Wen | Choi Kwang-hoon
I have a good habit of not being elegant: I get together with people I don't know or don't know, after greeting, when I am idle, I often ask people where their hometown is, what is their age, etc., of course, after asking, they will also take the initiative to report their homes. If you are a fellow countryman, you will close the distance and set some nearness; if people are older or younger than me, I will call people a brother or brother, a big sister or a little sister to increase the sense of intimacy and create some natural and harmonious atmosphere.
Because of the habit of asking about the age of others, in the past two years, I have often encountered things that have embarrassed me: seeing the face full of the vicissitudes of the years, I judged that this person was at least a person in the 1950s and 60s, at least the same age as myself born at the end of 1963, so I tentatively asked: "What year are you?" "I don't want people to answer that it was the mid or late 1970s. Repeated major deviations in judgment have caused me to be traumatized repeatedly, and at that time, my head was not shrugged, but my heart was cold. I don't know if the other party is polite, or if I am really young, most people still have to sprinkle salt on the wound: "You are much younger than me, right?" "I hope it's really small and really young." But in these years, how many people can tell the truth? In fact, other people's faces are their own mirrors, and people who are much younger than themselves are old, and they are definitely no longer prosperous, and they have long bid farewell to their youth.
Maybe it is that there is no "shelf" in their usual work, and people who know each other love to joke about it, coupled with leadership incentives, there are some "old cows who know that the sunset is late" in the work, the speech and behavior are not old, things will be "a trot" in a hurry, so people who know my age say that I am "young". Over time, there are some fluttering up, after washing up in the morning, before going to work, look at the mirror left and right, thick eyebrows, big eyes, high nose bridge, the gully on the face is not deep, the dense hair has not fallen off, in addition to the hair is dyed black, the eyes need to be squinted up and carefully examined, the mirror in their own "lens" sense is full.
In fact, there is still self-knowledge in the depths of the heart - the hair is white, the eyes are spent, is not the most obvious sign of old age? The so-called wrinkles on the face are not deep, that is because the old eyes are dizzy and can't see clearly. People say that you are "young", not young, don't forget that there is an extra "obvious" word in front of "young".
Idle, occasionally with colleagues and friends to the dormitory "playing wine guys", eat barbecue on the side of the road, wait for the wine to pass three rounds, but also with people called brothers and brothers, saying what "a white and a yellow, deep meaning of love" "a white and a red, deep meaning". And whenever this happens, there are always young people who stand up and say: Don't, your age is almost the same as my father, although we don't want to pretend to be tender, but "the water is rising", and it is also necessary to "bring" us old. Suddenly, the face is warm and ashamed, but self-deprecating: blushing is not "anti-cold wax", it is drunk.
Staggered, drunk on a whim, but also boasted that their wine table is generally not lost, not "broken", after drinking home has never been twisted to let people support and send, but the next day dizzy, unresponsive. Hangover, dizziness and sluggishness the next day, are not also characteristics of aging of the digestive system in old age? How could the flesh and blood have been like this before?
Why not just the dinner table? I, a high school graduate in my sixties (and of course, later mixed with an EMBA from a prestigious university), led five or six college students and graduate students born in the 1980s and 1990s in the department, and worked feverishly all day, feeling good about themselves, but they snubbed the rings and time, ignoring the scenery along the way. Sometimes I work overtime until two o'clock in the morning or even all night, just like a lively tiger, full of energy, and I don't feel any age gap with my colleagues, and I don't have time to think about whether I am really old.
One day I was chatting with a colleague and inadvertently casually asking if his father was born in 1950. People told me: 1964. Younger than me? I chuckled in my heart, a little embarrassed inside, but there was no sound in my mouth. Recently, the unit held a "I love my post" keynote speech contest, and in order to praise how I was "passionate and in a state" in my speech, some colleagues said that I was older than his father and should be called "uncle". Although six or seven years ago, colleagues born in the early 1980s called me "uncle", I knew in my heart that it was purely a friendly joke or joke between colleagues, and I didn't take it seriously, because my father was born in the 50s of the last century, how could I call me uncle? But for these two colleagues, I am a "real" uncle! Don't say call Uncle, his granddaughter is already more than three years old, in fact, she has already reached the age of teasing her grandson.
By chance, my son was recently seconded to a department of the provincial government to help work, temporarily living in my place, and had the opportunity to communicate with the "small partners" of my unit collectively. Colleagues who didn't want to be commensurate with my peers all called my sons' brothers and sisters and left me hanging aside. I was in a hurry and said, "Messed up, aren't you bad people?" They said, "Each of them is a matter of kinship." If you think about it, you and them are not a generation, but you are not "conscious". Before, let people call themselves "big brother", shame ah!
Repeatedly suffered similar setbacks and suppressions, and gradually became self-aware, realizing that although he was not old, his age was indeed not small. The main leaders of the unit, the genes of the northerners, the character of the southerners, wise, generous and easy-going. One day, I joked with the leader: "Now there are two 'best of the province's system': you are the oldest official, and I am the oldest." The leader is worthy of being a leader, people are silent, follow the trend of the backhand, humorously suppress, joke to me: "Got it wrong? I see you look like you did in 1973! "Isn't this a rhetorical and roundabout irony?" Does he look like 1953? I have some doubts about life.
Six or seven years ago, the secretary of the Youth League Committee of the unit with a literary and artistic style initiated an essay collection activity called "To Youth". This obviously excludes me, although slightly lonely, but not willing to be lonely, attached a "to the lost youth", won a bunch of young men and beautiful women's feelings: from your witty words, it shows that you are "old and old". I really appreciate that. In our hometown of Yimeng, there is also a saying with ironic meanings, called "do not know death", which means that people have been old and have not yet felt it. Time is a file that polishes us to where we are today. The body won't be young forever, but the mindset can be adjusted. I am secretly glad that although I have reached the age of "noon", my youth has passed away, and the years have eroded my face, I can still maintain a young mentality and active thoughts, and maintain a state of life that "does not know death", which is a fortunate thing.
Time is like a white colt passing through the gap, a turn of the eye, it is no longer the old dream of that year. A confidant once reminded me: "The years do not live, the seasons are like a stream, life, just passers-by." "Since life is short, the years are not sparing, after experiencing the vicissitudes of the world, why not treat yourself with this young state of mind, calm, idyllic, sunny, frank, open-minded, face life, show the vitality and vitality of life, "run away for half a life, return is still a teenager."