You and I are both dust, born in this world

I occasionally think back to scenes from the past.

If the time is placed during my elementary school years, it would often be a sunny day during the summer vacation. I would lie on the deck chair at the door of my family’s courtyard, facing the French plane trees and iron trees in the garden. In the sky with floating clouds, white clouds are like catkins in summer. I look up at the clouds one by one, imagining that they are changing creatures and what kind of stories they are playing out. Go to sleep.

There is a public toilet at the end of the yard. There is a wall past the public toilet. On the other side of the wall are pigs and their huge septic tanks. Occasionally there is an unpleasant smell in the summer. But in the memory there is no smell, only the feeling of wind blowing into the house.

The memory will become cool because of the wind. I lay on the bed and read the books I bought from Xinhua Bookstore one by one: I finished reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales and "The Adventures of Shukbeta" , after reading "Home", "Spring", "Autumn", and Gorky's "Childhood"...

Junior high school is often a summer afternoon when school is required. If the memories of elementary school are accompanied by the blue sky and wind, then the memories of junior high school are always transformed into the golden color of sunlight and city paths. I moved into a new house by the river, with the walls painted white, and my mother dragged her to the house every day. There are shiny floors, standing cabinets, corner cabinets, tables and chairs, sofas, coffee tables, and TV sets in the living room. The wall on one side is covered with my certificates. When I enter my room, there are toys, photo frames, and various small objects. The wall cabinet and the desk that have been with me for more than ten years...

It was 7:45. After dinner, the sound of Anhui Satellite TV's "The Best in the World" came from the TV. That period coincided with the summer vacation, and every night I insisted on listening to the ending song of this TV series before going to bed. I still remember the lyrics of that song: Why does my heart feel like a hangover? Why doesn’t it go away? Saying it doesn’t matter doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Isn’t it too hypocritical and too sad to have another chance? You don’t give me the last tenderness I long for...

Looking back carefully, it seems to be the tail end of 2005, when I secretly liked a girl. I vaguely remember her walking out of the shadow of the teaching building holding an umbrella. The sun was shining obliquely, passing through her playful bangs, and her fair face seemed to be glowing. I was running very fast and was about to be the first to leave the school. I couldn't help but slow down, but I didn't dare to look back. Of course, I was not the first one to leave the school that day.

My grandma and grandpa have passed away a long time ago, but my memory is of the grandma from ten years ago. At that time, I could go to my grandma’s house every weekend and every holiday. The understanding that grandma’s house was a holiday was deeply rooted in my heart. Everything my grandma cooked for me at that time tasted delicious, but now it doesn’t taste that way anymore. At that time, she was talking about seeing me go to college every day. In the blink of an eye, I had graduated from college and worked for many years, but I couldn’t be with her. Share any happiness I have.

Many nights I miss her, I wish I could dream about her, but in fact I can't fall asleep.

What is the picture of high school?

It was a cloudy afternoon and night in high school. When I came out of school, there were pirated books stalls on the roadside and an Internet cafe on one side. There was a huge flow of people coming out of the school gate. I counted the little money I had in my pocket, went to eat something, and then rented books to read. I read all the books near the school, and later I discovered reading books online.

After high school, it was university. In the next ten years, like most people, I drifted in this world and drifted with the tide. During this period, I experienced some things, made some friends, and visited some places. There is no firm memory, and in the blink of an eye, it is now.

Now I am about to enter my thirties, which is a strange age.

Twenty-nine before the age of thirty, and twenty-eight before that... Although the numbers are clear, before that, I always felt that I was a young man who had just left the age of twenty, but in my consciousness When I reached the number thirty, I always felt that the twenties, which should be my main body, suddenly passed away.

It was like becoming a middle-aged man in the blink of an eye.

Looking back on the past year, many things did not make me feel too big. Many things are not worth remembering in my opinion, but compared to my entire teenage years, the past In the past year, perhaps I went out the most: I changed jobs, had a child, left a group of people, met a group of people... But in fact, I can’t recall the feeling at that time. Maybe I was happy at the time, but now I think about it , except for tiredness, many times there is nothing.

The biggest change is from one person to two people to three people. To my wife, I often want to tell her, "Life is very difficult, but if two people work together, maybe one day we can come to terms with it."

I initially wanted to say: "One day We will defeat it.” But in fact we cannot defeat it. Perhaps the best result is to gain understanding and stop hating each other. At this time, I discovered that for a long time, I had always hated my life and tried my best to defeat it.

How did I become my thirty-year-old self? I couldn't capture the specific process, I could only see various features: I had lipoma, gallstones - they were suddenly discovered when I went to the hospital for a physical examination two years ago, and I even had some wrinkles.

I haven’t experienced the feeling of dreamless sleep in an unknown amount of time.

Under the extreme use of my brain, I experienced the shallowest sleep every day, and various dreams would continue. No matter how long I slept, I would never return to my original self.

When I was very young, I longed for the goddess of literature to favor me one day. My brain was very good, but I could never write articles well, so I had to keep thinking about it. Looking forward to the day when I finally find a way to enter another world, I concentrate my greatest energy to see it...

If we want to get something, we always have to pay more.

The night I realized that I was almost thirty, I saw a photo posted by a friend in my circle of friends. It was a place I had dreamed of going to countless times. I had already set a dream of going there when I was thirty. I dare not mention it anymore. That night I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep. I lay in bed until the early hours of the morning, and my wife must have been too noisy by me, so I just hugged the quilt and walked to the study next door, but I still couldn't fall asleep.

I looked at Hangzhou at night through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The street lights were all on. Next to the community was a building under construction, with huge incandescent lights facing the sky, dazzlingly bright. But there was no one in sight, everyone was already asleep.

