那些背影和成长以及坚持与回望Watching the Boy I Was Walk Away

Time drifts away as the stars turn and the world moves on—spring blossoms are a dream, and running water leaves no trace. Back and forth we go, and at last the season of campus recruiting is upon us. The air is thick with anxiety. This is the hardest year of all, full of the unknown, of unease, of uncertainty. I wonder whether I'll still embrace change, and the change that every choice brings.

A Strange City, and Leaving

The moment I got home yesterday, I got a message from Congcong saying he'd landed an offer, and I was genuinely happy for him. I've watched him work his way here step by step, through all kinds of hardship, and now it's finally paid off.

Still feeling my way and searching for a path, I can only hope some good luck comes my way this year too.

But here's the truth: life is never easy—and if it feels easy to you, it's because someone else is carrying the weight of it for you.

One person, drifting further and further away on their own. One day over Spring Festival, as I was about to leave home, it hit me all at once: I really am about to leave my hometown, leave my parents, graduate, and step out into the world.

The scenes from freshman-year military training feel like they happened yesterday, and yet nearly four years have flown by. It struck me that from now on, coming home will mean no more springs and autumns—only winters and summers. The time I get with my parents will happen only on holidays, and there will be less and less of it.

Looking back, I've spent so little time with my parents. And all at once I felt lost, like I'd woken up in another world entirely.

When you're alone in a city that doesn't "belong" to you, sometimes—often, even—you feel hollow inside, unsure what any of this is even for.

Watching the silhouette of that boy grow up; watching him hold on and glance back; those dim, shadowed hours, that stubbornness and that panic; those hours full of laughter, those vows and those dreams.

Fierce and Alive

The old me was like the version of himself Wang Xiaobo wrote in The Golden Age: "That year I was twenty-one, in the golden age of my life. I had so many extravagant hopes. I wanted to love, to eat, and in a single instant to turn into one of those half-bright, half-dim clouds in the sky. Only later did I learn that life is a slow process of being hammered down—people get older by the day, their hopes vanish by the day, and in the end they become like an ox that's taken the hammering.

"But on my twenty-first birthday I didn't see any of this coming. I thought I'd stay fierce and unbreakable forever, that nothing could ever hammer me down."

That's exactly how I've always lived: doing everything I loved, chasing down everything I was curious about or drawn to.

In my days alone, recklessly chasing after freedom, throwing a fierce drive into anything I wanted to do.

Solitary, self-certain, doubting every so-called truth, contemptuous of every creed.

Cold, with nothing much I cared about, unwilling to weigh gains against losses.

Someone who'd been through a "baptism by death," and would gaze at it, and keep gazing. Naively taking my own subjective feeling as the whole meaning of life.

I called myself an "optimistic pessimist"; at times a purest, most absolute pessimism would come over me, and in certain moments I'd lose myself as sincerely as Zhuangzi dreaming he was a butterfly.

I often look back and long for those days—days when each one was almost entirely different from the last.

I envy that stubborn, selfish guy who dared not to care what anyone thought of him, who lived entirely for himself.

I envy how well he got along with himself, and every one of his sharp, cool, jagged edges.

He was strong, fierce, alive. Even weighed down by worries and unease, getting by in a way that could look a little clumsy at times.

I don't know whether I'm fierce or not, but looking back now, I deeply envy the version of me at twenty.

Socializing

I've never much liked socializing. Especially not the kind that's excessive or pointless.

The direct consequence of over-socializing is this: your disposable time, money, and life get wasted—your time above all.

For someone working a non-traditional job in a first-tier city, once you subtract work, commuting, and sleep, the time left in a day to do as you please is very limited.

That precious time could have gone to thinking, reading, cultivating an interest, bettering yourself, resting and unwinding, working out, taking care of your health, dating, side projects, starting something of your own, and so on.

If you over-socialize every day, what's actually left for you shrinks to almost nothing, and all of that gets squeezed out—sometimes disappearing from your life altogether.

Thinking

Why bother thinking? Because in the hours of class and work, there's simply no quiet environment and no unbroken block of time for you to sit alone and think things through calmly.

A person clears away obstacles, banks their advantages, gets clear on direction, and keeps growing—all through constant thinking.

Someone who only ever keeps their head down and grinds, and never finds time to think independently, will not make any progress. Think about what, exactly? Think about the problems that came up in your work today—what lessons there are to take from them, and how to do better.

Think about what plans you have for tomorrow's work and life; think about one interesting thing that happened today.

Think about that flash of inspiration you jotted on a sticky note, the one you couldn't flesh out during work hours.

Think about what important thing you still haven't done, what important person you still haven't seen, what important place you still haven't been.

Solitude

Over these few years of solitude, I've realized I really have become a bit of a "loner." More willing to be alone, less willing to argue and quarrel. More willing to read a book than to gawk at a spectacle. More willing to sit quietly by myself and let my mind drift.

Maybe when you've been on your own long enough, it really does become an addiction.

The truth is I'm not really antisocial—you could even call me outgoing and lively. But most of the time I'm just lazy, too lazy to tend a relationship. And other times, it's simply that I love freedom, and I feel any kind of relationship would tie me down.

Above all, though, it's that a true kindred spirit is hard to find. I've always felt that with most people I can only ever bring out one dimension of myself, and it's hard to find someone whose interests run as boundlessly wide as mine.

Solitude is a rare and precious thing. In that undisturbed time and space, arranging exactly how you spend those hours entirely as you wish is a tremendous kind of freedom.

In the very limited free time and space of each day, if you can manage self-discipline—planning, restraint, self-motivation—you can generate efficiency, and accomplish the things others can't, and in doing so you make something of yourself.

Every talented, accomplished person is someone who knows how to enjoy and use solitude; they store up energy in solitude so they can burst forth and bloom when they're not alone.

And everyone who fears solitude, who spends their days chasing a sense of existence at dinner tables, drinking tables, and karaoke bars, is bound to drown in the sea of the crowd.