Life in fragments.
2017.05
1. Don't live for other people.
— A saying you can chew on endlessly. Every time I have some new experience, I understand it a little more.
This time, it's that people often decide their own lives by reference to other people's. That saves the cost of dithering and gives you, easily, a solution that suits most people. But for oddballs like me who overthink everything, it may not work so well. Everyone has times of confusion and idleness, and then it's worth watching the paths others took to success or the hardships they went through. Inspiration, really, is using other people's pain to set off your own happiness, and other people's happiness to dissolve your own pain. If you could pay more attention to what you want, rather than what your surroundings encourage you to want, perhaps you wouldn't care so much about some things, and wouldn't have to make so many compromises.
2. Hard to hold the line
Speaking of compromise, life really isn't one straight line all the way to the end. Sometimes, to achieve some goal within a limited time, I do things that go against my own principles. I'm very disappointed in myself, and at the same time I feel that people always look at what's nearest first, which is both good and bad. Wherever you are, really getting something done is truly hard. In feelings and in body alike, people are very fragile, but it's because we really want to do something that we find the courage to face whatever may come.
3. From foodie to sleepie
From today I truly rank sleep above food. Counting back, I haven't slept properly since Thursday. By this afternoon, before my defence, the tiredness had built up to an astonishing level. When I woke from a sleep, a lot of the negative feelings had gone and the world had become a little fresher, so I say a good sleep is the most solid kind of salvation. When your body is in bad shape, it's hard for your mind to be in good shape. In the shower after getting up, I sorted good things into three kinds by what makes them good: beginnings, processes and results. For example, the beginning of a new journey or a new hope, the process of eating, and the result of sleeping.
Waking up, I found I was still here.
4. Myself
In a few short dozen hours in Shanghai, I went through many rare states of mind, and then discovered how important the self is. In the hall of the railway station: no ticket back to be had, no hotel to be booked, the shops starting to close, the light going dim. In the metro it was bright enough, but not far outside was the vast night; almost everyone had a direction home, and my phone had been cut off. At those two moments I didn't know where to go; the whole world gradually blurred and had nothing to do with me, and gradually I had only myself and my backpack. The night lights became an illusion; the people walking towards me became another species.
But the world was still this world.
That's all.
2013.05