At the moment I began to write this down, the dream was still unusually clear. It had been a long time since I last had a dream that felt so complete, so solid, almost like something that had really happened. Last night, I dreamed I had returned to the third year of middle school—the darkest stretch of my life.
In the dream, the holiday had just ended and everyone was back at school. Our homeroom teacher, Mr. Ye, came to the classroom and spoke to us with deliberate seriousness. He said he knew we had long since grown used to the comforts and distractions of ordinary life outside school, and that being suddenly brought back here would naturally make us restless. But since we had returned, he said, we should settle down and do the work in front of us.
After saying this, he began checking our holiday assignments.
What I remember is that we were supposed to find, in our own diaries, a copied-out set of lyrics from the song The Funeral of Roses. Everyone else seemed to have found theirs. I alone could not. Panic rose in me all at once. I had no idea what to do, and the fear of being criticized for unfinished homework was almost unbearable.
My deskmate in the dream was a well-known entrepreneur, though I can no longer remember who exactly. What stayed with me was his diary: old, marked by time, but still neat and orderly. Looking at it, I suddenly felt that a person’s future gains and losses may already leave faint traces during the years of growing up.
I was terrified of having no assignment to hand in. I did not know how one was supposed to respond when the work had not been done. All I could think was: make one now. So I took a sheet of calligraphy paper from my schoolbag and prepared to copy the lyrics on the spot.
But as I wrote, my mind was not on the assignment at all. I was thinking only of whether I could leave sooner, whether I could return to the age I belonged to now—the age after many things had happened, after many hardships had already been endured.
Because I knew, very clearly, that I no longer had the courage to live through those old sufferings all over again.
During a small pocket of free time, I opened my computer and read through several neighbors’ blogs, looking at their year-end reflections for 2022. On the surface, no one said much directly, but between the lines there was always the same mixture: something gained, and something paid for.
In truth, it is not only adults who suffer. Everyone has a private world, and every private world has its own hardships. Life is often full of disappointment; the people we can truly speak to about it are few.
Over the New Year holiday, I had a heart-to-heart talk with my younger brother. The topic was more or less his grades, which were not ideal, and his worries about the college entrance exam. At his age, this is a very common fear. Many people assume that those with better grades must have experience worth sharing, though I was never exactly an outstanding student myself.
Still, I was not left speechless. I did not tell him much about my own past. I only told him a small thing he might not have known.
When I was in my final year of high school, after evening self-study ended, the school required everyone to wash up and turn off the lights within half an hour. But if someone had gone to check our dormitory, the room would have seemed completely dark at first glance, as if everyone were already asleep. Yet if they had walked in and lifted any blanket at random, they would have seen the same scene: someone holding a flashlight, still studying beneath the covers.
Perhaps my experience of the world is limited, but I have never really believed in so-called genius or luck. Most of the time, we simply do not see what others have done in the dark.
Children have their own trials. Adults have their own responsibilities.
A few days ago, while looking for a place to rent, I met a housing agent. Compared with others in the same line of work, he struck me as unusually sincere and grounded. Before I had even seen any apartments, I had already quietly decided that if I rented this time, I would do it through him.
The first few places he showed me were not suitable, but in the end, with his help, I found a small home that felt right. Yet more than the rental itself, what stayed with me was the story I heard from him.
Before the pandemic broke out, he had opened a restaurant with a friend. They worked hard for several months, and business gradually became lively—so lively that they earned quite a bit during that period. Then, at the beginning of 2020, the outbreak spread across the country. Places of business with dense crowds and constant movement were inevitably hit hard.
At first, everyone thought things might return to normal after a few months. But as we all know, half a year passed and restrictions remained. A year passed, and restrictions had become normal. Two years passed, and only then did discussions of reopening begin to appear here and there. Two and a half years passed, and business still had not truly returned to what it had been.
For a small shop, or even for a small-scale company, that kind of blow can be fatal. Countless businesses shut down because of it. His little restaurant was no exception.
I watched the rise of the building, the banquet guests filling its halls; I watched the building collapse.
Of course, I cannot claim to have truly felt what he felt. But when he told me that part of his story, I could see both helplessness and acceptance in his eyes. Later, I learned that he now works two jobs. During the day, he does his regular work. At night, he sets up a stall. Day after day, it is the same.
Without my noticing, a quiet respect for him had already taken root in me.
Everyone has a weight in life that feels almost unbearable. We are all trying desperately to bloom while carrying regrets and tears.
Even now, I still remember a scene I once saw at a subway entrance. A young child, schoolbag on his back, was carefully supporting his grandmother as they walked. They moved very slowly, but each step was steady. In the grandmother’s hand was a bag of vegetables she had just bought.
Parents everywhere carry the same tenderness and worry. I believe his parents must have wanted, more than any of us, to pick him up from school themselves. But perhaps circumstances did not allow it. Perhaps they were bearing everything silently somewhere behind the scenes. And he, in his own way, was already working hard to grow into an adult.
When I first came to Shenzhen, after interviewing at several law firms, I happened to arrive at Fuhua Road. Tall buildings stood everywhere, and above them were blue sky and white clouds. I waited at an intersection for the traffic light to change, listening to the steady ticking sound of the signal.
In that moment, loneliness and confusion swallowed me. The world was so vast, yet there seemed to be no place in it for me. Traffic flowed endlessly in every direction, yet none of it had anything to do with me.
It was then that I truly understood: everyone has their own road.
Perhaps we are given the chance to choose a direction. But whether we can actually arrive depends on whether we are willing to push through the thorns and keep walking toward it, step by step, without turning away.
Maybe Nietzsche was right: life itself is a kind of suffering. As for the meaning of life, perhaps there is no need to keep demanding an answer.
The process itself is the answer.