I've always been a slow starter. My first date was with a girl

The words of Leonardo DiCaprio—“I’ve always been a slow starter. My first date was with a girl called Cessi. We had a beautiful relationship over the phone all summer, and then when we met, I couldn’t look her in the eye”—speak with the tender vulnerability of youth, where the stirrings of love awaken both joy and trembling. They remind us that beginnings are often marked not by confidence, but by hesitation, for the heart carries both desire and fear in equal measure.

The ancients knew this delicate truth well. For they taught that the first steps of affection, like the first shoots of spring, are fragile. To call oneself a slow starter is to confess that love does not always rush in with boldness, but sometimes arrives with timidity, where the tongue falters and the eye cannot meet its reflection in another. Yet in this hesitation lies honesty—the raw truth of a soul learning to love.

The beauty of this tale rests in the contrast between words spoken unseen and presence face to face. Over the distance of summer, the relationship flourished freely, unburdened by gaze or gesture. But when bodies meet, the weight of reality awakens shyness. The ancients would have said: the voice of the heart is often stronger in absence than in presence, for longing grows bold where eyes cannot yet.

And yet, there is no weakness in such trembling. For even the warrior quakes before battle, though he later conquers. So too, the youth trembles before the mystery of love, though with time he learns courage. The first faltering glance, the downcast eye, is the seed from which all future strength is born. To confess this is not shame, but testament to the humanity we all share.

So let this teaching endure: do not scorn the slow starter, for even the greatest journeys begin with hesitant steps. In love, as in life, the earliest attempts may falter, but they prepare the soul for deeper connection, for truer sight, for greater courage. The ancients knew, and DiCaprio reminds us, that the heart must stumble before it learns to stride.