Slow Down a Moment
Everyone, wait a moment. The messages I did not get to reply to yesterday, I will reply to all today. Before I run off to the workshop to play shop assistant, let me rest a bit and tap out this “Slow Down a Moment.”
1
Using the eyes drains the spirit. Old Chinese-medicine doctors always tell us to look at the phone less — it drains a person’s spirit and mind. I once had a few naive years, not long after graduating. I would go drink milk tea. Then I watched the couples or friends next to me — what should have been good time for free chatting, but mostly they looked at their phones, wordless toward each other. I told the friend with me: we must avoid this behavior. Now, I have about become that kind of person, with the same ways. Looking back, I even feel my old self was a bit bright. For example, on weekends I would return to my parents’ and try not to look at the phone, chatting with them more. And then I often went to the library and borrowed many books, for myself and my parents. Now thinking back, I find I was so driven then. Back then, my old father, not yet wanting a smartphone, would often play the erhu and practice calligraphy; and I was still the poetry-writing youth a sociology professor spoke of. I visited a friend’s home, and the couple, all evening, mostly looked at their phones alone. I thought: I do not want to become like this in the future. Later, my old self would look down on my current self. Later still I understood why boys and girls have more brightness in their eyes: because, unlike us who have started families and careers, they do not have to manage so many things. Of course, some young people are not bright either, because they go out for milk tea and scroll the phone the whole time.
2
We know how to reach a “simpler, clearer, more lucid” self, but often cannot do it. We should be composed and at ease, but now we are hurried, scrambling. This sounds like our posture going to work. Years ago, I already understood: if I got up half an hour earlier each day, even a bit earlier, I could slowly eat breakfast outside, then slowly walk to work. Walking, I could slowly feel the breath of life, including the smoke and fire of the human world. Really, you can feel it. Yet now the fact is always: the night before, willingly staying up late, the next morning only wanting to sleep a bit more, finally rushing anxiously to work. Some things you can choose to do, but at other times, more often you cannot choose. For example, doing gear reviews — you cannot say I only test good things and reject cheap ones. That neither fits an influencer creator’s long-term career plan (you have to be the all-knowing sage while staying down-to-earth), nor is it operationally easy. But once things pile up, more is just swallowed whole, not necessarily understood. Sometimes I wonder: is testing just one high-end product a month enough? Of course, thinking is one thing. Life does not always follow your thoughts, and you easily drift with the current. You need to split yourself into two people: a robot-like reviewer, and a mischievous child who can freely and comfortably feel the bat’s joy.
3
Zoning out is happiness. Now I understand: happiness is not that complex — first, it is having time to slow down. Only when slow do you feel something, can you compose thoughts, even not think, just zone out. My old self was so silly, thinking happiness and joy were simple, even alone. Now whenever I recall, after school looking at the rolling clouds on the balcony by the classroom with classmates, or after PE finishing basketball and feeling the few minutes of breeze between classes, I feel happiness was simple, yet became so distant. So distant that now, every day, to stop and slowly tap out some words, I must silence the phone and deliberately vanish for an hour. As if only such a “slow down,” a moment’s slacking, can find my boyhood self. May everyone have time to slow down. Only then can we see ourselves and truly “live.”