01
After getting through each phase of a project, I always feel: Ah, I’m alive. I look up at the painting on the wall. Different colors spread outward in all directions, half like seawater and half like a beach. The palette is almost identical to the bedsheet I brought with me when I moved from Beijing to Shanghai, and I start looking forward to the next trip to the sea. The forecast says it will rain on half of those days. That’s not surprising; in that place, rain is a common occurrence.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. I no longer welcome rainy days the way I did as a student. It feels like that period ended the year I graduated from college. Maybe no one can imagine that, during those days, volunteers rowed me from my dormitory to the footbridge when I left the building.
At my first music festival in Wuhan, I almost got soaked through. I have to thank a guy standing slightly ahead of me on my right: he took the disposable raincoat he was holding and offered it to me, while the official raincoats didn’t reach our area until much later. At every music festival after that, the forecast said it would rain, but each time we got no more than a few drops. I don’t know whether to be grateful that the forecast was wrong or thank heaven for looking after us exhausted but excited humans out in the open.
Some time ago, I listened to a song. I happened to have no work on hand, so I went through the comments. Someone mentioned a variety show, and I followed that trail to watch its first episode.
Ah, I loved it. I loved it so much—especially the scene of riding motorcycles along the road by the coast in the rain. It wasn’t the scene itself I liked, but the spirit behind it. Then, at one moment, the corners of my mouth, which had been turned up, fell. It was early April; if you round up, the weather hadn’t even started to warm. Riding through the rain, it was inevitable that the goggles would fog up. During a stop at a traffic light, one of them was laughing and chatting with a teammate, then simply took off his goggles and spat twice onto the lenses... Aaaaaaaaah, oppa! What happened to your image?! Anyway, this man only became more charming in the episodes that followed. Even the big guy traveling with him dared to say straight to the Netflix camera, “If you were a woman, I’d marry you.” How could I possibly resist? 🥲
Well, I hope the weather is good during those days in the future. I’ll thank you in my everyday life, dear heaven.
02
F said there was a special project coming up, with no release date yet, related to Doctors Without Borders. It reminded me of a book I read in high school, The Road Less Traveled by Han Feiye. I’ve almost completely forgotten what the book was about; I only remember that it had something to do with humanitarian relief and NGOs.
Back then, I really had a dream. If I could, I wanted to follow the path of this woman. If I could, I wanted to join some NGO and do something. What? I didn’t know, but it definitely wouldn’t have been the kind of thing Han Feiye did.
Later, my dream of becoming another version of her fell apart. But I did get a chance to come into contact with an organization connected to NGOs. Gradually, I realized that those three letters no longer meant something so sacred to me. It was a little like being enchanted by something and then seeing through the enchantment.
Decluttering was the same. Things I used to love buying lost their collecting appeal once they left home. On one hand, they felt like a burden when moving; on the other, you don’t bring anything into life or take anything with you when you die. Even if I physically owned these objects, what would that change? What need in me were they satisfying?
Recently, because I had some movie tickets to pass along, a new woman was added to my contacts. Looking at her Moments, I had the feeling she and my roommate would get along. During the National Day holiday, the two of them, despite living in different places, even went to the same exhibition in the same place. I thought that if I sent my roommate her contact card, the two of them could coordinate the ticket transfer directly. Maybe my roommate could meet someone who lived closer and occasionally go out or have a meal together later. Scrolling further, I realized—oh my god—the shows and movies she watched were all things I had watched too. No wonder we went to the same screening... Of course, at some point I stopped scrolling.
Had this coincidence happened in the past, I would have treasured it, cautiously, because that’s my temperament. Now, instead, I just sigh inwardly and leave what happens next to time. Out of the countless people in the world, we happened to appear in each other’s contact lists. It isn’t entirely without fate, but maybe that is the full extent of the fate between us.
It feels as if I’ve been forcing myself to learn to face everything in life with a faint detachment; forcing myself not to keep so much bottled up the way I did in my teens; forcing myself to stay invisible on social platforms... As if this is the so-called internet life of modern young people, as if this is the state people say adults are supposed to have.
But who wants to be represented? I still could feel 20 years old if I wanted to! Do you know why some people choose to step outside the social clock and live a different kind of life? On the one hand, it’s because they want to. On the other, once they really do it, they feel free from head to toe~
Whatever happens, being happy matters.
03
I think I understand a little better now why I like some people’s rambling posts on public accounts. These people are living seriously and recording the little details of their growth with care.
Last time I was transferring at an airport, I met a woman who started talking to me and suggested that we share a room. On the day she had to catch her flight home, we went to the café she wanted to visit and the ice-cream shop I wanted to visit. The coffee was good, and the ice cream was delicious. As someone who likes making journal spreads, she also loved browsing stationery and creative-goods shops, and didn’t miss a chance even at the airport.
On the day we had arranged, she arrived at the café first, and I got there later. After I came in, she pointed to the right. In the dim light, a middle-aged man sat beneath the window, writing something—a remarkably beautiful scene. Then she let me take a peek at the journal she had placed on the table. She had actually drawn the scene! It even had Korean written on it... When I turned to her in surprise, she put the notebook away and said I wasn’t allowed to read the words she had written. Aaaaaaaaah, how could someone who loves life this much not make your heart flutter?! Compared with me, who can’t do any of that, spending those hours with someone like her really felt like... heaven had sent another little angel to light up my life.
Some days ago, a podcast host I had worked with before asked whether he could pass my contact card on to another podcast host. Honestly, it wasn’t the first time he had done this; he had introduced me to at least three clients. None of the collaborations worked out because of pricing, but I was still grateful. He thought of me every time, even though, as a podcast host with several hundred thousand followers, he knows so many people.
Through podcasts, a huge number of people and their stories have flowed into my life. They once made me lost: how am I supposed to live my future? I’m still lost now. I’ve never really been a person who is especially certain of anything.
Not long ago, someone asked in a group how to overcome anxiety about turning 30. The group owner summed it up perfectly: anxiety, in the end, is always about death. Right? Even anxiety about money is connected to death. Some people say that when they’re tired of living, they’ll just find some way to die; some spend huge sums hiring young men for blood transfusions to slow the decline of their bodies... Those are individual choices, I suppose. Coming back to it, assisted dying really is an idealized way to die, but in reality, it comes with conditions—strict conditions beyond money.
Ah well, I’ll still be anxious about whatever I’m supposed to be anxious about, and life still has to go on. So let me make myself a little happier: every fleeting moment of happiness is worth chasing and enjoying.
04
I really am someone who, no matter what, only wants to live in the present.
Every choice has a cost behind it, and only the person inside it knows what it feels like.