Wen | White Lake
When I was a kid, there was a time when my grandmother and I lived in a place called Cross Street.
Going out to the right is the wet market, chicken, duck, fish, steamed buns, vegetables and fruits, always full of people. I went with my grandmother once or twice and didn't want to go there, it seemed like there was no sun all year round, the ground was always wet, and there were littered vegetable leaves and rotten fruits everywhere.
Southerners do not know much about the southeast, south, and northwest, and like to say back and forth when pointing the way. On the left side of Cross Street where we live, there are a series of restaurants and restaurants, and in the evening, the neon flashes and is mysterious. The place where I went to school was in the northwest corner of Cross Street, and the shops on both sides of the school gate were in addition to snacks and toy stores, that is, bookstores, one after another, the business was very prosperous, renting books, 5 cents a book. Grandma gave me a dollar a day for breakfast, I was very frugal to spend only 5 cents, the remaining 5 cents to rent a book, not only to fill the stomach but also to enjoy the spiritual food, every day is very happy.
The east end of cross street, has been walking, has been walking, is an east-west longitudinal main street, both sides of the high-rise buildings rising from the ground, "the car is like a flowing water, like a dragon, the flower moon is spring breeze", an old and a small walk in those high-end shopping malls, counters outside the door, all feel the cold forest ...
Years later, every time I recall that hour of light, it is like a film film, one picture after another, coming out of my mind, the details are blurred, but the main line is clear. A little girl with big eyes and a child's flower head, timidly going to school and leaving school, forever two points and one line.
On weekends, I will occasionally be invited out by my classmates to play, and places farther away from Cross Street have gradually become familiar, and I will not get lost when I walk alone, but character determines fate, I draw circles along Cross Street, no matter how big that circle is, what I ultimately like is still just the place where I live with my grandmother and where I go to school, between the two points and a line.
Later, on the road of life, I also encountered countless cross streets, like checkerboard grids, crisscrossing and intertwining into my life vein, some straight and straight, some grass snake gray lines, thousands of miles.
When I first came to this city, I was often surrounded by the longitude and latitude road of "meridian does not guide the north, latitude does not refer to the east and west", but after living for a while, I quickly became familiar with the main longitude and latitude road, but the scope of life is still a circle with home as the center and a limited circle around.
At this point, I suddenly had an epiphany one day, how mediocre and self-disturbing the many confusions and anxieties about choices and directions that I had experienced in my youth. Yes, in the Internet age, what you have seen and known is richer and more complex than at any time before, and further education, employment, feelings, marriage, including now, what kind of interest class to report to your children, is a huge project, the overwhelming amount of information is dazzling, everywhere is a crossroads, everywhere need to choose.
What to do? Some people choose to follow the footsteps of others, some people do not choose the road, and some people stand still, and I choose to follow my nature, listen to my heart, in the noisy cross street, finally no longer confused, flustered, wandering, but like the little girl who had clear and bright eyes when she was a child, she firmly walked on a road she liked, happy and satisfied every day.
People can't step into the same river twice, and we can't step into all areas of life at the same time, either to make more money or read more books; there is always something you are good at and like, and there is always something that you have to give up.
Jobs said, "You have to find what you love." I understood this truth when I was a teenager, but how many detours I took in the middle finally confirmed this after the death of youth. What about you? After walking through the crossroads of life, where have you chosen to go?