Seven Days Book #2｜Black Coffee and Latte

When I turned 30, I discovered that my mother’s understanding of me was still at the stage of a junior high school student who was easily angered when plans were changed. Indeed, I used to be like that, with an irritable physique or a world-weary mentality. It was just that at that time, The word "world-weary" hasn't become popular yet, but I actually just hate things that are beyond my control that keep going wrong. You have to hold everything in your hands. Man can defeat nature and hold the steering wheel of life. At that time, I would read books with titles like "The Key to Success" or "Beyond Yourself". It was called an inspirational book, but in fact it was about out-of-control positive thinking. poison.

One time when I returned home, my mother and I went to buy coffee, but the clerk made the black coffee I ordered into a latte. I don’t drink milk much anymore, so I try to avoid dairy products every day. When I got the coffee that day, I told my mother that I What we ordered was actually black coffee, but we had already driven away from the small shop, and my mother in the passenger seat was yelling that she would go back to the shop to get another cup. I don’t know what Mom is obsessed with, but it’s just a cup of coffee, isn’t it? I'm not lactose intolerant, it's just a matter of personal reasons that I don't want to drink milk. While arguing with my mother, I drove the car further and further without any intention of turning around. Later, my mother compromised. While waiting at the red light, she took a sip of caramel macchiato and said, "If it were you before, you would definitely go back and argue with them!" To be honest, I never expected my mother to do this. In conclusion, according to her argument, I seem to be an unreasonable and resentful person, and I am not even sure which past this "past" is or whose past it is. Of course, I can’t blame my mother for this. We didn’t have much contact after graduating from high school. At such a young age, I really naively thought that as long as I had a plan, it would be implemented. But life is not work. The uncertainties encountered in work are all within a controllable range. Even if you encounter uncontrollable emergencies, you can still respond on the spot with limited resources; but life is different. Life is an uncontrollable event. Once it happens, it will definitely be a state that I can't grasp with both hands. All I can control is my mentality.

After leaving home, my mother's understanding of me stopped at the same place, but I have learned to face loss of control and disorder. Every page in my dictionary says "It doesn't matter." The reason why it doesn't matter and doesn't matter is not because those events are nothing, but what can I do with them? Go back and ask for that cup of black coffee, tell the store manager that the work-study student made a mistake, give me a new cup, apologize to me, and hold the work-study student responsible? What woke me up from my mother's conclusion was that it wasn't the time lag in her understanding of me, nor her actions to make me feel better because of the time lag in her understanding of me, but the person who once wanted to hold everything tightly in her hands. Apart from myself, only she knows about me, but the persistent me now knows how to protect myself.

I'm not sure when I learned to protect myself in this way, but after several years of work experience, I once hid in the office toilet to cry, and sat in the driver's seat on rainy days without going home. I once couldn't figure out what small workplace groups were like. I couldn't tell the difference between the words of my seniors and what they said about the mode of operation, but now I can understand it. The mental rule is not to think too much and not to be attached. If you want to control things that are controlled by others, you will only make yourself uncomfortable in the end. You have suffered, you have kicked the iron wall, and after you leave your comfort zone and safety net, no one will want to observe you carefully. People can always hide the little things that they don’t want others to discover, but my mother just sees me too clearly. , so even now she can still know what the unarmed me might be thinking about in my heart.

Maybe one day, someone may still notice my daily pickiness, or care about it, but it doesn’t matter. Right? It doesn't matter. But what I hope most is that I hope my mother knows that it really doesn’t matter to me, whether it’s black coffee or a latte, whether it’s the me before or the me now, whether it’s the estrangement from my mother or the ease that I have been able to gather. Angry constitution.