It is already difficult for me to stay up late at this time, which will make me lose energy throughout the next day, but why can’t I fall asleep? I thought of my old self who could sleep for eighteen hours, and then I thought about the past, high school, junior high school, elementary school...

I suddenly remembered a brainteaser I had seen when I was a child. The title was like this : "How far can a person go into the forest?"

The answer is: half of the forest.

…

How long ago was that memory? Maybe more than ten years ago. During the spring outing organized by our classmates, the sun was shining brightly. We rode bicycles to the countryside dozens of miles away, which we heard was very interesting. A good friend at the time brought a long chocolate bar and gave me half of it. It was the first time in my life that Eating something so delicious once. We were so tired halfway through that we gathered on the grass to play brain teasers.

Those questions were very popular back then. I have forgotten the other questions now. Only that question has been clearly remembered by me for so many years.

"How far can a person walk into the forest?

Half of the forest.

Why: Because you are walking out of the remaining half Forest."

Ever since I was a child, I have always felt that this question was just a piece of cleverness on the part of the author, and it was not true at all. It was just a superficial way of speaking. Perhaps that is why I have always struggled with this question and this answer. But on that night when I was nearly thirty years old, irritable and sleepless, this question suddenly came into my mind, as if it was beating me desperately to understand it.

- Because for the remaining half, you are walking out of the forest.

……

I felt like I had been hit. I don’t know when it was, but I returned to bed and slowly fell asleep.

I have repeatedly written about the weight of time in many essays, but perhaps it was that night that really made me deeply understand that weight.

I suddenly understood how many things and possibilities I had lost. In the process of muddling through, I suddenly became a middle-aged man in his thirties. This process is ultimately beyond recourse.

I am not enough to elaborate on these things. In the days to come, I think that if everyone will inevitably come out of the forest, maybe that is not a negative thing. The images in my mind were so meaningful, and the things in front of me were so meaningful.

Just sad.

I have not yet gained an understanding with the world, and that will surely be an extremely complicated task.

What I want to say is: Every day when I walk out of the forest, every day is painful, and every day there are problems that need to be made up for. It is easy to solve the problems, but new problems will inevitably emerge one after another. I fantasize that one day I will be able to write with fluent writing and be able to write perfect articles easily, but in the past few years I have realized that it is impossible. I can only accept this pain and then slowly solve it. In the process, seek corresponding satisfaction.

I think I will enjoy this kind of pain until the end - I wrote in my last essay, that was in 2014 "Life may be like a bus, many people will Accompany you for a journey, some people walk a longer distance with you, some people get off at the next stop, some people sit far away, and some people sit next to you, sooner or later one day, they will get off, You will also stand up and reach the finish line at a certain point. "At that time, I was feeling that after a man turns thirty, he has to do things with certainty. At that time, I didn't expect that this age would be so close. It had only been a few months, and perhaps everything had gone by in an instant while I was hunkering down at my desk.

Cherish what you have now, everyone - if I had been able to sleep for eighteen hours, I would not have understood the troubles he would suffer later, just as we who walked into the forest would not have understood the journey under our feet. precious.

In the second half of last year, I returned to Hangzhou from Guangxi.

On the high-speed train coming back, there was an old couple sitting in the front row. They lowered the backrests of their chairs and lay there. The old woman kept her upper body leaning on her husband's chest, and the husband followed suit. Holding her in their arms, the two pointed at the scenery outside the window.

I found it interesting and took photos.

My wife sent me a WeChat message. She was already eight months old at that time. She told me that she wanted to have a little dog. She said she wanted Jin Binfeng’s little golden retriever. I said yes, their wife makes the decision like ours, so it would be more reliable for you to add his wife.

In the end, the puppy was not raised because their dog was old and lost. Thinking about the time when I went to their house, it was a long time ago.

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, a rare day of good weather, the family went to the West Lake for a tour. Because there were too many people and the weather was too hot, they came back early. Unexpectedly, they had not been apart for dozens of days. Never saw the sun again.

Before the New Year last year, I fell down while riding my bike home. It took me a month to recover.

Moving forward, I just bought my first electric bicycle. After a busy day, I got off work. After dinner, I liked riding the electric bicycle. She sat in the back seat, and we started riding together at night again. Driving around the streets of Linping City.

In the beginning, we rode electric cars around the streets and alleys of Linping City every day. We had already been to many places, but this year, several new roads were opened.

What we are familiar with is gradually changing.

We found several new parks or wild areas with few people. Sometimes we would go to the grass to bask in the sun and plan a picnic. Closer to home is the newly built Huangguo Mountain Park. Beside the park are large lotus ponds, and there are also trails that have been built for many years but no one has visited. Walking along the way is like a novel adventure. Next to the trail is an abandoned wooden shelf that is large enough for a wedding. Dense wisteria flowers hang down from the tree trunks beside the wooden shelf, making it look particularly quiet in the dusk.

Yu Gao built a new campus. From a distance, the rows of teaching buildings and dormitories look like gorgeous Russian-style castles. My wife and I occasionally took an electric car to drive around there, and we couldn’t help but sigh, If you go to school here, you will definitely be able to have a good relationship.

The commercial street of Qiushan Street has been demolished. The familiar storefronts have disappeared, and the remaining bricks and tiles look a bit desolate. However, it is conceivable that in half a year and a year, more new shops and restaurants will open on the streets. When you look around, you will see that they all have bright facades and bright lights.

The world may continue to be updated and introduce new things like this.

The baby is eight months old and is becoming more energetic every day. In some ways, he has also become more obedient.

I listen to music every day when I go to work, and the first piece of music I click on is often Xiao Ke’s "Gently Let Go". One of my favorite lyrics is this:

——Facing the endless passage of time, who can do anything?