Text/Liao Chaoguo
Many things or many principles in life can only be understood and understood after reaching a certain age and having a certain life experience. Childhood does not know hardship, youth does not know sorrow, and youth does not feel difficulty. Only after middle age, after the crushing of life, the hammering of life, and the tempering of worldly affairs, will one understand that there is too much helplessness in life.
Whether you can understand and understand the helplessness of life can only be helpless, and it is also a sign of a person’s maturity. Mature people will understand that things in the world cannot be achieved only by their own efforts. Mature people know that there is something beyond everyone’s reach. A person can only do his best to achieve success. As for the final result, he can only “do his best and obey the destiny”. The same is true for humans. Human beings are both great and insignificant in front of nature. Greatness is manifested in the fact that through long-term genetic evolution, they have stood firmly at the top of the food chain. The insignificance means that human beings have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg in many fields of nature. There are many, many unknowns. For example, the new coronavirus that has been around for three years is still so rampant, and humans have not yet found a good way to cure it. Of course, with the development of human productivity and the improvement of human cognitive ability, we will move from the unknown to the known at a gradual speed and method, but this is a rather long historical period. In one’s life, there will be many things, no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to achieve them. In other words, there are too many helplessness in life.
Helpless, this idiom allusion first came from the inner chapter of “Zhuangzi”, “The World”. derived from a story. The story tells that Gao, Ye Gongzi of Chu State, was sent by the King of Chu to go to Qi State. I heard that Qi’s envoys are tricky and difficult, and Ye Gongzi Gao is not good at mediating diplomatic affairs, so he was afraid before he went. He was worried that he would not be able to complete the task, and he was also afraid of the punishment of the king of Chu. So he went to ask Confucius for advice. He told Confucius about his many distresses, and Confucius comforted him and said: ” Knowing what to do and being at peace with one’s life is the ultimate virtue .” There are times when people are powerless and have to do nothing. Since the King of Chu has arranged this matter for you, this is your job responsibility. You have to conscientiously perform your duties and put all your heart and soul into this matter, so you won’t be anxious. You’re anxious right now because you’re thinking too much about other things that haven’t happened yet. Even the sage Confucius, when persuading others to face things that he can do nothing about, in addition to encouraging others to do their best, he can only persuade them to think less and calmly accept the results that they cannot control.
In a person’s life, many times, there are always regrets that cannot be made up, wishes that are difficult to satisfy, accidents that cannot be avoided, helplessness that cannot be let go, entanglements that cannot be calmed down, and sadness that cannot be expressed. No one lives involuntarily, and few people can do whatever they want. There is no one who is not living through hardships, and few people are able to take it easy. The helplessness in life is ultimately manifested in the fact that something has happened, and there is really nothing you can do except to accept it; apart from a wry smile, you just grit your teeth and stand up;
There is a joke on the Internet that lists 10 powerless things in life. They are: the wall that falls to you, the person who leaves you, the time that cannot be kept, the origin without choice, the inexplicable loneliness, the helpless forgetting, the past that cannot be reproduced, the ridicule of others, the inevitable death, the inevitable Salvation loves it.
Life is more than just helpless. Frustrated in career, frustrated in love, frustrated in marriage, incapable of raising children in the family, confused and confused in life, there is always such a big gap between ideal and reality, and expectations and results are always so disappointing. The British poet Shelley once said: “Tomorrow will never be the same as today. The only thing that remains unchanged is impermanence.” Mr. Lin Qingxuan, a famous contemporary Chinese writer, said: “There are nine out of ten unsatisfactory things in life.” The old man Yang Jiang who lived over a hundred years old also said that “the years are quiet for a moment, and the chicken feathers are everyday “. Many times, these “unexpected things” and “feathers all over the place” make you helpless. In life, there are too many helplessness. Losing is helpless, missing is helpless, parting is helpless, regret is also helpless. The greatest helplessness in life is the impermanence of life.
It is the normal state of life to love but not to love. Love is something that is indispensable to human beings, just like water is to life. If a person lacks love, the soul will die and the person will not be human. Emotion is an equally important need in life as bread. If a person lacks emotion, it will be difficult to live a healthy life. Love and affection constitute the whole meaning of life. But even such a theme is often helpless in life. In this life, people are constantly meeting and saying goodbye. It is difficult for anyone to tell who is the destination of life and who is a passer-by in life. “Lover will eventually get married” is just a kind of good wishes and expectations. The reality is that many people who love each other can’t get together in the end. It’s not that I don’t love, but I can’t love it. Everyone has carved a shadow of a person in their hearts, and they always hope to stay together for a lifetime, but later on, they can only see the other person turning around and leaving quietly. Therefore, Xu Zhimo, a poet of love, had to write: “I am lucky to gain, and my life is lost, that’s all.”
