"It was just that I was standing at the fork in the road, seeing the storm clouds, and the day you made your choice, in the diary, was quite dull and ordinary, and I thought it was an ordinary day in my life." The writer Tao Jie once described the moments in his life in this way.
Just as there are "firsts" in everyone's life, they may be carefully planned or may only appear in daily life.
And the "first" experience may not be about achieving a surging goal and completing a vigorous initiative (such as bungee jumping for the first time, winning an award for the first time, traveling around the world for the first time), but rather:
The first time you fall to the ground, meet the world, and let go of your parents' hands and enter kindergarten;
The first time to leave home to go out to study, to the first time to enter the workplace as a social person;
The first time I stepped on the red carpet of happiness, I went to the white head and grew old and frothed with each other.
……
In such a "first time in life", you and I can simply and truly glimpse the common destiny, so as to have a foresight and understanding of ourselves.
It is precisely because of these "firsts" that we have an irreplaceable embellishment, connecting everyone's light and dark life.
Especially as the Spring Festival approaches, when re-reading the book "The First Time in Life", the sense of resonance is even stronger, because it restores the real life picture of many people, including you and me.
From birth to schooling, to growing up, becoming a soldier, going to work, getting married, going to the city, buying a house, staying together, retiring, retiring, and saying goodbye, the book presents twelve "firsts" of great significance to Chinese.
But the truth is that even if you skip only one of the chapters, the experience of these "strangers" will make you feel connected to your past, present, and future, and there is always one of the twelve "firsts in life" that will move you.
"The First Time in My Life"
This is the officially authorized book of the same name for the documentary "The First Time in Life", which has received high scores of 9.1 and 9.8 on Douban and B stations, respectively. This book is not only a "literal reproduction" of the story in the film, but also presents the emotions, feelings and unfinished stories that have not yet appeared in it.
How many stories does a life have that it doesn't know before it first comes into this world?
The chapter "Birth" in the book focuses our eyes on the delivery room and completes the story of our meeting with our parents.
▲The picture comes from the book "The First Time in Life"
You know, in China, on average, 50,000 babies are born every day, and behind this are 50,000 brave and great mothers.
For example, the 27-year-old young pregnant woman with heart disease in the book is pregnant with twins. The difficulty of childbirth is that the mother must first undergo heart disease surgery, and general anesthesia is required during the operation, but then the fetal heart will stop, which is likely to affect the safety of the child's life.
After the doctor and the family discussed the risks of the operation, the husband signed a consent form for the operation. Back in the hospital room, he and his wife chatted about the twins' names and joked to reassure her. In fact, behind the smile, there is a worry about unknown risks, but also companionship, responsibility and love.
Birth is a very common thing. However, this does not mean that it can be ignored or hidden. Before becoming parents, when we understand how life came into this world, we will cherish it more and understand the difficulty of "meeting" for the first time in life.
Personally, I also like the last words of the chapter "Birth":
Dear child, the road ahead is so long,
There will be some people who like you,
There will also be some people who don't like you,
You will have many joyful days,
There will also be a few long nights when you can't sleep peacefully,
But at the moment you don't want to think about anything,
This is your first meeting with the world.
The chapter "Growing Up" takes our eyes into the mountains of Yunnan and revolves around the poetry class of the local Yishui Middle School.
The children in this school have been absent from childhood because their parents have gone out to work, and they have learned to be silent and lonely early, and they have also learned to use "poetry" to express the warm emotions in their hearts.
For example, the 12-year-old boy Shi Yingsuo is the smallest and least talkative child in the class, and his best friend is only the old cow in the family.
In the language class, looking at the landscape in front of me and the sky overhead, the whole class wrote the first poem of their lives. Only the applicator lock, nothing can be written.
When he returned home a month later, he saw the fields where he had worked, the stream where the cattle were grazed, and heard the familiar sound of the wind. He wrote the first poem of his life:
When you close your eyes
I saw the green wind
Wait until you open your eyes
It was found that it had dyed the buds of the Ada plant yellow
but
I won't
Tell you the secret of the wind changing color
He didn't read it to his father, because he knew that his father didn't have time, didn't care and didn't care, he only read it to the old cow, only it could understand, he was used to growing up secretly in the places where his parents couldn't see.
He hadn't learned how to talk to people, and the secret hidden in his heart was more than the change of wind.
In the chapter "Staying Together" in the book, the interviewee Lao Wan and Aunt Xiong won the title of "Moving China" 2020 Person of the Year, but the couple did not go to the scene to receive the award, not because they did not want to, nor because they were delayed by the epidemic, but they could not rest assured of their "anti-cancer kitchen" - worried that once they left, the patients and families of the cancer hospital would not be able to cook there.
In the "Anti-Cancer Kitchen", located in a narrow alley next to the cancer hospital, the couple prepared cooking tools for cancer families, where they could prepare their own dishes, cook meals, and bring them to their families in their hospital beds. This simple kitchen greatly reduces the cost of meals for cancer families.
"What's the most beautiful sentence in the world?" It's not that I love you. It's that your tumor is benign. ”
It is this small kitchen that records the heartache and hope of cancer families, and also leaves a heart-warming story.
Here, there are husbands who complain with their mouths, but are gentle as water in their hands and eyes, running for their wives; there are daughters who cook for the first time and understand how hard their mothers work; there are elders who take care of themselves and regard life and death as light.
A dish is a taste of life
What comes out is the sweet and sour of a family
See more impermanence
The more I feel that happiness is peace
The family sat together for a meal
And at the end of the book, there is also the theme that we can't avoid all our lives: "Farewell", on the surface color, this is a sad and helpless chapter.
The interviewee, Chao Wenzhen's wife, almost forgot about him because of his illness, and when he was older, he could not take care of his wife, so he could only send him to a nursing home. But the old nest goes five times a week, pours 11 subway stops, four bus stops, and then walks 800 meters, insists on going to the nursing home to "date" his wife, and his biggest wish is that his wife will not forget him.
On the wall hung a small white board full of notes, and on the body hung a key ring sent by his wife more than 40 years ago.
And he cherishes every extravagant after-dinner walk: holding his wife's hand, snuggling up to each other, staggering, the two backs look warm under the silhouette of the sunset, perhaps, this is the best way to stay in love.
The opposite of life
Maybe not death
It's forgetting
Even if you forget about me
But I still love you
I think that's why the original documentary became so popular and the books touched thousands of readers.
Because we are more and more eager to explore real "experiences", to care for specific individuals, and indeed to see what our lives were like for the first time.
And compared with the documentary, the words in the book "The First Time in Life" are more plain and powerful, and each narrator gives the language itself the "truth": without extra carving, some words are not even smooth enough, but they can close the distance between the heart again and again.
Opening this book, we are not only reading other people's stories, but also worth savoring the beauty of every Chinese trying to "live" in the book. These beauties may be made in pain and with the burden of time, or they may be vigorous and clear, with the power of love.
If this book that "can write a lifetime in one day" can make you cherish real life more after reading it, understand the hopes of individuals, and be happy for yourself and for the small efforts of everyone around you, you may have completed its meaning.
Just like the shallow little words on the book cover: "Please pay more attention to the newcomer", let us also pluck up the courage to embrace the New Year.