Tonight is a rainy night, and it is no longer summer. The rain still carries the essence of summer, and calling it autumn rain is far from sufficient—it lacks the coolness, the lingering charm, and the essence of “Li Qingzhao.” We have once again reached the awkward transition between summer and autumn, where turning on the air conditioning feels cold, and not turning it on feels hot. I feel like I cannot control my own body, and it is truly frustrating.
As 2024 approaches the end of the lunar year, I am stepping into the long-awaited age of twenty. Reflecting on the years before eighteen—my sentimental fifteen and my sorrowful eighteen—I often think that our generation born in 2005 is quite extraordinary. The Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, the onset of the pandemic in 2020 (who would have thought that winter break would last so long? I didn’t even have time to return to school to save my potted plant), the lifting of pandemic restrictions in 2022, and then participating in the college entrance examination in 2023… From rural areas to towns, we have experienced the joy of wandering the streets in our childhood, as well as the fun and convenience brought by the evolution of mobile phones. However, I increasingly feel that people are becoming more estranged, with too little authenticity and trust. In this fast-paced life, it is impossible to shed the masks of hypocrisy and expose oneself in communal spaces, even though—no one will notice you.
Life seems to be in constant motion. It rained all day today, and I feel like crying. Perhaps it is because nothing significant enough to cause a stir has happened recently, I feel as if I am floating with my feet off the ground; perhaps the best days are behind me (though I still hope for better days in the future). Those days were long and damp, yet they could stir the strings of a zither, defying the law of energy dissipation, as the reverberations still linger.
Today, I truly felt—perhaps autumn has arrived.
As 2025 is halfway through, I do not know if there have been any commendable events this year. It seems I have not prepared at all for the arrival of the new year; perhaps it is always like this. The arrival of the new year feels sudden to me, as if there is no transition period.Because the term “new year” always carries a lot of expectations, and after the new year comes spring, people never delve into whether the new year has any negative connotations, but instead indulge in the joy of red and the anticipation of tender green.The four seasons cycle endlessly, but I am still looking forward to the tender buds of early spring, the evening glow of midsummer, the red leaves of late autumn, and the heavy snow of winter. I am still someone who looks forward to these things. The essence of humanity is to stand alongside hope and all that is beautiful, which is why we use tools like words to concretize abstract emotions or abstract the concrete feelings.
But I should not only expect the occurrence of external beauty; perhaps the meaning of “living” that I yearn for comes from the beauty I personally create.
I have not thought of what to write as a message to my twenty-year-old self, so I will leave that for later. However, I think that life messages are likely not singular; they are also fluid.
——I hope to vividly and specifically love everything that is in motion in my life.