Chapter 364: Bright as a Galaxy (Essay on 28th Birthday)
I remember some things from my childhood.
I liked playing table tennis when I was in elementary school. Later, I saved money and pestered my family to buy my first table tennis racket. I took it to school and played it twice. Later, when I went out to play after class, I was beaten by two A junior high school student or high school student snatched it away, and I chased it all the way to get it back. I was beaten down the slope from the back door of the school. When I fell to the ground, my head hit a big rock, and a big bag came up.
I forgot whether I cried at that time.
I still remember the appearance of that big stone, which was next to the old back door of the school. Later, a cement road was built on the ramp to come down. The edge of the cement road and the stone were about twenty centimeters apart. I can still recall the image of water flowing over the stones sometimes when it rains.
When I was in junior high school, I boarded at school and studied by myself at night. Every night I would spend 50 cents to buy a piece of chocolate and eat it. The chocolate was very hard and a little bitter, and I felt that my mind was very clear. When the evening self-study was about to end, the teacher had already left, and a boy in our class was playing hide and seek in the school. At that time, I liked to scare girls. When we came out of the stairs of the teaching building, there were gardens on both sides of the road, surrounded by short privet trees. When class was about to end, we hid behind the privet trees. When we saw someone coming down, we jumped out to scare people.
One night when get out of class was about to end, I sneakily hid in the garden, and then I saw a friend who was playing very well with me coming over, and he sneakily hid on the other side. I thought, this is really a hero's idea of the same thing, and it will be twice as scary later. Then three female classmates came downstairs. When they came over, I jumped out with a "ah" sound, and my friend also jumped out from there... They collided with each other in the air. The three female classmates were stunned for a long time and laughed. We had no choice but to run away in despair.
Sometimes I would hide in a dark corridor with a flashlight. When someone walked by, I would suddenly turn it on and shine it up from my chin. Once, a girl was frightened to tears, which made us at a loss. We thought that this was too bad, so we wouldn’t tell the teacher...
When I was in junior high school, I participated in a school-wide art performance and told a fat man. Cross talk, cross talk was written by me, and the effect is very good. That fat guy didn't rehearse seriously, and couldn't remember his lines when it came time to perform. Halfway through the performance, he asked me: "What's the next line?" I told him... and forgot to move the microphone away from my mouth. Of course, the effect was still very good, at least everyone laughed.
What exactly do you want to express by writing these things? In fact, it's not too complicated, if you really want to say it. I remember the simple mood at that time, that kind of school and dormitory. Broken windows, carefully written blackboard newspapers, the alley behind the teaching building where cross talk is rehearsed, divided sanitary areas, children cleaning with brooms in the morning, old beds in the dormitory, the lonely faucet in the courtyard, The snow on the roof of the bulletin board in winter, the sweltering heat and laughter at the beginning of school in summer, the sound of four-wheel drive driving through the empty campus on Saturday... everything is gone in the blink of an eye.
Many times I wonder if I have caught something, because I missed too much, but sometimes I tell myself that the memory is finally caught in my mind. The feeling at that time, even further, may be I can still remember many things. I remembered the feeling, but forgot the characters involved.
Nowadays, I like to sit on the bus while listening to music, watching people going up and down, watching the scenery passing by outside, and thinking about what kind of stories they have. Every time I can construct countless pictures in my mind, and when they move with the music, everything comes to life. I can see every detail clearly, and it contains certain feelings. This is my strength, but after all, it is also a lonely game. If someone is talking to me next to me, all imagination will be gone.
I went to Sanya with some friends two years ago. When asked where to go, I said it would be better to take the bus. If there is a bus, I will get on it. I think now, if I just walk around, I can cover all of Sanya. …Of course I didn’t do such a 2B thing later. We stayed in a hotel, typing during the day, and in the evening we swam in the hotel swimming pool and walked to the beach. Then when it was time to eat, we took a taxi to downtown Sanya to eat at KFC...the food there was really bland.
So every time I sit on the bus alone, I wear headphones and try to sit in the back row by the window. What comes with the music is mostly fantasy, and sometimes I see some interesting things. . Last year, I took a bus to Changsha. It was raining, and there was a lot of water in the bus. There were not many people, but the seats in the bus were full. There was a seat behind the driver's seat. , someone probably had vomited not long ago, leaving a pool of vomit next to it, and everyone who came up subconsciously walked around it.
A young man and woman, probably less than twenty years old, came up, perhaps students from the university. The girl kept smiling and talking to the boy, and she never noticed when she stepped on the pile of things. Later, the boy came to the back and stopped near the car door, and the woman sat down on her seat. I don’t know when she discovered what was under her feet, but I think she must have liked the boy very much. After a few stops, the boy got off the bus first, and then I got off too. I don’t know where the girl sat.
I had a girlfriend last year and we broke up at the end of the year. This is the first time I have been in love in many years, which may be a bit funny. After all, I am twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. After today, I will enter the twenty-ninth year of my life. After the breakup, I kept thinking whether I did something wrong or something right.
I always wonder if I am right or wrong.
I probably just graduated from high school. When I was in my early twenties, one day I suddenly got the phone number of a female classmate. Of course, I had some contacts and memories in the past, and I was considered a good friend. There is no need to elaborate on these. narrate. But we haven’t contacted her for two years. I called her that day, and suddenly I couldn’t calm down. I couldn’t sleep that night, and I couldn’t calm down when I did anything the next day. I felt my hands were shaking, so I called her and confessed my love to her. .
