I often hear people complain that their lives are not good: they were not born in a good family, they did not meet good leaders, they did not find a good partner - since they have drawn a bad hand, how can they play good results?
Of course, fate exists, but there are always people in life who play high scores with a bad hand and become the envy of everyone.
The protagonist of the book "There Is a Tree in Brooklyn" introduced today is such a person.
The book has been selected as a textbook for American high schools many times, and has been named the "Best Youth Book of the 20th Century" by Amazon Bookstore, and is a best-selling and enduring coming-of-age novel around the world.
In this novel, writer Betty Smith uses her own childhood experience as a framework to tell the story of a little girl who breaks through difficulties and crosses classes.
Now, let's walk into the little girl France and see how she achieved the counterattack of life.
1. Live happily and keep a good attitude in the midst of difficult situations
The little girl, France, was born into a poor immigrant family, her mother was a cleaner, and her father made a living by singing in a song hall. The family rented a steamy, battered apartment, often hungry and full, and could only rely on the leftover meals that Dad occasionally brought back from the cabaret.
Despite the difficult conditions, the young Francie has a calm and optimistic attitude. She likes to run to the library and borrow books in alphabetical order, and she likes to read books on the Taiping Ladder in front of her house. Later, she fell in love with writing, from diaries, essays, to scripts, and she enjoyed writing them tirelessly.
Reading and writing bring her a broader spiritual world, so that she will not indulge in the dilemmas of reality and maintain a state of continuous growth.
The writer Wang Zengqi once said: "People always have to stay in something and indulge in it." Only by gaining something can we confirm our own existence and truly live out our own value. ”
This state of "indulging in it and getting something out of it" is self-enjoyment. Self-enjoyment is a manifestation of a person's mental health, no matter how bad the external environment is, as long as a person is still happy, then he is still a person who has not yet been defeated and has the hope of overturning.
In 1961, Wang Zengqi, who was sent to Zhangjiakou, picked up a paintbrush and drew potato maps for research institutions, working in the remote and desolate Guyuan. In those miserable and rainy days with uncertain futures, Wang Zengqi not only did not feel depressed and depressed, but also painted a lot of paintings, read some books, and ate dozens of varieties of potatoes over and over again.
Many years later, when Wang Zengqi recalled Guyuan in the article, he said that the days in Guyuan were really very relaxed. Every morning, I go to the field to pinch flowers, pick leaves, insert them in glass bottles, and paint them one by one. When the potatoes are ripe, they draw potato chunks, and when they are finished, they are roasted and eaten.
He remembers many interesting details of life. I remember the delicious noodles I ate in Guyuan, the pleasure of running through the fine sand on horseback, and the days after a terrifying thunderstorm, followed by a sunny day.
The unpredictable weather in the north of Saibei is like a life with ups and downs, although we can't fully control the rhythm of fate, we can adjust our mentality and give ourselves a comfortable and calm state of mind.
With a good attitude, there is a base to resist the wind and rain, and there is a possibility of turning the tables against the wind.
2. Live strongly and self-disciplinedly, and accumulate the strength to break through the predicament little by little
France's father was handsome, personable, able to sing and dance, and talk well. He had a strong imagination and was able to describe the days of poverty poetically. He loves his wife and children deeply, cares about the little girl in the neighbor's house who is ignored by his relatives, and has many good friends in the neighborhood.
However, he lacked the ability to earn money to support his family, and could only rely on the protection of the union to make ends meet. In order to escape the pressure of reality, he developed the problem of alcoholism, and his body slowly collapsed. The roof leaked during the overnight rain, and just when he was struggling, the union fired him. At this moment, he completely gave up hope, fell drunk on the street on a cold snowy night, and ended his life.
And France's mother was a strong, self-disciplined woman. In order to make money, she took several cleaning jobs alone, refusing to rest even in the days of pregnancy and labor. She insisted on saving, even if she could only save a few cents at a time.
She had a strong faith in educating her children. She read the Bible and Shakespeare to her children every night, and did her best to save a tuition fee for them to go to college.
