Reviewing today, organizing exam outline notes. Looking at my own crooked, twisted handwriting, I'm thinking of buying a calligraphy copybook to practice with. Suddenly I recalled that as a child I once bought a copybook but never seriously finished a single one, and in the end it served no purpose at all. Things that were once misunderstood, resented, and rejected have today become understood, appreciated, and accepted. Perhaps this is what growing up is?
...... Foods I once didn't like to eat I can now partially accept. Things I once didn't want to do I now begin to do on my own initiative. Back when my parents repeatedly admonished me, I used to think to myself, "When I have a child of my own, I won't force her to do this and that all day long." Now I think they really did have a point - it was just that they didn't choose the right way to express it, which led to my resistance. More and more of that rebellious mentality has gradually been worn smooth. Speaking of "rebellion" - it was really just another mistaken way of expressing things. Refusing to communicate with others was actually nothing more than not having sorted out the differences between what I wanted, what I needed, and what I would come to need. For most things, input and reward are positively correlated, and just how arduous the process is can only be known through experience. Having chosen the so-called shortcut, one had best not expect to obtain a satisfying result through wishful thinking. Without a lofty pursuit, without taking the difficult road, surrendering to one's instinctual indolence and sinking into oneself - that has no good ending. I once discussed with a classmate what is called "the value of a person." I held that the value of a person is reflected in others' evaluations of him; my classmate held that the value of a person depends on what contributions he himself has actually made. Now thinking back, both views have their reason. Whether the route is "doing-equals-having-done" stemming from inferiority's longing for recognition, or that of confidence, the ultimate result is the same - surpassing one's former self along a meaningful path.
......I am not advocating a doctrine of suffering either; deliberate hardship is not at all worth glorifying. Hardship education, plainly put, is merely the contradiction between expected goals and the difficult-to-change material conditions of the moment, which causes growth to take a different form and brings about other changes in personality and other aspects. The "difficult route" I am speaking of is just another concept set against letting things drift - a trajectory only slightly more taut than complete relaxation; I am by no means mythologizing the doctrine that suffering creates greatness.
The former self-centered "I" liked to split everything in two, black or white, liked absolutes, liked "will inevitably lead to," "definitely," "necessarily," "is nothing but," "is merely." Later I felt this was inappropriate, and so I grew fond of "mostly," "perhaps," "may." And as I see it now, a person's writing is closely tied to his life experience, and however rich life experience may be, it is still confined within a narrow little circle - the people he has met, the customs he has felt, are all very limited. Within such a system of discourse, it is hard to avoid him insisting "this is just how it is!" That is indeed not right, but if for that reason one blurs everything and leaves room for retreat in everything, on the contrary it becomes hard to convey "the breath of a person."
In that light, the former "I" who read writing only as words also had its limitations. Regardless of the article's own choice of words and phrasing, "I" should fully take into account the limitations of the author's life, and forgive the diction that grates on "me." I have always held that an article is the expression of a thought, not something taken up to communicate or even instill thoughts. As for the latter, those are extended, optional functions. If an author publishes an article with ulterior motives, using it to attack some figure and thereby deliberately stir up storms of public opinion, then it is a weapon, not an article. To this day I still hold to "the article itself is pure." It's just that some people like to use the pen as a spear.
A while back a college-entrance-exam essay went viral; its diction differed from the patterns the public is accustomed to. I read a few lines of that essay and lost interest in continuing. Setting aside that the obscure characters and words exposed how shallow my literary foundation is - speaking of the article itself, I think it is very well-suited to the gaokao essay genre. "Letting the teacher fail to understand," "having recondite words," "writing in a strange manner" all let it stand out among countless gaokao essays. The gaokao essay does not really need any sincere emotion, nor any profound thought; you merely need, within those forty or fifty minutes, to scrape together an 800-1000 word piece with a clear structure.
......I've drifted again. From reviewing to practicing handwriting to writing essays to the gaokao, I've gone further and further from "growing up." The current "I" looking at the past "I" has learned to accept many things. Then the future "I" will perhaps pay the price for the choices of the present "I." Someone said: "The only thing humanity learns from history is that it learns nothing from history." As for the future? I'll just leave it to the future "I" to fret over.