Seven Days Book S5E6｜Crossing Mountains and Seas

What did you cross on the sixth day? The moments that you once thought you couldn't get through safely are not special now. If you could say something to you at that time, what would you say?

First of all, we have overcome the unsolvable life problem of "I was born without my consent." I can only hope that medicine will be more advanced in the future.

Once again, I crossed the line of "Why didn't you accompany me and raise me well when you were born, causing me to suffer the misfortunes and grievances of so many left-behind children?" The process was long and torturous. The general process was: "The family finally reunited when I was in college. I got together with the mentality of trying to make up for the time; I kept giving my sincerity to my parents (actually, I subconsciously thought that giving love would give them back). Love, the lack of love in childhood led to a giving personality, unconsciously pleasing others); constantly being disappointed by not being responded to and negative responses; finally, after countless cycles of communication incompetence, quarrels and sadness, I realized that as a child I should What is given but not received cannot be made up for by growing up.”

All of the above are powerless and are problems imposed by the outside world. Everyone cannot choose their own birth, even if they are biological parents, they cannot make requirements (on the other hand, parents should not have requirements for their adult children. It is the duty of parents to have children, and it is your responsibility to raise them. Children who have been loved will naturally know how to reciprocate love when they grow up. Children's love for their parents is instinctive and truly selfless. Only parents brainwashed by Confucian "filial piety" are selfish, so please talk about "selfless parental love" before talking about it. First ask yourself whether you have raised your children well, whether you love your children, and whether you have any selfish parental requirements for your children - although this is a bible for most traditional East Asian parents, love is learned, TAs Most of them have never been loved, or have not taken the initiative to learn love as adults, so naturally they cannot love others).

So I can only let myself go on issues that I am powerless to choose and cannot choose. That is not something that can be decided or changed. People can only have expectations for themselves and can only change themselves. Under such a premise, the most difficult thing to overcome in the past was the first low point in life that I decided to do but failed after many efforts (I say "first time" because although I don't want a second time, life is still a low point). Unmeasurable).

Let’s start with choosing a major before college. I have been interested in language and literature since I was a child, and the majors I chose during the college entrance examination were all related to this (although I was also interested in medicine, but I was so bad at science in high school that I couldn't choose it). Who knew that I would switch from my first choice to journalism, but fortunately, journalism Learning is also related to words. Unfortunately, after being ignited by news, I realized that none of what China could report was real news. With a flexible mentality of "Since the truth is not allowed to be told, let me rewrite the story," I applied for a postgraduate examination for film script writing in the late undergraduate period, but failed the final re-examination. So after graduation, I went to Beijing to work and take exams, but I failed to pass the exams one after another. After failing four times, I wanted to try my best to take the exam again, so I stopped working for a few months to concentrate on preparing for the exam, but failed again. Fortunately, at that time, Parallel Line started an experience work on the front line of the film, and suddenly became busy. In the end, he went through more than three months that were worse than life and death. He "went inside" and learned that there was no hope for Chinese movies. If in the end I am not even allowed to write the story I want to write, then why have I been taking exams for so many years? Thus falling into the black hole of "everything is meaningless".

Those days spent in the black hole are indescribable now. When a person is in a black hole, it seems that even his thoughts are not his own. Just remember that without all desires, there is no end to the pain. Of course, I have no desire to live. After all, I would rather never have been born. But I don’t have the desire to die, because I have a partner and a cat, and wanting to die sounds painful (thinking about it now, maybe “I don’t want them to be sad” and “I don’t want to feel pain” are subconscious desires). In the black hole, the love around you seems to be sucked in, and the whole person is in a quasi-vacuum state.