She must have had a boyfriend in college at the time. The outcome of the phone call was unknown, but after the call and conversation, she calmed down and had a good sleep that night. After that, I complacently regarded it as " "The End of Youth", put it behind you, work hard and never think about it again.
One day about a year later, she suddenly called me and talked to me about life in college. I felt very strange. I asked her what happened, and she asked if I had agreed to you. What would you do? I said that I knew you wouldn't agree at the beginning, and she didn't say anything.
At that time, I voluntarily gave up college because of my family's conditions, but after graduating from high school, I actually couldn't find a good job. My life may not be embarrassing, but it was not a time when I could afford anything. After that phone call, that night, I suddenly felt that I was such a bad person. Oh, I called to confess my love to her just to sleep. Of course that was not the case. Of course I did like her at that time. From then on After that, I thought that I should no longer drag others down or hinder others when I can't bear the responsibility, even if it's just emotional fluctuations. So for several years after that, I no longer had any contact with anything that might involve feelings. Although I once had such an opportunity, I suppressed it almost as soon as the idea arose.
Until one day, I felt that I had realized what responsibility was like, and then I thought I could start giving it a try.
But...hehe, of course these ideas are wrong.
In fact, in the final analysis, it is my own too strong sense of self-protection that is at play. I realized this on the eve of a classmate’s wedding last year. We had dinner together and saw her again when we entered. she is married , I was stunned for a moment and said, "This is..." She actually hasn't changed much. I remember her name and various memories, but I just couldn't recognize her at the time. …That night I thought: I’m such a fucking lousy person.
Presumably she and her husband will not read my article. These things are nothing if written. Even if they can be read, it is nothing. They are just memories. If possible, I would like to say One sentence: "I'm sorry."
What I want to say now is that there must be many regrets in life to appear perfect, but it is not like this. Since I was twenty years old, I have been working tirelessly to avoid regrets and avoid harm. If I think something may fail in the end, I simply don't touch it. Thinking about it now, it has become a real regret. If there are young people in their teens or twenties who read my book, I hope they won’t be like this. If there is happiness, just seize it, and if there is a challenge, try it.
After the age of thirty, men should do things with certainty. This is mentioned in "The Grandmaster", but it was after the age of thirty.
For me, it is no longer necessary to get myself back to something "right". There used to be many twisted places in my personality, which made me feel confused and painful. Now they have been finalized in my body and become a part of me. Therefore, I have been able to retain some of myself. Something that feels precious. The outlook on life has been established, and the confusion has disappeared.
I was able to write a book because of this, so I gained the ability to write a book. Because of these, I could listen to music in the back of the bus and watch the crowd go up and down, and see more and more things. Because of these, I could type in the noisy KFC and use the people around me as the background, so I could analyze my life more deeply and objectively and gain experiences that no one else had. I think, if I have lost something, after all, I have also gained a lot.
Sometimes I think that life may be like a bus, many people will accompany you for a journey, some people will walk a longer distance with you, and some people will get off at the next stop. Some people sit far away, and some people sit next to you. Sooner or later, they will get off the bus, and you will get up at a certain station and reach the finish line.
I go out for a walk sometimes.
The town where I live now has a large lake with good greenery and various facilities. Various light strips are turned on at night, there is music, and sometimes there are cultural performances in the small square. . The walking path goes around the lake. There is a big and impressive house opposite. The lights are turned on at night, just like a villa. When I came here for the first time, I thought: Wow, who can build a villa by this lake? It’s really awesome. money. It turned out to be a public toilet.
In the evening I listened to the song and went for a walk around the lake. One night I came back from the lake. It was already a little late. In front of me was a lonely bus stop with countless stars in the sky. I looked up and saw that everything around me seemed a little empty. The street lights illuminate the road, and vehicles drive by from time to time. The car lights in the distance illuminate it. Opposite is a community, and next to it is a quiet, temporarily suspended construction site. But looking back, the lights on the lake are reflected, and the city lights are blurred and quiet. There are also pedestrians coming home from the night in the field of vision. When I thought about the lives they lived, I suddenly thought, there are so many of them.
In this city, in this world, there are really so many people, just like the stars in the sky, they can’t be counted. Everyone has their own life and all kinds of bizarre experiences. Just imagining there are so many people and so many lights is enough to exhaust your brain. At that time, I suddenly felt that it was really a pity that a person could only live a lifetime. I really want to experience everyone’s life...
Later I thought, although I had never thought about it so clearly before, maybe this is why I like writing books so much.
I'm twenty-eight years old. In the process of writing the book, I was able to simulate many things and moods, and I felt that many things I saw were so ordinary that I could hardly be surprised. One day a friend told me that if there are no accidents or surprises in your life and you can understand everything, wouldn't it be too boring? I don’t know if this is really boring to others, but for me, every moment, I experience various feelings, joy, joy, nostalgia, and sadness. This world both surprises and calms me every moment. Also that night, I thought, it would be great to be able to see such a bizarre world with countless lives and countless emotions intertwined.
I really want to let everyone know these emotions.
We can only live for a few decades. When one day we get off this bus, there will be countless people on it, some getting on and some getting off, for hundreds of years, thousands of years or tens of thousands of years, As vast and endless as the stars in the sky. In such a short moment, if I get off the car one day, I hope I can tell myself that I have seen many things.
Oh, and...nice to meet you. (End of this chapter)