When was the last time we actually stayed with something?

Not just noticed it.

Not just reacted to it.

But read it slowly. Let it linger. Let it sit with us for a moment longer than a scroll.

We live in a world of instant responses. A heart. A thumbs-up. A quick tap that says I saw this — even when we didn’t really enter it.

Staying asks more of us.

It asks for attention in a time when attention feels expensive.

It asks for stillness in a culture that keeps moving.

It asks us to feel something we might not be ready to feel yet.

So we react instead.

Not because we don’t care, but because reacting is lighter. It doesn’t require us to slow our pace or open our hearts too wide. It lets us pass through without being changed.

But reading — truly reading — is an act of presence.

It means letting words reach us.

It means allowing a thought to interrupt our momentum.

It means sitting with discomfort, truth, or tenderness instead of skimming past it.

The strange thing is, the deeper the words are, the easier they are to rush past.

Quiet honesty doesn’t demand attention.

It waits.

And the platforms we move through aren’t built for waiting. They reward speed, not depth. Motion, not meaning. Reaction, not reflection.

So we tap hearts quickly and move on — sometimes forgetting how to stay with something long enough for it to leave a mark.

But the moments that shape us have never been fast.

They’re the sentences we return to.

The thoughts that follow us into quiet rooms.

The words that come back to us days later, when we didn’t even realize we needed them.

Those moments don’t always announce themselves with reactions.

They happen quietly, out of sight.

So maybe the question isn’t why didn’t they respond more?

Maybe it’s when did we forget how to stay?

Because staying — with words, with truth, with each other — is where meaning still lives.

And it’s something worth remembering how to do again.

“Some things don’t ask to be noticed — only to be stayed with.”

Until next time,