I don’t know exactly how I got out of it. At that time, it was like I was sitting on time, and everything didn’t matter anymore. Perhaps because it didn't matter anymore, they gave up their struggle and floated out from another mouth of the black hole - just like the huge tree-rooted monster that the trio encountered when they broke through in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". After relaxing their bodies, they were The monster was put down. During that time, I read a lot of books intensively, mainly about Western philosophy and Lu Xun, and also "A Dream of Red Mansions", which I had never read in full. I felt the same way as the experience of previous generations. History always repeats itself, and human progress is like a journey of higher wisdom. Improvisational experiments on living things are full of unnecessary repetition and absurdity, so Sisyphus is still pushing the stone.

So I decided not to push this stone. After I came out, I started to make plans to leave. I first applied to a school in Macau (because the tuition was more affordable), but I only received an offer from the most expensive school. And during the COVID-19 epidemic, I gave up. All while returning to work full-time, online and remotely. Then moved to Europe.

Looking back on that experience, it’s a bit humorous because it’s like there was some kind of alien force trying to tell me, “Stop hitting the south wall and try another direction.” When I was applying for Macau, some universities required me to take the Mainland Postgraduate Examination to pass the national level. So I went to the Beijing Film Academy to take the naked test for the same major, and got the best score in the past few years. However, due to the increase in the admission score of Beijing Film Academy that year, I was one point short of advancing to the next round.

Stop hitting the south wall. The south wall is not worth hitting. If you walk along a good road and encounter a wall, it means there is something wrong with that road. Go in another direction. The existence of big rocks is for punishment, and you have done nothing wrong. Why should you be punished? No one can punish anyone, only legal provisions that have been tested by history and have procedural justice.

Just like the movie line says, "Life is always so hard."

Mathilda: Is life always this hard, or is it just when you're a kid?
Léon: Always like this.

First of all, we need to clarify which sufferings are caused by others, why should we participate in and experience these sufferings, and is there any way not to participate? Life itself has enough suffering, so don't waste your life becoming a victim of man-made suffering. Since we have no choice but to be born, this life is used to experience life itself, not to be used as a toy for anyone who is "superior" to others.

Back to life itself, although there is no end to the pain of life, the good news is that besides pain, there are many other things in life. If you focus more on the opposite side of pain, the pain will be compressed smaller and smaller. For example, in Seven Days Book S5E5｜Beyond the eight hours of work, there are huge blessings... I talked with a friend: What you lose after eight hours of work must be earned in the remaining sixteen hours. Before you have to do it, things become easier when you use the existence of this "something you have to do" to enhance the experience of life. Of course, the eight hours that had to be spent couldn't all be painful. If so, change it to eight hours.

I Contain Multitudes

Today and tomorrow, and yesterday, too
The flowers are dyin' like all things do
Follow me close, I'm going to Balian Bali
I'll lose my mind if you don't come with me
I fuss with my hair, and I fight blood feuds
I contain multitudes

Got a tell-tale heart, like Mr. Poe
Got skeletons in the walls of people you know
I'll drink to the truth and the things we said
I'll drink to the man that shares your bed
I paint landscapes, and I paint nudes
I contain multitudes

Red Cadillac and a black mustache
Rings on my fingers that sparkle and flash
Tell me, what's next? What shall we do?
Half my soul, baby, belongs to you
I relic and I frolic with all the young dudes
I contain multitudes

I'm just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost are made good again

I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
I have no apologies to make
Everything's flowing all at the same time
I live on the boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods
I contain multitudes

Pink petal-pushers, red blue jeans
All the pretty maids, and all the old queens
All the old queens from all my past lives
I carry four pistols and two large knives
I'm a man of contradictions, I'm a man of many moods
I contain multitudes

You greedy old wolf, I'll show you my heart
But not all of it, only the hateful part
I'll sell you down the river, I'll put a price on your head
What more can I tell you? I sleep with life and death in the same bed

Get lost, madame, get up off my knee
Keep your mouth away from me
I'll keep the path open, the path in my mind
I'll see to it that there's no love left behind
I'll play Beethoven's sonatas, and Chopin's preludes
I contain multitudes

Source: Musixmatch
I Contain Multitudes lyrics © Special Rider Music, Universal Tunes