Choice

I have to say, a person's life is spent making choices. Choosing to face or to run, to be smooth or to be square, even to live or to die. Different choices pull us further and further apart, or one day, unexpectedly, bring us face to face again. Perhaps this is the logic of change: the taiji gives birth to the two forms, the two forms give birth to the four images, and the four images and eight trigrams return to the one.

Counting the past, I was shocked to discover: twenty springs and summers, and we are still accomplishing nothing. We're like a cat curled up in the corner of a wall, watching the mice come and go with no reaction. In the blink of an eye, we've all passed the age of genius, yet sometimes even a genius's mood is beyond our reach. We guard a genius's dream and end in regret. I have to ask, what is the goal of Chinese education? It squanders our precious youth, then leaves us to our own devices, to survive or perish. It's like a mother who, while alive, treats her son as a horse or an ox, and when she dies, the poor son, having been a horse or an ox his whole life, knows how to be anything else? Actually, English is in no way inferior to Chinese in expressing emotion. A line that captures my current feeling is "Fuck the education of China!" Throw in a little hand gesture — a dramatic shrug — and it becomes truly perfect, vivid, and complete.

People always have the right to choose, and of course the right to choose what. What I least want to see is someone, already past twenty, still muddling along, doing nothing of substance. Twenty years — twenty years exchanged for nothing but a diploma. Twenty years of walking on eggshells have left me emotionally exhausted. How many twenties does a person get? And which of those twenties was more youthful, more full of vigor, more willing to fall and pick oneself up and keep going without regret? Which one? Which one could so easily break free of worldly shackles, with a heart full of wild dreams? Which one? Which one shone like a bright sword, calm and clear? Which one could?

I have to admit that we missed the best time of our lives; it could even be counted as a prime opportunity. From then on, we have had no choice but to live out our days chasing the waves like an ugly duckling, and end our lives that way.

Twenty years — many debts were incurred, and now we must work hard in the next twenty, and the twenty after that, to pay them back. Just as someone wrote: selling oneself for a worthless string of beads. Twenty years — our parents gave us so much, so we resolved to spend our whole lives repaying them. Our whole life became a continuation of our parents' — a purely temporal continuation. In programming, that's an infinite loop; like grafting, generation after generation, the turn will come for you to "turn into spring mud to nourish the flowers."

Some will say: a person must learn gratitude; repaying your parents is a must. But think from another angle: if one day you become a parent, would you do worse than your parents did? Why? Because someone once said, "If a person does not look out for himself, heaven and earth will destroy him." Each of us struggles and bleeds and cries for the "self" in our own hearts. In fact, everyone is selfish; the key is how big the scope of that "self" is. So, the relationship between parent and child, expressed in sets, is: the parent is contained within the child — in other words, my whole is only part of yours. Different families just have different proportions.

Some may think this is too cold. It's just that language is too pale to express the love in my heart. I just hope that one day, when I've achieved something, I can let you sleep without a care — that is the repayment I want. Unfortunately, not everyone understands; unfortunately, those who don't understand are all my benefactors; unfortunately, nothing is sadder than a heart that refuses to die.

This gathering, too, will one day be torn apart by our ideals into pieces too small to form a single word. How should one live a perfect life? One day, for the sake of what I want in my heart, I too will leave you. I will choose to leave quietly; at that moment, I will be able to hear your prayers from afar.

Time and we are both changing. The victor's cheers have barely sounded, and some are already eliminated. Time is the killer, killing everything that does not move. So we are fortunate to be alive, because we are still moving. The day we stop — that is the day we die.

Everything I want to say to you was sent to the edge of the sky in that upward glance of mine. On every fifteenth night, please pay attention: in the glorious light, there may be my final words.

Life passes in a hurry; twenty years flash by in an instant. A few regrets, a few bouts of longing, all flow eastward with the water.