Postscript to "Strangers Met in Namtso" (II)

When they met again this time, she felt that he seemed to have changed a bit.

He clearly stated before that his life is to get married, buy a house, have children and then retire in a few years - in short, to do the same thing as the people around him. However, now that he talks to her about his future, he doesn't seem to be so sure.

"Recently, I started to think that if life goes straight to the end like that, it doesn't seem to be interesting."

"Don't you just want to go the same way as everyone else? There's nothing wrong with that. Everyone is like that. There's a price to be paid for being different."

"I would like to hear from you, what will it cost?"

"It's lonely to be different."

He didn't expect this to be her answer.

"If you live the same life and walk the same path as other people, you just need to follow the path of your predecessors. In the old society, as long as you managed carefully, most people could live a life without trouble. Of course, I'm not saying that it's impossible to live in peace now, but the society today is more complicated than it used to be, and I am more and more suspicious that even with the brigade, it may not be the safest. But the advantage of being with the brigade is that even if something goes wrong, there are many People are with you. This is a sense of security. On the contrary, if you take a different path with others, no matter whether you succeed or fail, you can only walk on the path that you have established. There are not many people around you, which is very lonely. what."

"What about you? Are you not afraid of loneliness?"

"Scared, scared to death."

"Then will you go with the brigade?"

"I don't deliberately walk a different path with everyone. I just ask myself what I want to do when I go to each fork, and then take the path I want to walk. Different, find your own way to go.”

"Wouldn't that be lonely too?"

"Yeah. But that's my choice. If I do something I don't want to do with the team, I think it will be more painful than being lonely. This is the experience of people who have come here. Before making choices that are different from those around you, think about it. Make sure you understand what the price will be."

"Come here! You seem to have done a lot of shocking things when you say that." He laughed.

"Of course it's not very shocking... Or put it this way, I am lonely when I travel to Tibet. Because no one around me is interested in going there. You should feel this too? Of course, this is only a small thing, but What I want to say is that these little bits of loneliness will accumulate if you take different paths with others in many fork roads. If there is a big fork in the road one day, I think I will still choose my own heart, because I already have the courage to face loneliness.”

He was quiet.

"Please don't misunderstand. Of course, I encourage others to follow their own hearts. I just advise you to think carefully before taking a different path. I hope you don't regret it."

"Thank you, Master, my disciple understands."

"What disciple, when did I become your master?"

"The disciple has decided to take you as a teacher and learn the way of life." He made a gesture of nodding.

She pretended to beat him, and he laughed with her.

That night, she recalled what she had said to him.

Did she really have the courage to face loneliness as she said? He wasn't really sure either, she just used to convince herself like this.

She didn't know what he wanted to do differently from others, but she was very happy to be able to talk about these topics with him. Because no one around her would talk to her about these topics.

Again, it was a real pleasure chatting with him. Maybe it's because that's his forte?

However, she, who was emotionally ahead, began to worry about her heart again.

He will leave in four months. What is the difference between his and her behavior now and a year ago. Although they didn't have any ambiguous behavior, she knew she still liked him, so what was the difference between allowing her to meet him and jumping into a fire pit?

She said to herself that she had a lot of experience with her crush.

There's nothing wrong with pretending it's okay and "their experiences are over and they're good friends now."

She kept reminding herself.