When I was 20 years old, I knew what real "poetry and distance" was

Picture: Xie Simao

Some time ago, I retweeted an article about "Poetry and Distance" on WeChat, which aroused the comments of many WeChat friends.

This is what I wrote: I don’t yearn for or envy the so-called poetic life, maybe it’s because I haven’t reached the age to yearn for it. I always feel that life should be balanced, and the vulgar atmosphere of daily necessities is the basis and foundation for a poetic life. There are some beautiful scenery and roads that you just have to pass by. Those "rooms that open the door to fresh mist and clouds" are enough to occasionally experience and post on Moments. After all, true cultivation lies in the human world.

Every time I see articles about poetry and distance, I will think of my 20 years old.

When I was 20 years old, I was as ignorant as I was. One day I stayed in the office and felt very bored. With a stable salary that would not increase, we stayed in a small square grid every day. At that time, we browsed the QQ space, just like today’s WeChat Moments. We first looked at other people’s moods and thoughts every day, and then constantly changed them. Our own personalized signature. It seems that only "personal signature" can make us temporarily forget our "impersonality" in life.

Days like this lasted for a long time, and I began to think about going to the "distant place". Couchsurfing was very popular at that time, and the post about volunteering in Lijiang also had a very high click-through rate on Douban. In some sleepy afternoons, like physical chemistry classes in junior high school, I used my work time to read There are many recruitment materials for volunteers going to Dali, Lijiang.

For the first time, I had the urge to go out.

Until later I came across Tibet. Before that, I didn’t even have the concept of Tibet, nor did I know about Lhasa.

I decided to go to Tibet almost without hesitation. Some people may go to Tibet because they know it is beautiful, but I just thought it was far away. I chose Tibet because it is further away than Lijiang and Dali. I was young and willful at the time, so I submitted my resignation directly to my boss. The boss talked to me and granted me a month's vacation with pay.

Having never been to a distant place, I took that month’s salary and a bunch of messy luggage and boarded the train to Tibet.

I didn’t have money to fly, so I took a 55-hour train ride to Tibet. To keep my waist straight, I stayed in Xi’an for 2 days. At that time, the spread rate of Weibo was not that fast, and various travel posts were not so popular. Therefore, Tibet is not as well understood to us as it is today.

After I went to Lhasa, I stayed at Xianzu Island by the Lhasa River. The owner of that inn was Brother Kun. People staying in the inn come from all over the country. In addition to some tourists who come to stay for a night or two, there are also some people who stay in the inn permanently. What do you mean by permanent people? They are people who travel abroad for a long time and live in Lhasa to kill time. They all have a certain reputation in social circles, and the pictures and some "poisonous chicken soup" they posted have also attracted a certain number of fans on Weibo.

Almost all of them are young people, mostly born in the 1990s, some are lovers, and some stop studying at the age of 15 and go out to look for people in distant places. Their life is very irregular. They usually sleep until the sun rises, then eat whatever they want, bask in the sun, take photos, sell small commodities on the street corners, and then drink beer, highland barley wine, and sing in bars in Lhasa at night. ballad. Until early in the morning, I fell asleep again.

The inn is not clean, and the messy environment is in sharp contrast with the blue sky and white clouds. There is a lot of dust and clutter, which even a person like me who is not very germaphobic can't bear. Only the sunlight shining in and shining on the ethnic style sofa in the living room gives people a lazy atmosphere.

If you post a post at this time, add a filter image, and post it on Weibo, it will definitely attract a lot of likes from fans. In my opinion, these were really pretentious at that time.

After spending a few days doing nothing in Lhasa, I felt bored. Because I don’t have much money, I can’t go to the really beautiful places in Tibet. I can’t go to the beautiful places that require a chartered car to see. And at that time, I went to Tibet because a lot of problems in my life had not been solved.

At that time, I realized that if you want to travel truly happily, you must have confidence. That confidence is money and being satisfied with your own life, rather than having to worry about escaping to a so-called distant place. Work and life after returning to reality.

Practice is not travel, and travel is not escape. Travel is just travel, experience everything you want to experience in your unconcerned heart.

Then one day, I bought a shawl on Bajiao Street, took a selfie and posted it on QQ Zone and Weibo. Many people asked me to buy one for him. I suddenly smelled a business opportunity.

In the days that followed, I was hardly idle. I shopped around among the merchants selling shawls on Bajiao Street, and finally selected one with the most affordable style. I negotiated the lowest price with the boss, and started Started purchasing on behalf of others. (Many years later, Weibo and WeChat began to become business platforms. I really regret not pursuing this business opportunity at that time, otherwise maybe I would have made a fortune today!)

That was the last time I went to Tibet. Happy times.

