Countless times I've recorded my life in writing, sometimes wondering how much of it is truly worth remembering and commemorating. Yet, I can't fully organize and reflect upon it. Countless times I've longed to return to my innocent days, to forget the dust and grime that follows the glitz and glamour, but I remain troubled by the pervasive worldly dust. My life itself is a beautiful mistake. I truly miss those days of wandering, living life my own way. I could go to bars late at night to listen to decadent, energetic music, live a simple life when I was strapped for cash, yet frequent glamorous places for work. I searched for my place in different societies. I am someone who understands life, yet also someone who doesn't know how to live. Saying goodbye to those days of wandering, I've repeatedly succumbed to a life I initially didn't want to accept. I continue my withered yet passionate youth at a predetermined pace, year after year. Every time it rains, I undergo a baptism. I remember my boss at Siemens telling me, "Doing marketing is like living a life. You have to treat work and life with the same attitude you would treat life itself to have the courage and passion to face it." Thinking about it the other way around, I treat life like marketing, but without the profit motive and with more mundane worries. My life is being worn down by life. I've lost all my edge. I know this is a fact I can't change because I don't have the ability to change it now. I believe I can change my current situation someday, but that's a long way off. I'll have my own career and improve my life, but by then I'll be a middle-aged person completely brainwashed by communism, no longer as flamboyant as I was in my youth, without the impulsiveness and passion of youth. I'll just be making money for the sake of making money, struggling to make ends meet, never again driven by passion. In the past year, the changes I've undergone are sometimes unimaginable even to myself. I'm even reluctant to think about the details of my life. I want to start a family, have a home of my own, and return to a life I can control. Yet, I'm still indulging myself.
I've filled my life with activities, working a fixed eight-hour shift and then teaching at an adult night school afterward. I feel a sense of happiness while teaching, interacting with my students, using my knowledge to help others, and conveying a youthful way of thinking. Seeing the different lives reflected in their faces and smiles fills me with envy. My college counselor once said, "People always want to change their way of life after living in one environment for too long, even if it's a simple and monotonous one. It's like wanting to change environments after staying in one place for too long. This isn't a universal trait, but a survival instinct." Instinct? What is the instinct for living? Searching for one's own survival instinct in such a stressful and monotonous environment has shattered the meaning of instinct; it's become a search for an instinct that was originally one's own but has been lost.
I'm truly an extremely cowardly person. As I furiously typed the words above and then indulged in regret, I realized I had no ability to change anything anyway, so what's the point of saying all this? It seems that my life can only be recorded with these utterly useless words, which I then use to comfort myself when I am calm and collected. I am always sealing away memories, but I am always facing reality!
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