Many people have stopped scrolling through their朋友圈. They have started to ponder these questions.
Special Digest 4: International Exhibition of Yifei
February 22， 2020， 18：22
The beginning of 2020 was rather tough. A sudden outbreak of the epidemic confined most people to their homes.
In the first few days， facing the rare extended holiday， people were jubilant and fully enjoyed themselves.
But as the epidemic progressed， the dates for resuming work and school were constantly postponed， and people's leisure activities at home gradually lost patience.
Making cold noodles， playing ring-toss， and indoor tourism frequently filled up the朋友圈， showing the majority's irritability and boredom.
The complete end of the epidemic may take some time； but with the arrival of spring， many people gradually let go of their impatience and began to understand： What winter owes us， spring will surely compensate.
What we need to do is to make all the preparations and welcome a brand new beginning.
Life, destiny, and society have always been characterized by both risks and opportunities.
A pandemic is quietly changing society, industries, and individuals; during this period of staying at home, many people gradually stopped posting complaints, jokes, and banter on their social media; they began to immerse themselves and start thinking about several questions.
1. What is the most important thing in life?
Before the pandemic, you might have envisioned such a 2020: promotion and salary increase, annual income of millions, a happy marriage, traveling around the world. But now you only want one thing: "to live".
This statement is both amusing and realistic. While being alive, a person can have any ideals, even daydreams are possible.
Because there is a saying that goes well, ideals should always be there, after all, what if they are realized?
But when facing the unknown death, a person may only have one wish, that is, "to live".
Just as Yu Hua said in the preface of the book "Living", "People live for the sake of living itself, not for anything beyond living".
This is a reverence and longing for life. Only when facing the unknown death can people be so clear-headed, clearly knowing what to "give up" and what to "abandon", so as to have "gain".
At this time, no one complains about simple meals anymore, no one feels that life is ordinary anymore, and no one thinks about how to become extremely rich anymore. They just feel that the beauty of life lies in the existence of life itself.
Those increasing gray numbers are the dissipation of life. The helplessness towards life's powerlessness makes people appreciate the preciousness of living.
2. How should one live in life?
Shi Tiejin in "I and the Temple of Earth" talked about how he was crippled in his most arrogant age and only thought about death.
But in the desolate Temple of Earth, he saw the greatness and vigorous vitality of life and decided not to die.
He said: Since the decision to not die has been made, the next question is how to live?
Similarly, a serious pandemic, facing the separation and death. People began to re-think life, modify the trajectory of life, and re-consider how to live.
Modern people face a lot of pressure, houses, cars, education, pensions, but sometimes they are powerless in the face of natural disasters and human calamities.
So, how should this one life be lived?
Recently, it was popular to say "Live this life in the way you like", but later some criticized that this indulgentism would ruin a person.
However, apart from death, everything else is an abrasion. Since death is inevitable sooner or later, one should think about what kind of life one truly likes and not waste too much time in the wrong direction.
For example, students who have stayed at home for too long finally realize that they actually don't like this unrestricted time for sleeping in, surfing the internet, and playing games. They actually prefer a more diligent self.
While adults who have been busy with work and neglecting family companionship usually think that a little more time spent chatting with family and having dinner together is the happiness of life.
Those office workers who save money and be strict with themselves for various reasons may finally realize that it is worth spending some money to visit the world, even to taste the delicious local delicacies.
Life really has many regrets due to the brevity of life, and this pandemic has given many people an opportunity to re-think. Because of the new problems faced and the different life experiences, they finally know what they truly want.
3. Be content with life!
The "Laozi" said: The greatest misfortune is not knowing contentment, the greatest fault is wanting to obtain, so knowing contentment makes one's contentment always sufficient.
When speaking of contentment in normal times, it is often felt as being a blow to the enthusiasm of others to strive forward, and it seems like giving a plausible excuse for not working hard oneself.
But in the face of the pandemic, people really start to think about contentment, and they understand contentment.
At first, there were still people complaining that being stuck at home all day was extremely boring, but when they saw the medical staff supporting Wuhan sleeping on the floor at midnight, they were silent. At first, they were complaining about the road closures and the investigation. But when they saw countless duty personnel braving the rain to stay at their posts and dissuading people from going out, they fell silent.
At first, they were angry that they couldn't even visit relatives during the New Year. But when they saw the nurses supporting Wuhan leave, her husband shouted behind them: "You must come back safely. I'll take care of all the housework for a year." Then they cried.
The so-called contentment is not effort, but knowing how to cherish.
Cherishing those seemingly ordinary but precious possessions. There are so many of them. The time we don't cherish is the time others cannot have.
In this epidemic, some parents lost their children, some children lost their parents, some people were isolated and couldn't see their relatives; some people risked their lives to work.
So, in comparison, what is contentment? Not causing trouble for others, not causing trouble for oneself, always being kind, doing more good deeds, all are signs of contentment.
Four. Learn to draw lessons!
The famous Roman politician Cicero said in "Letters to Friends": Being tripped by the same stone twice can be considered a great humiliation.
The famous Japanese host Noriaki Watanabe said this sentence:
What is a disaster? A disaster is not the death of 20,000 people, but the death of one person happening 20,000 times.
After the epidemic, our society, various industries, and each of us should seriously reflect. We shouldn't let the heavy price paid by this epidemic be wasted as another lesson.
Summary: Life always encounters some things that make people confused and then grow. It can be done actively or passively. But since these things are in front of us, let's strive to hand in a satisfactory report.