Impermanence

Last time, after finishing my internship in Mianyang, I wanted to stay an extra day in Chengdu and decided to return to school the next day. That afternoon, after arriving in Chengdu from Mianyang, my classmates were all crammed into the Dicos at the North Train Station waiting for the train after 7 PM. Since I didn’t have the key to my house, I went up too, ordered a juice, chatted with them, and took the opportunity to recommend fun places in Chengdu to my roommate from Guangxi. Maybe he wouldn’t come to Chengdu again in his lifetime, so it was a good chance to show him around a bit. But he was too lazy to go shopping, and I didn’t want to accompany him, so I called another high school roommate who was also a university alumnus to ask where he was. He said he was at my senior sister’s place and asked if I wanted to come over.

This senior sister was also from my hometown. She was quite pretty, with a charming smile and a bit tanned. I usually called her Sister Lan. When I first arrived as a freshman, she treated me to a meal. Later, we ate together many more times, but our contact wasn’t close—we only had each other’s phone numbers, not many texts. Now I’m quite glad it was this way. I’m not a QQ fan myself and rarely take the initiative to message others to get closer. If I had, it probably would have gone cold long ago, and I wouldn’t have this indescribably familiar feeling now. Seeing that the distance wasn’t too far, I went over, planning to catch up with her and ask about employment prospects in our major.

Naturally, we ate dinner together. At a skewer restaurant near Xinhong Road, the owner pulled the table out to the flower bed by the sidewalk and invited us to sit. As sunset turned to night, the city’s sky gradually darkened, streetlights came on, emitting a hazy glow. A few of us ate, drank, and chatted in this flower bed while cars slowly drove into the distant darkness. Sister Lan said she liked this feeling. I think no one would reject this kind of warm atmosphere. It seems like we’re previewing our future days. Whether it’s a few years or ten, when time flies by and life weighs us down until we can’t breathe, having a few friends who can sit at a roadside small eatery, order a few plates of peanuts and a few glasses of draft beer, eating and talking—that’s happiness, isn’t it?

Many people have grand ambitions, but God won’t arrange for all of them to be realized. The 80/20 rule exists, so most people can only be ordinary folks in this lifetime. Some people set their dreams too high and chase them too hard, ending up with nothing after a lifetime. It might be better to lower your stance, lower your dreams, and chase one small happiness after another around you. Conversely, how many people really want to do earth-shattering great things? Ambition is just ambition. Human innate laziness always stops their actions. Most people’s days aren’t lived according to life plans because they don’t know when they’ll die—maybe in the next second, maybe in sixty years. So it’s better to say people live by miracles, grateful for impermanence’s favor every second. Our well-being is nothing more than seeking a life without worries and a death without regrets. As long as we have a place to live, food to eat, some money to earn, a wife to marry, and children to laugh with, a plain and ordinary life is enough.

Yesterday, I watched Yu Hua’s To Live with tears in my eyes. Life is impermanent. For some people, the peaceful years and stable present they long for are not easy things. Because we’re just ordinary people, in the face of powerful external will and social turmoil, even if everything seems hopeless, we still have to keep living. Just being alive is good. Sooner or later, we’ll transcend it all, and all suffering will eventually leave.