Walking

When you're going mouldy, go out for a walk.

2017.06

I think people should have some real beliefs; otherwise they're beyond saving.

A belief can be huge, or so small it's too thin to get stuck in your teeth. A belief, like keeping promises. Let's leave aside keeping promises to others for now. The promises you make to yourself, the resolutions you once made through gritted teeth, the dreams you once burned for: if you can't manage a single one, can't make even a little of it come true, then that's no damn life at all.

Though in many things you don't have much power of choice, people are actually easily satisfied. What they hope for is usually happiness within reach, which you can get just by standing on tiptoe and pushing a little. The sad thing is that people always keep their eyes on the watermelon and forget the sesame seeds. The watermelon may be big, but it's hard to digest. With ambitions swollen for the chicken and the eggs, they end up without even dry rations to eat, which looks terrible. If you don't believe me, take a look in the mirror; I believe it, anyway.

I've been at university for almost two years, and I keep feeling that life has played a trick on me: the scenery promised on the way here turned out, when I arrived, to be behind a locked gate. Everyone hates being tricked, so as soon as we fine young people of the new era realize this, the first thing we do, full of righteous indignation, on behalf of those coming after us, is nail a few more boards over the gate. Then we add a seal across it, inscribed: "We all went through the same thing. There's nothing to be done. Stop dreaming." What it really means is: "If I didn't get in, nobody after me is getting in either."

There are also seniors of the encouraging, supportive type, but often after a few words it just peters out. Especially in a social environment already so close to society at large, why should anyone give themselves selflessly for anyone else, putting in effort by the bucketload? Besides, most of them haven't fully made up their own minds about the choices ahead. Of course, male seniors help younger female students by the bucketload, but few of them selflessly.

So, fine, go with the flow: "forget it". Congratulations, you've as good as completed this storyline.

So is there another Happy Ending? Think about what's holding you back. This environment really has a lot wrong with it; for many of the things you like doing, you can't find the right atmosphere. But you can't just push all the blame onto the outside world. And what are you doing yourself, besides nailing up boards?

Take out your own key and go and unlock the scenery you want to see. The idea of "the many" is deeply rooted in human society: the many are absolute, the many are right, and if you want to live among them, you can't come across as a freak. So your discouragement is understandable, because everyone is thrown off by the group's judgments and values. But before being a member of a group, a person is first an individual. As an individual, you have the right to pursue your own life. One person's resistance to a group is very weak, but I think that as long as you promise yourself to change your course bit by bit, you're sure to get closer and closer to the destination in your heart.

Keeping a promise to yourself is a strange thing, because it works the opposite way to keeping a promise to others. Before you do it, it seems very hard, but once you start, you can't stop. One reason is that the long pressure of the outside world makes it look very hard; more importantly, it's something you really want to do deep down, so just thinking of it sets your heart pounding and your blood racing, and once started there's no holding back.

This afternoon I was very glad to do such a thing. I set off alone in the afternoon sun and a cool breeze to get to know this city I've lived in for nearly two years and yet know almost nothing about as it plainly is. My footsteps extended the map of Nanjing in my head, storing street name after street name as real impressions. Before long, in fact, I noticed something laughable: these roads are only a few hundred or a few thousand metres from school, yet I had never once walked them. Nanjing had truly become a tourist attraction of a few points and a few lines; I'd been going round and round within them, and was frighteningly unfamiliar with everything off the route.

Before setting out I kept wavering over whether to ask someone along, but then I thought: there's no one going my way anyway, so why bother? When I actually started walking, I found that taking just myself on the road was exactly right. Jiangning is a development zone of Nanjing; there are lots of upmarket housing estates, but off the main roads there are few people and few cars. So, alone, I let myself go completely, singing and walking and swaying, lost in it. The roads with no cars and no people seemed especially wide with just me on them; now and then I even walked down the middle of the road, minding no one.

I let the shadows of trees and the sunlight flicker across my eyelids, let the cool wind tousle my hair and blow my coat open, let the music play on shuffle while I sang and danced along. Monotonous? Not at all. I walked in circles on the dry grass at the roadside like a drunk to scrape off the mud stuck to my shoes; wherever I saw a fork I picked the one I liked, walked till there was no road left, turned back and tried again; I even smiled at myself in understanding. So I still have me, this soul that still holds a certain innocence and curiosity towards the world and towards life. The road was like a blank videotape, and I spent three hours recording on it a stretch of time free of all agitation and constraint.

When the mind is let go, when the body is let go, when the soul is let go, the scenery along the way becomes marks in memory that can't be erased. As I walked, I gradually felt that this place was no longer as strange as before. It isn't an inn; it belongs to me too, it's also a home of mine. This time I wasn't a lonely onlooker; I blended quietly into this world, listening to her birdsong, listening to her heartbeat. I also gradually felt that if I don't take that step forward myself, I'll never know what lies ahead on the road. The world is so big, and where you haven't walked, it's a wasteland. But while you walk the road, you can try to believe there will keep being surprises waiting ahead for you. Embrace the world, and only then will the world embrace you.

2012.02