Although before that, I saw the afternoon sun shining down on the Lhasa River, the water by the river turned into a blue color, and the fine stones shone under the reflection of the sun and water. , I am also very excited.

Even though it was about to rain heavily, I was very excited when I saw a large dark cloud next to the Lhasa River that was so low that it was almost overwhelming.

Also in a bar in Lhasa, a friend and I were drinking highland barley wine, blowing smoke rings, and singing loudly in an almost deserted street. I was also very happy. excited.

But that kind of excitement is nothing compared to the excitement I feel when I am "working" with a sense of value and accomplishment.

Only at that time, the stones shining in the sun by the Lhasa River, or the clouds that were so low that they were almost pressing down, and the folk songs coming from the bar late at night, seemed even more charming. .

At that time, I discovered that when people are young, premature comfort is actually a waste of time. It will consume your enthusiasm for the world and make you look at the beautiful scenery every day, but still feel The hollowness of life.

Later I changed a hotel and symbolically went to some places around Lhasa. On the day I was about to leave Lhasa, I went to the market to pick up the last batch of goods, contacted the logistics and packed them back together. Guangzhou. I left the contact information of the merchant selling shawls. After I came back, I cooperated with my friend’s business Weibo and bought hundreds of shawls one after another.

I earned back all the travel expenses. At that time, for me, the meaning of going to Tibet became making money.

Later, traveling to Tibet became popular. Almost everyone says they want to go there to cleanse their souls, and hitchhiking on the road seems to have become an awesome behavior. It seems that everyone is telling young people to leave your life. Beautiful scenery and roads are what young people should have. So at that time I was thinking, is this a true journey? If I were to actually travel in the future, which option would I choose?

I suddenly knew that I should choose a dignified way, or truly feel it without any worries, get to know friends, or truly enjoy it with my family and friends. Instead of being one of those dangerous hitchhikers, going from this place where you are tired of staying to another place where others are tired of staying, repeating the same thoughts. It’s not about going to a strange place, taking some beautiful photos and sending them to my circle of friends. Instead of doing nothing to escape my real life. Don't let yourself become a person who stands in the beautiful scenery and still feels empty inside.

Only in this way can you make friends who truly inspire you during your travels and truly find the meaning of travel.

In fact, I didn’t keep in touch with any of the friends I had drinks and meals with at the inn. Instead, when I really experienced the beautiful scenery, I made friends who really gave me insights. They helped me in my later life. Here, I still study with them. In them, I see another possibility of life.

So later on, I was no longer content to sit in a cubicle, but looked for more possibilities.

At this time, some people may say, I am just young and I have no savings, but I really want to travel while I am young. I feel the same way and know that if we don’t do some things, we may never be in the mood to do them again. Just like now, I will never feel like I did back then and spend so long taking a train to Tibet alone. If I had not gone there, I would not have met the mentors and friends I later became.

Let me talk about an internet celebrity, Mao Li. People who follow travel and follow Weibo may be familiar with her. When I followed her, she had only 70,000 Weibo fans. She had just graduated from college that year, and her graduation trip was only to Vietnam. Later, I used my talents, such as writing articles, doing Taobao, purchasing on behalf of others, and even worked as a photography assistant, just to follow him to strange places.

In 2012, she took the tens of thousands of yuan she earned at that time and went on a round-the-world trip with her boyfriend, because Maoli itself has a certain fan base and knows how to promote itself through other social platforms. She is also a beauty, so she has attracted the attention of many people. On the road, she never stopped making money, but worked hard. She knew the meaning of her trip. She turned her feelings into words, and later received many commercial advertisements. Of course, her fans also increased to more than 2 million. Subsequently, she was criticized by netizens. People thought that she could only travel on a budget and should not use travel to make money.

I followed her silently, and later left her a message. I said I will always support you, a girl who earns her own living. In my opinion, Mao Li’s success is due to her own efforts. In fact, when she was very young, she was already very business-savvy. She did not spend her parents’ money on traveling. She is just braver than us. . She just knows the cost of traveling, and she needs to earn this cost herself. For her, she knows quite well that the trip she wants is not to show off, she has a goal, and those who have no goal are just the judges like us.

Therefore, to truly find and experience distant places, it is essential to have your own skills or abilities. We can only use what we have to exchange for what we want, because a dignified life , is originally about exchange. This exchange is not a derogatory term, it is the basic law of life in the adult world.

When I was 20 years old, I suddenly realized that if I live my life well, there will be poetry and distance wherever I go. No longer let those who use inspirational slogans influence you casually, and no longer be deceived by useless chicken soup articles and articles about traveling to find yourself.

Until one day, when we really travel instead of escaping from life, those poems and distances are the real poems and distances.