Asking but not getting is a common thing in life. Everyone has their own desires, but it is not completely up to us to decide whether we can achieve what we desire. Taiwanese writer Bai Xianyong said: “Owning is always a fluke, and impermanence is the normal state of life. All maturity begins with loss.” There are too many unsatisfactory things in life. The ancients said that everything is only half-satisfactory. To be half-satisfied already means that Gao Xiangjing Bodhisattva has been favored by fate. The cruel reality is that it is difficult for people to come to this world. Suffering is natural, tiredness is inevitable, and dissatisfaction is even more obvious. There are very few people who come with a golden key in their hands, most of them are ordinary, and there are many poor people. Everyone has their own unspeakable secrets, and everyone has their own unspeakable sadness. There is no such thing as “easy” in the world of adults. You have to bear responsibilities, support your family, ignore your work, and earn money. Thousands of people suffer in every way, and thousands of people suffer in every way. In the process of seeking in life, failure is common, and success is accidental. Many times, things that don’t belong to you, no matter how hard you try, will never be with you. As a saying goes, even if you hold your fingers tightly together, you will still miss something that is not in your destiny. Fate is your thing, no matter how you miss it, you will have it. I’m an atheist, I’m not superstitious. But I believe in fate. I take the “fate” right here to mean that we humans have not yet realized that there is a magical power. I believe that the discovery of dark matter will definitely explain it if we move forward.
It is the common sense of life to expect more than we can. Hope is always good, but hope is only really good if it can be fulfilled. Unfulfilled hope is not essentially different from no hope. The difference is that unrealized hope will increase people’s troubles and pain. There are many things in life that cannot be expected. It can also be said that it is a common sense to fall short. It makes a lot of sense, and it makes a lot of sense. If you act according to that principle, you will usually be slapped in the face by life. Because any reason has its specific environmental conditions and scope, such as: the harder you work, the luckier you are. Many people have worked hard all their lives, but have not seen luck come. If the cognition does not reach a certain height, the understanding of things cannot grasp the essence through the phenomenon, and the law of the development and change of things is not clear, there will be a deviation in direction, and the harder you work, the farther you will be from the goal. And we have to admit the existence of “luck”. Luck is hard to explain, but it does exist and affects us deeply. For example, those lottery winners in life, and the outcome of two football teams of equal strength, it is difficult to explain clearly with any scientific theory. It has been said that luck is chance meeting hard work. How did the opportunity come about? If the opportunity is explained clearly, what about “coincidence”?
Paying and not getting is the rule of life. We often say that there is no harvest without hard work. This is undoubtedly quite true. But as an adult, you should also know that not all hard work will pay off. When you reach a certain age. After going through the ups and downs of the world, you will gradually understand that there is not a completely linear relationship between giving and rewarding. A correct understanding of giving and rewards includes at least four points. First, there will be no rewards if you don’t give, and rewards are the result of giving; second, giving and rewards are not necessarily proportional. Returns; third, there may be a time lag between contributions and returns, that is to say, contributions are not immediately rewarded; fourth, not all contributions will be rewarded. The most frightening thing in the world is that hard work fails to produce results, and efforts are not rewarded, but this is often the case in life. The famous singer Andy Lau, one of the “Four Heavenly Kings”, also sang in his song “It’s All My Blame”, that it is self-righteous to pay equal to gain. In life, paying is really not equal to gaining. Giving without gaining is not advocating and encouraging not to give. On the contrary, pointing out that giving without getting rewards is to remind people that rewards are not easy, and more attention should be paid to getting rewards from multiple efforts.
Life is like this, there are too many helplessness. But it is not because of these helplessness that we should wait passively, wait for death, and live a decadent life. The attitude towards helplessness in life is also testing what kind of person we are. Some people are depressed because of helplessness, some people think because of helplessness, some people rise up because of helplessness, and some people change because of helplessness. If life is compared to a battle, on the battlefield of life, one side is our soul, and the other side is the helplessness of life. Perhaps, the hardships and ups and downs of life grind our fighting spirit; the heavy and helpless fate destroys our determination. But we still have to bear with it and fight against it silently. Because we can’t avoid it, we can’t avoid it, we only hope that it is impossible for others, and we can only face it correctly. Facing it correctly is the necessity of life, facing it correctly is the attitude of life, and facing it correctly is the way of life. So, how do we face the helplessness of life correctly?
