2022, Twenty-Four

0

It's the evening of January 1, 2022, and today is my 24th birthday.

However busy or distracted I get, I seem to have a harder time than most people forgetting my own birthday.

At the turn of the year, people always feel a surge of wanting to bear witness. So on the last day of the year, everyone gathers to count down out loud, celebrating together that the old year has passed, hoping the one ahead will be better — full of ceremony.

Whenever the midnight bells begin to ring, family and my closest friends come to wish me a happy birthday, and that's a small happiness I get to collect. But I always feel I don't quite deserve it, because I can rarely remember their birthdays, and so I can never return the same blessing on theirs — no matter how much I love them.

When I was little, we didn't celebrate birthdays. The grown-ups at home went by the lunar calendar anyway, and the end of the year was their busiest season — they had no time for a child's small world. To our family, this day was simply the day you took down the old calendar and hung up the new one. Though some years, Mom would remember it was my birthday and boil a few extra eggs for me at breakfast.

Growing up, I slowly came to feel this is a day worth taking seriously. True, it's ordinary — the same as any of the 365 days in a year. But it's also special: for me, it's a new year stacked on top of a new age. And besides, it's always a day off.

Going out to the square to count down with the crowd is exciting, of course, but that kind of feeling never lasts. When the countdown ends and the second hand ticks over into the next year, there's always a hollowness left in my chest. I think, on days like this, the best thing is to curl up with the people you love — doing anything at all can feel happy. And honestly, keeping yourself company isn't bad either.

This year I stayed home alone and went nowhere. On New Year's Eve I stayed up outrageously late and binged the rest of an old anime I'd been following, all in one sitting.

I forget things far too easily. A year goes by and plenty of memories get dropped along the way, and even the ones that stay will drift away from me with time, like running water. So, following my old habit, let me write something down for the year that has passed.

1

This past year I seem to have done nothing at all, and yet I'd call it a very full year.

A year ago today, I was in an unfamiliar city, busy planning and running a New Year's countdown event — exhausted, and wondering whether the perks of that job were worth continuing to endure the dullness and pressure it brought. Before Spring Festival I looked at the wages I'd saved since graduating and did the math: the savings were enough to live on for half a year. So I quit — and I really did manage to do nothing for six whole months. With the money nearly gone, I've now come to Shanghai to grind again. These days I share an apartment here with a good friend from college, clock in and out on time, and outside of work I try to carve out more room where I can breathe freely.

The biggest, most precious harvest of the year was exactly that half year of doing nothing.

The happiest and most lost stretch came right after I'd made the decision not to work for six months and rented a place near Dong-ge's home. Happy, because every day I could do whatever I wanted; lost, because I never knew what to begin the day with. I had always assumed that "freedom" simply meant happiness. It was during that time I discovered it isn't like that at all.

Freedom has a price, and its price is that you must answer for yourself — completely, entirely answer for yourself. No one assigns you tasks, so you must assign them to yourself. No one makes choices for you, so you must make every choice on your own. No one guarantees your health, so you must learn to take care of your own body. No one can look after you every moment, so you must learn how to love yourself. No one will correct your mistakes, so you have to train yourself to notice them as they happen...

At first, life was restless and directionless: aimlessly reading, listening to music, wandering the internet, watching stock charts, listening to podcasts, playing games, watching pointless videos — letting my brain chase dopamine without end. Looking back now, the brain really does love entertainment, and entertainment really is delightful. I can't say at what point it happened, but somewhere along the way I found myself slowly changing — a seed planted who knows when, one called "feeling," fed on the nourishment of all that idle time, had begun to grow.

In my student days, I had always lived in comparison with others, chasing the success everyone else was chasing. To me, getting good grades in school and hitting numbers at work was simply what one did. In pursuit of those so-called "good results," I had become all too practiced at ignoring my body and whatever I felt inside.

Then it suddenly dawned on me that all that "striving" had really been a thorough kind of escape — escaping from facing my own feelings, escaping the fear and unease hidden beneath my actions, escaping the price that must be paid to make choices that are truly mine. "Working hard" was the solution I'd come up with for hating my own imperfection, without ever stopping to ask myself why I believed imperfection was a problem that had to be solved.

So, awkwardly, I began learning to live with myself — learning to accept my many flaws, learning to observe my own feelings and moods. Change always means pain, but this was a good beginning. The old self leapt down; a new self grows back in its place.

These days I keep being surprised by my own sensitive, tender side, finding myself more and more able to feel the beautiful side of this world and the currents of feeling that run between people — knowing myself better and loving myself more than I used to. That is this year's greatest progress. The self that competition and efficiency had turned into a tool is setting that tool-side down and becoming flesh and blood again. That deserves celebrating.

2

I forget which book I read it in this year, and I forget the exact line, but the gist was this: all human troubles come from relationships, and relationships mean your relationship with yourself, with others, and with the world. Having improved my relationship with myself, this year I also grew in my relationships with others.

My basic principle for being with people this year: be tolerant and accepting of others, trust that they can tolerate and accept me in return, express my honest thoughts, and accept the outcome of not being understood. I set a few extra small rules for myself too, though timidity often kept me from following them: if you like someone, say so directly through praise; be brave enough to admit mistakes and apologize quickly; don't drain yourself to please others; don't dodge a problem just to avoid conflict; look people in the eye when you talk.

This year I came to understand more clearly that the adult world means everyone answering for themselves — I answer for myself, and I allow others to answer for themselves. Grasping this simple truth genuinely lifted a great deal of social weight off me. Other people's feelings and lives are theirs to be responsible for; I used to treat them as my own burden, and other people's moods would trigger my unconscious reactions — either forcefully demanding they change, or resisting, or running away. Separate your own tasks from other people's, drop the fantasy of changing and saving them, give up arguing over who's right and who's wrong in a relationship — and suddenly being with people becomes light. Slowly, I'm no longer so afraid of it.

Last year I thought I had figured out what love was, thought I already knew how to treat it. A year on, I realize last year's me still didn't understand enough. Through this year with Dong-ge, I feel I've leveled up again — as if I've arrived at a deeper understanding of love, a deeper certainty, a deeper courage.

I believe it more firmly now: loving yourself is the foundation of loving anyone else. Only when you know your own emotions and can manage your own moods can you recognize what others feel — and by understanding and responding to their feelings, build something good with them.

3

2021 — the world grew harder and harder for me to read, more chaotic and disordered by the day. I saw everyone in the crowd shouting at the top of their lungs while giving up on hearing what anyone else was saying. I saw countries building high walls and treating each other as enemies — you throw a punch at me, I answer with a knife. More and more words that cannot be spoken, works that cannot be seen; people destroying one another in the fight over what counts as "correct"...

But so what. None of it can scare off my curiosity or my courage to explore the world. I used to tiptoe through everything, so afraid of being wrong that I didn't dare take a single step toward change. I want to become less afraid of mistakes — brave enough to admit them and walk away from sunk costs, arms open to new knowledge, new fields, a new world.

I know very well how small and powerless I am before this world, and I will no longer dream of changing the world or changing other people. I choose to bend down and take up the tow-rope that is mine to pull. Carry the weight I ought to carry, and surely everything will turn out different.

In the new year, I hope to live each day with care, eat every meal well, and love the lovable people with all my strength.

The world presses me down; I set myself free.

Happy birthday to me. Happy new year.

2022.01.01