In the face of the hardships of life, some people escape, some people endure, and some people silently accumulate the power to turn the tables. When analyzing the problem of poverty, some economists have put forward the concept of "bandwidth", which means that severe survival pressure is easy for poor people to spend all their energy on coping with the present, so that they only care about immediate interests and lose their long-term plans, so that it is difficult to get rid of poverty from the root causes, but they fall into the dead cycle of "the poorer and busier, the busier and poorer".
France's mother, though poor, was not a person without "bandwidth." In addition to her work, she took time to read with her children and hire a piano teacher for her children. She also dumps her endless cup of coffee and occasionally splashes out at restaurants to give her children a taste of what they can waste.
At any time, a person with "bandwidth" is a person who still has spare energy in his heart. This spare power allows them to cope with the matters at hand while also accumulating strength to completely break through the predicament. And the accumulation of strength is inseparable from strong quality and self-discipline habits, it is difficult to imagine a lazy person who is obsessed with fantasies can achieve what long-term goals, laziness can only make people stay in the comfort zone, watching life become more and more uncomfortable.
Only with firm goals, clear paths, perseverance, and hard work can we turn our beautiful vision of the future into reality.
3. Live lovingly and be a compassionate person
When France went to school to get vaccinated, she heard a Harvard doctor bluntly comment that poor people shouldn't have so many children, while the nurse from the slum next to him echoed it. France was so stimulated that she did not expect that her class of origin would be so unbearable in the eyes of doctors, and she did not expect that the nurses who were born into poor families like her would be so demeaning to brooklyn, who had raised her, after getting out of trouble.
Later, With excellent grades, Francie became a newspaper reader and studied university courses in her spare time, and her situation improved little by little. After her mother marries a kind police officer, Francie is about to say goodbye to Brooklyn for a better life.
At this time, France left Brooklyn behind like an old dress, but once again walked through the familiar schools, parks, theaters, and libraries, recalling the bits and pieces of her childhood life with deep feelings.
She walked to the commissary where she used to go to the lottery when she was a child, where a rag doll hung all year round to attract children to the lottery, but no one ever won. This time, Francie bought the doll and asked the boss to give it to the winning child.
Francie wanted to give brooklyn kids a chance to win prizes, to experience the surprises of good luck, and to believe that there was hope for hard work.
In that impoverished, rude, and numb environment, children's hopes and visions for the future are invaluable. Francie wants the children's vision to be echoed in the real world, even if it's just a rag doll.
In life, there are many people like nurses, who try their best to erase the traces of suffering left on their bodies, and hate that they cannot modify their past through time and space, as if the tragic and bleak past is not worthy of the bright and beautiful self of the present.
From a psychological point of view, the refusal to accept one's past is a manifestation of a lack of complete personality. Those who have to cut off the past after the situation improves, even if they seem to be successful, their hearts are still broken and divided. A person who is divided inside, even if he is bright on the outside, is ultimately vulnerable, and in the whitewashing of the outside world, in the endless inner conflict, the past that he wants to forget consumes energy like a black hole.
If you can't accept your complete self, you can't have a strong heart, and you are doomed to become fragile and sensitive, strong in the outside.
France did not become a nurse, she accepted the bittersweet joys and sorrows of life, not only grateful for every experience, but also willing to soothe the pain of others.
She is like a paradise tree that grows in a concrete field, even if the environment is difficult, she must try her best to grow and leafy, bring the vitality of life to others, and leave a comfortable shade.
People who know compassion are happy, they have a complete personality, a strong heart, and a steady state of mind. Even if they endure the wind, frost, rain and snow, they can calmly deal with it, creating a warm and harmonious world in their hearts, bringing hope and warmth to others.
4. Conclusion
Turning the tables against the wind is the dream of many people. To achieve a headwind reversal, it takes luck and more confidence.
What we can do is to maintain a good attitude, make unremitting efforts, constantly enrich ourselves, enhance our strength, and at the same time, maintain a heart that knows compassion, nourish the heart with love, and help others.
The winner is strong, and the self-victor is strong. Compared with the headwind reversal of the overnight rich, overcoming one's own faults, improving cultivation knowledge, cultivating the quality of great love, and growing into a better self step by step is the right way to embark on the peak of life.
May we all enjoy ourselves in difficult situations, stick to our goals in the chaotic life, and care for others in the journey of struggle. Not to indulge yourself, not to go with the flow, to maintain a bright and warm heart in the storms of life, is the real headwind overturning.