If before coming into this world, you got a terrible life script, would you be willing to go through it?
If you come to this world and find yourself at the table holding a bad hand, what attitude will you continue?
In her autobiographical novel "When You Fly Like a Bird to Your Mountain", the American writer Tara Westover truly recalled her life counterattack experience of climbing out of the garbage heap, cutting through thorns and thorns along the way, and entering Cambridge University and Harvard University, completely reversing her fate.
She escaped from the mountains, broke through her stubbornness and narrow-mindedness, opened the door to a new world with education, and finally gained a true sense of independence, happiness and freedom.
As soon as the book was published, it was on the New York Times bestseller list.
And from Tara's real life story, it is not difficult to see:
The reason why a person is strong in her heart and lives out happiness and freedom is not because of a good birth, not because of a solid family situation, but because she has the 4 abilities to reshape herself.
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Overcome your inner fears
Tara grew up in the mountains of Idaho, USA, where her father suffered from severe bipolar disorder and her mother had no opinion.
Tara's parents were conservative Mormons who did not believe in modern science and education. This also led to Tara not going to the hospital since she was sick, let alone attending school.
She had been dragged by her father to help with the waste recycling station since she was 7 years old, and once she was knocked to the ground by a huge wreckage and nearly died under her father's forklift.
In that harsh environment, Tara had also witnessed her brothers being cut, burned, and even cut off their fingers.
As a child, Tara had fantasized that the magical junkyard was a playground for demons and wizards, elves and thugs, but now she discovers that it is like a purgatory, full of fear.
In addition, the family is also full of problems such as violence and contempt for women.
His brother Sean is moody, violent, and has a personality disorder, and he often insults Tara as a prostitute, a nigger, etc., and even grabs Tara by the hair and pushes her head down the toilet.
Even when Tara went to college, Sean would always use the excuse of playing with her to intensify his violence against Tara, and Tara dreamed of being killed by Sean more than once.
This painful past, like a carving knife, left deep and shallow scars in Tara's inferior and sensitive heart, and Sean once became her nightmare.
Yu Minhong said: "When you are afraid, all the doors are closed for you. ”
Many times, it is not the dilemma that defeats a person, but the fear, frustration and lack of self-confidence in the heart, which is the low energy that cannot be released by the long-term suppression of the heart.
These low energies shape and distort cognition and become the way one understands the world.
Tara was fully aware of this, and under this invisible pressure, she was not broken, but with a wave of tenacity, she went on the road with fear, danced in shackles, and began to make the gray fate blossom little by little.
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Quietly work hard
The roar of the junkyard, the clamor of the family, the savagery of Sean, the trespass of his father, Tara wanted to escape countless times.
His older brother Taylor, who was admitted to college, became the light in Tara's darkness, and under Taylor's influence, Tara decided to go to college.
She picked up Ben and used the fragments of time to quietly bury her head in self-study, she secretly studied trigonometry, studied physics, and she always believed that outside the door was a regular and rational world.
After experiencing the failure of the first exam, Tara was not discouraged, but continued to bury her head in the study, and through the re-fight, she finally received a letter from Brigham Young University.
When Tara entered college, she faced even greater challenges.
Because she had never been educated in school, she had no vocabulary accumulation, could not write papers, and could not complete even the most basic homework.
She was also mistaken by her teachers for deliberately causing trouble because she often asked very childish questions.
Tara was rejected by her teachers and classmates, and for a time she felt that going to college was a mistake. Although her heart was shaken, she never gave up.
In order to pay the rent, she endured stomach pains and went to do cleaning work at 4 a.m. every morning.
In order to pass the exam, she stayed up late into the night every day, tugging at her hair and meditating on the textbook and taking notes.
She endured the pain of being severed by Sean's toe, and limped but unswervingly walked toward the examination room.
Because I have suffered more, I am not afraid of the tiredness of learning, because I have gone through too many tribulations, so I cherish every learning opportunity.
Through continuous efforts, she was recommended to study for a master's degree at Cambridge University as an outstanding graduate.
Through continuous efforts, she went from being a conservative Mormon to an academic elite of spiritual freedom.
Yang Xiwen said: "Life is a process of accumulation and thin hair, I am willing to continue to learn, see myself improving every day, a little closer to those seemingly distant dreams." ”
And every effort of Tara is carving herself, and every persistence is letting life tie down.
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Only by quietly working hard will there be a thick accumulation of hair after silent precipitation; Only by persevering to pay will it shine in the grinding of the years.
Whether fate is in your own hands, whether you are muddy in the sea of people or live a unique wonderful life, it is entirely up to you.
Learn to be alone
When Tara first entered college, her loneliness stemmed from the fierce conflict between her innate cognition and the real world.
Growing up in a rigid environment, when she first entered college, she thought that girls wearing short skirts with bare knees were debauchery, and it was disrespectful to go to the movies on the Sabbath;
She never washed her hands even after going to the toilet, her ears hurt but she didn't dare to take painkillers, she didn't know what a "massacre" was, she didn't have money to pay tuition but firmly refused government subsidies.
Classmates cast contemptuous glances at her, seeing her as a freak, and she was always alone.
