Staying Awake While Reading

Ordinary life most easily devours our thoughts.

Every day you handle almost the same things. Clients ask you to make the logo a little bigger, the content a little more eye-catching, the colors a little brighter, the layout a little fuller—it’s exactly like some male compatriots’ fantasies about women: bigger breasts, sexier clothes, fuller figure. Then you modify according to the client’s requirements. The result isn’t something you like at all, but the client says it’s great. “Not bad, young man, you’ve worked hard~” “Sure thing~” While silently chanting “Logo bigger! Content eye-catching! Colors brighter!” you painfully complete several more layouts. After doing similar work for several months, you find that your body and mind are completely occupied by work. All day long you’re doing things similar to assembly line work—no need to think. Ignorance is strength!

In the end, you always find yourself exhausted. After getting off work and eating dinner, you sit in front of the computer, worrying about the whole country like you’re in Zhongnanhai, reviewing the day’s Weibo posts, afraid of missing any trace. You browse classmates’ and friends’ spaces to see how they’re doing today. In reality, you haven’t seen them for a long time, haven’t heard their voices for ages. It seems like you care deeply about the existing world and the friends around you. However, after aimlessly closing the webpage, you can’t remember a single thing you saw ten seconds ago, one minute ago, or even ten minutes ago. The feeling of premature aging flashes by, and immediately even this awareness of sorrow disappears without a trace. Even though there’s the consolation that people who are good at forgetting always live happily, the uneasy thought never truly leaves. You may not know your dopamine levels, but your own emotions are always clear.

So you indulge in the negative effects that low mood brings you. You clearly know you’re unhappy and know what to do, but you just don’t execute it immediately. You have to wait until you finally feel bored to the point of collapse before you’ll miss the things you used to do, before you’ll turn your thoughts into action.

I finally picked up a book again, immersing myself in the author’s thoughts, forgetting the temptations of the internet, TV dramas, cars, and women, feeling the author’s reasoning. Only after closing the book did I use my own consciousness to make my own judgment on the author’s reasoning. Although I couldn’t reach high-level conclusions, feeling the difference between good and bad writing was especially satisfying, because during that time I thought, I felt my own existence as a human being.