Lingering Words, Lasting Thoughts: A Love Letter in Defence of the Long Form in a Short-Form World

We live in an age obsessed with brevity.

In my work as a communications and crisis expert, I am trained to sharpen, shorten, and deliver — fast. The goal is not to make people dwell, but to make them act. Every word is measured for its power to cut through noise and land.

And yet, there’s a longing inside me that refuses to be silenced.

It’s a love for long-form.

Not the indulgent, self-important kind — but the kind that invites you to linger. The kind that makes you slow down, sit with an idea, turn it over, let it seep into your bones. The kind that reminds you that being human is not just about doing; it’s about being.

. . .

Why long-form matters (even when the world says it doesn’t)

Some will argue long-form has no place in today’s workplace or on today’s social media. We don’t have time. Attention spans are short. We need punchy messages, sharp headlines, instant reactions.

But here’s the quiet truth: when we abandon long-form entirely, we risk abandoning a part of our own humanity.

Long-form creates space for complexity.

It allows for contradiction, doubt, nuance.

It gives us room to explore, wonder, and even change.

Without it, we risk becoming transactional beings — clicking, scrolling, reacting, but rarely feeling. We risk reducing life, work, and thought to metrics and outputs, leaving no room for the slow, patient, messy parts of being human.

. . .

For people like me — and maybe you

This reflection is not a rejection of short-form; I respect it, I work with it, I know its power. But for those of us who carry a deep-seated love for long-form — even if it’s quiet, even if it’s hidden — we need to remember that love matters.

It’s not a weakness.

It’s not outdated.

It’s a part of us that still aches for depth and meaning, no matter how loud the world rushes by.

At home, as a mum raising children in the Catholic faith — and as a second-generation eternal expat, raising them far from our motherland — I see it too.

Because I was raised far from my motherland, too. I didn’t grow up knowing much of my culture, history, or heritage — or maybe I just never paid enough attention to it then. But now, I feel the ache of that absence. And I want my children to have more: more stories, more roots, more knowing.

So I linger with them in the stories. I slow down for the rituals, the histories, the heritage I’m still learning myself — even as I nurture in them a love for the multicultural world we call home.

Because these things refuse to be rushed or reduced. They remind me that some things can’t be compressed. They need space.

. . .

A gentle defense, and an invitation

So here’s my small defense of long-form — and maybe, an invitation.

Not necessarily in work, where brevity often rules.

But in our personal spaces, our quiet moments, our journaling, our self-expression — wherever we let ourselves breathe.

We can leave room for the slow.

We can cherish the words that linger, the thoughts that last, the meanings that refuse to be reduced to bullet points.

Because even in a short-form world, we are still long-form souls.

We, ourselves, are long-form.

We carry contradictions. Wounds. Wonder. Memory. Mystery.

We cannot be condensed into a caption, a KPI, or a polished sentence without compromising something essential.

To love long-form is to honor the unedited, unfinished, uncompressed truth of being human.

And maybe — just maybe — holding on to long-form is how we remember who we are.