The lonely Tara began to find solace in the book, and through learning to understand modern civilization, she gradually shortened the gap with her classmates, redefined herself, and began to live like a normal person.
Solitude is a gift from Heaven, and loneliness is also the best period of appreciation for a person.
Those anxious emotions gradually turn into calm, and the voices that bother you will slowly calm down, and Tara finds her own rhythm in solitude, which also allows her to have her own rational judgment of many things.
Of course, Tara's loneliness comes from the campus and from her native family.
When the enlightened Tara begins to expose Sean's crimes to her parents, the stubborn parents believe that she is possessed by the devil and hallucinate, and she begins to be isolated by the whole family.
But in these days of isolation, Tara touched an inner reality, and she unswervingly defended the truth, unswervingly pursuing her faith and truth.
She reread the masterpieces of Hume, Rousseau, Smith and Mueller, and conducted down-to-earth academic research in an effort to solve the "unsolved mysteries" of the family.
It took her a year to finally finish the first draft of her thesis, receive a confirmation letter for her PhD admission to Cambridge University, start to establish a new way of life, and finally have an answer to the confusion that has tormented her for many years.
There has never been a one-time success, and behind all the achievements, there are loneliness and hardships that ordinary people cannot experience.
It is the unwillingness to sink after loneliness, a kind of enlightenment refresh after crying, a kind of persistence in the dark night, and the pain of nirvana before breaking the cocoon into a butterfly.
Feng Jicai said: "Mediocre people fill the emptiness with hilarity, and excellent people achieve themselves alone." ”
Life is a lonely walk, to improve in the days when no one cares, to accumulate strength in the time of silence.
You don't have to try to fit in, you don't have to look up to authority, you cultivate quietly and quietly precipitate is the best way to live at the moment.
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Let go of your inner obsessions
Wendell once said: "Once the mind is expanded, the mind never returns to the original narrow field." ”
And Tara, who has been given a new life, also experienced this "can't go back" when she touched her family who was standing still.
Whenever Tara tried every means to suggest that Sean was a violent maniac seeking support from his family, her father yelled at her, "Did you come back from Cambridge to make the family chickens and dogs restless?" ”
His father always protected him, and his mother did not say a word.
Sean thinks Tara stabs him in the back, calls insulting and ranting, and threatens to hire someone to kill her.
Under Sean's threat, in the deformed favoritism of her parents, Tara's sister Audrey chose to break off the sisterhood with her.
The whole family agreed that Tara was far from God, controlled by Satan the Devil, and would destroy the family.
What makes people feel conflicted and laughable is that despite the contradictions with Tara's concept, her parents still plan to let her return to conversion, exorcise demons for her, and hope that Tara will be born again.
Her parents' "love" for her has always existed, just too deformed.
Tara is reluctant to cut off the blood bond with her parents, but the family is the most difficult place to sort out right and wrong, and her parents are still the parents, but she is no longer the same person she once was.
For a long time, Tara's spirit was in a state of severe division, she was cowardly, broken, self-doubting, paralyzing herself by watching TV every day, often crying and laughing hysterically at night, running into the street and shouting.
Through psychotherapy, she realized that new educational concepts and cognitions had long been implanted in her belief system, and it was her inevitable fate to be separated from her original family.
Leaving your parents as an adult is a necessity, and there is a need for a real family relationship, and you are holding your own life script, not your parents' sequel.
After a painful struggle, Tara finally got rid of her guilt and decided to truly say goodbye to her parents, reconcile with her heart, and insist on being herself.
As Tara said in an interview:
"You can love someone but still choose to say goodbye to him. You can miss someone every day but still be thankful they're not in your life. ”
Some people, who are not suitable for meeting each other, can exist in your life in another way; There is a kind of affection, only suitable for nostalgia, you can change a longer distance to send to remember.
You don't have to get too close, and you don't have to condemn yourself.
When the sun is too hot, we choose to turn around and embrace the moon, but that doesn't mean we've forgotten or betrayed the warmth and light the sun once was.
Let go of the burden and you can run to a new life.
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Write at the end
Through self-salvation, Tara broke free from the shackles of her original family and stepped towards an open world of life;
She explores human nature through education, reshapes herself by renewing her cognition, and strives to achieve the transformation and counterattack of life.
Lin Qingxuan said: "People should also be like pearl oysters, cultivate the ability to reshape wounds, transform the wounds of life, and make them beautiful pearls." ”
In one lifetime, the grass and trees are autumn, there are fruitful and abundant scenery, and there are also devastated desolation.
Only by letting go of attachments and rebuilding after destruction will you meet a new self.
Only by learning to be alone and constantly exploring inward will you find your own destination.
Only by overcoming fear, hope in difficulties, and faith in disappointment, can we find happiness and the courage and courage to survive.
For the rest of your life, may you and I be like Tara, turning the bitterness of life that we have tasted, the wind and rain and mud we have walked through, into a long staircase under our feet.
You should fly to your mountain like a bird - don't wait for the wind to come, but chase the wind, the process of chasing, is the meaning of life.
Author: Su Hao'er