Clarify the cognition and understand the impermanence is the constant. Life is impermanent. Impermanence is uncertainty, there is no such thing as eternity, everything is changing and difficult to control. The only constant in this world is that everything is changing. The essence of life is impermanence. Life is a substance, neither pleasure nor pain, it is an existence made up of a series of facts. Whether this fact itself is good or bad is entirely our subjective judgment of a concept. The real pain that afflicts us because of things is actually our thoughts. From this we can see that this world is not centered on one of us, it is an objective world that follows various natural laws. This kind of objectivity is not created by a certain force, but the result of integrating all the forces of time and space in the world. Don’t resist the existence of things because they are against our will. The only thing we can control and set ourselves free is our inner being, outer things are out of our control. Realizing this, we will truly let go of our self-centered thoughts, begin to accept the uncertainty of life, and understand impermanence to be permanent.
Only by changing your mentality and understanding acceptance can you turn the page. Facing the impermanence of life, we must learn to accept it. Anything that happens to us in life, including things we can’t accept, is acceptance in addition to facing it squarely. Because the outcome of things does not change whether we accept it or not. Zhou Guoping, a well-known contemporary scholar, said: “People cannot control their own destiny, but they can control their attitude towards fate, and calmly bear the inevitable encounters that befall them.” Wise people learn to accept when things have become irreparable. American writer Mike Singer said in his book “Living Soberly” that when things are unchangeable, if you don’t accept it, or even resist it, and hold on to this situation, it is actually creating a blockage of the mind. We will be entangled in this matter or attached to this matter, and the energy caused by this matter cannot pass through you and cause blockage in your mind. This blocked energy will not disappear, it will bring people various emotions and internal conflicts, making people trapped in this matter, depressed, anxious and unhappy, until you accept the result of this matter. Acceptance is not a meaningless confrontation. Acceptance is to face up, to accept is to reflect, to accept is to be relieved, and to accept is to end. It is the wisdom of dealing with the world to cut off immediately after something has happened. It is the pattern of being a human being to turn over the page happily. Only by saying goodbye can we turn the chapter, and only by turning the chapter can we start over.
Adjusting behavior and knowing how to be open-minded is the antidote. To deal with the impermanence of life, instead of blindly entangled in anxiety and confrontation, it is better to accept relief from the mentality. Only in this way can we see the new village with willow banks and bright flowers in the road of nowhere. Mr. Wang Zengqi, known as a representative of the Beijing School, wrote in his book “Everything has a heart and a taste in the world”: Someone asked me: “How did you come here these years?” They probably thought I was in a good state of mind, which was a little strange , I want to know what strength I use to support me. I replied: “Anything happens”. The old man has gone through so many hardships in life, and he still lives so full of vigor and joy. The secret is to go with the flow, to go with the flow. Going with the flow is a realm. Going with the flow does not mean inaction, but knowing that nothing can be done and not forcing it. If you can’t love, you can’t change others, but you can change yourself; if you can’t get it, you can’t control your destiny, but you can adjust your mentality; Don’t think about the unreasonable, time will have the answer. Peace of mind is a pattern. To be at ease with the situation is not to go with the flow, but to be wise in judging the situation; to be at peace with the situation is not to sit on the sidelines, but to give sincerely. An, that is, peace of mind. Peace of mind is peace of mind. No matter what environment you are in, whether the sun is shining or the wind and rain are blowing, it is a wise attitude towards life to maintain a mentality of following your heart. And letting nature take its course, being at peace with the situation will eventually lead people to the top of the mountain of detachment and open-mindedness. Detachment and open-mindedness are the real antidote to the impermanence of life.
In short, the general strategy for dealing with the impermanence of life is, if you encounter it, try to change it, if you can’t change it, then adapt to it. If you can’t adapt, avoid it. If you can’t even avoid it, you have to let it go. But more often than not, the competent choose to change, the lazy choose to adapt, the cowardly choose to avoid, and the brave choose to let go.
Life is long and life is short. Life is not easy, keep going forward. Whether you are helpless or powerless, be yourself with your heart and live with peace of mind. You can be happy when you are helpless, and you are lucky when you are powerless.
Life is impermanent, life is impermanent, and facing it calmly is a wonderful life. December 3, 2022
Written in the waters and sky beside the South Lake
Zuo An Ji: I always analyze the helpless things, whether it is my own reasons or external factors, if it is my own reasons, I either change myself, or go with it, if it is external factors, I either wait for the opportunity to change, or change surroundings. If you look at life pessimistically, it is easy to accept the reality, but you will also be depressed; if you look at life as changeable, you will not be trapped in difficulties, and it will often bring about turning points. There is no choice but to let the flowers fall, let the flowers fall if they want to fall, but we still cultivate hard, the flowers will bloom more colorfully in the coming year, and the familiar swallows will return as scheduled.
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