Falling Flowers in a Dream

I had a surprising dream. On a weekend morning, I woke right at the time I'd normally be getting up for work. Still a bit groggy, laziness left a faint urge in my mind to lie back down and keep sleeping. But recalling the dream, I couldn't help sighing; I couldn't be calm. Generally speaking, a dream is just an afterimage left in the brain by the thoughts of the day. If you think of someone day and night and dream of them, you're not so foolish as to take that dream and pawn it off on some star sign or fortune-telling nonsense. Because you know perfectly well the dream only means you missed them. This morning's dream was the same kind of ordinary dream. I was missing someone, as if they had always been by my side. Yet a few fragments are still worth lingering over.

The dream, at this point, has been reduced to scattered droplets; the blurry memories in my mind grow harder and harder to gather. I watched blue smoke climb past my fingers, from a thin straight line gradually turning into a pale cloud, and a room appeared before my eyes. The room in a dream has no concept of size, and faces are hard to recognize — no color, no outline — only two or three people inside who seemed to be wearing camouflage, reminding me I was in a dream.

So I got up, drew back the curtain, and watched the sunlight flood the room in an instant. The city's clamour or the birds' chirping sounded empty, yet not unfamiliar. You grieve, and the sun rises in the east; you rejoice, and the sun rises in the east. There are birdsong when one is born, and birdsong when one dies. The world has always been here; everyone is busy with their own things; only I am secretly pleased that I got up early on a weekend. Looking back on the dream, I seemed to have made a choice as ordinary as any other. Why say "without controversy"? Because on weekdays, when I make a choice, I do only one thing: I wait. I run through all the possible outcomes in my head, then wait indifferently for time to move forward. Whether the best or the worst, it seems to have little to do with me. In the dream, I was lucky enough to become a teacher at a training school. This idea is not strange; it should be related to a conversation I had with a friend earlier. Then I dreamed of new students coming in to register, and an urgent problem suddenly appeared.

What should I teach the students?

I could see people in camouflage because among our group there was a veteran who could teach others how to survive in the wild. There was another teacher who told me he'd tried lecturing elderly men and women, and they all understood. In that instant, I realized: in this mixed group, everyone has something of their own, everyone has come prepared. Only I, who had waited for all this, was at a loss, not knowing how to receive it. This reminded me of the story of Lord Ye who claimed to love the dragon: if you don't know what you truly want, an opportunity in front of you can turn into a huge hidden danger.

On workdays, full of confusion, we get up early and sleep late; every day feels long. We long for the end of the day, long for the weekend. Day after day, until one day you look back and realize the days that once felt like years have become years that feel like days. Before you know it, you've missed the time in your life when you were most likely to shine. What you've waited for is still the blankness of years. You've had no thrilling adventures, no all-consuming study, no heart-stirring love — so your memories are blank too. You have no past or future; you are just a pebble that has wandered into the long river of life. You've seen the world's bustle, yet can only drift with the current.

Who are you, really? You watch quietly in this time and space. You had no intent, yet you've somehow come to understand the most incomprehensible of human relationships.