Slow Down: 让我们活在当下
It was my eleventh solo trip in three years. In 青岛, I had a quiet breakthrough. After years of embracing slow and mindful living, I finally felt myself truly slow down. My thoughts were fully here, in the present moment, in this present space, in 青岛.
In Chinese, we often say 活在当下 : Live in the present moment. It sounds simple, but the way of living it is far more profound. For me, living in the present means not being anxious about the future, and learning to honour the past without living in it. It took years of slow practice to loosen the past, quiet the future, to let go, to trust, and to return to the present moment, to NOW.
I was walking along the streets of 青岛 when I suddenly saw my art. The blue 青岛 letters stood against a soft beige wall, and for a moment, I was surprised. The colours mirrored my own graffiti piece, SLOW DOWN. I stopped in my tracks, feeling both happy and quietly romanticized. It felt like a déjà vu.
Maybe that’s what slowing down does… it allows you to finally see what’s always been there.
There were years when slowing down felt like a luxury. There were seasons when I lived almost unconsciously — clocking through work tasks, chasing the next milestone, the next career progression, completing my postgraduate degree, and repeating the same cycle of waking, working, and sleeping. The days blurred into each other, and the motion never seemed to stop. Amidst life’s hustle and bustle, did we ever truly pause to feel, or ask ourselves: was this the path we truly wanted, or just the one we managed to push through?
Slowing down isn’t about doing less, and it’s not the opposite of ambition. It’s about doing with intention. It’s living consciously and being fully aware of how we spend our energy, our time, and our emotions. It’s choosing what truly matters, instead of being pulled by everything that doesn’t.
In 青岛, standing before that wall, I felt as if life was whispering the same message back to me and that perhaps I had finally arrived where my art had been trying to take me all along.
Let’s 活在当下, live not in the past, not in the future, but right here, in the PRESENT
