Is there something that you regret until you die?
Is there something that you regret half a life's decision?
With the hot screening of Zhu Yilong's film "Life Events", another similar theme film Ning, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film many years ago, "Entering the Mortician", re-emerged in front of people's eyes.
It talks about the taboos that our Eastern culture does not dare to say much, and it seems to be saying "death", but in fact it has been telling about life, about regret.
The protagonist, Kobayashi, is a cellist who became a mortician by chance.
During the midlife crisis, he became increasingly unable to face his life regrets: never being able to redo his cello again, and never being able to forgive his father, who had abandoned him.
About regret, about regret, this movie teaches us a good way to deal with it.
Can't put down the cello,
Regret that cannot be lost
Kobayashi is a cellist in the orchestra, and from the age of four or five, he was forced by his parents to learn the piano and cried every day. In this way, the cello ran through his life.
Although his skills were not exquisite, in order to play a better melody, he took out a loan to buy a high-end violin.
However, by chance, the orchestra disbanded, and with Kobayashi's level and age, it was almost impossible to find an orchestra willing to take him in.
At this point, he had only two choices: either to do some odd jobs in the performance, or to abandon the violin and find another way.
Under consideration, he chose the latter and returned to his hometown in the countryside to start over.
A newspaper job post in charge of "assisting with travel" attracted his attention because of the lack of money and the proximity to home.
At first, he applied for a job just to make a living and support his family. But soon, he discovered the "secret" of the job.
The so-called "assistance in travel" refers to sending off the deceased, that is, "morticians".
The first time, he met an old widow who had been dead for two weeks, and the stench in the house made him sick, and the maggots crawling on the corpse made him vomit.
He hated the president who had brought him into the industry, and ran into the bathhouse to rub his body over and over again.
In the dead of night, he felt that fate was punishing him for his willfulness, for not being with his mother when she was dying.
All emotions dissolved into an impulse, and he took out his worn-out cello again, just wanting to play a song.
The cello carries his sealed past, and the sound of the cello contains the ideal self he gave up on choosing.
The moment he restarted the strings, he began to think long about the past and regretted giving up the cello. The long tune is full of his helplessness and regret.
Regret is a kind of mental attrition, from the perspective of the present, people are eager to change the past, but they can't really change the past, they can only immerse themselves in sadness, fantasizing over and over again: "If you make another choice at that time, it will definitely be better."
The emotion of regret will trap people in the obstacle of memory, and if they can't get over the obstacle in their hearts, they can't look forward in a dashing way.
In the face of pain,
"Regret" became the best analgesic
Behind every choice, there are hidden benefits, but also unintended consequences.
The reason why people regret it is because the consequences are magnified and people cannot afford it.
Kobayashi chose to be a mortician, and the advantage is that money is more troublesome and less close to home, which can always make him feel the greatness and smallness of life.
Once, when witnessing the president make up the deceased, Kobayashi felt that his profession could give the deceased a final lease of life, and he began to try to accept the job and enjoy the "benefits" of getting a sense of life value from the job.
The consequences of choosing this profession are: being disliked by those around you and being pointed out.
Soon, word spread throughout the town: the cellist who had once been in Tokyo had become a mortician who was now in the business of the dead.
Even his always sympathetic wife refused his touch and forced him to resign when he returned to his mother's house.
Facing the pain of life again, Kobayashi began to regret choosing this industry again.
The moments when people regret the most are often when real life is frustrated. If the original choice can make the present smooth sailing, we may never regret the past.
People seem to be accustomed to standing in the current perspective, to measure whether the original choice is correct or not.
When the present life is painful and powerless to change, it will subconsciously shift the responsibility to the past, thinking that the past choices are wrong.
In the face of real suffering, the most common reaction of people is to retreat. Let yourself go back to the past, back to the fork in the road of life, examine yourself at that time, why not make another choice.
It seems that as long as you regret it, you can escape reality for a short time and reduce pain.
But we forget that the past is the present. The present is the future of the past.
"Unfinished" regret,
They are all teachers of life
There is a "Zeignick effect" in psychology, which says that our brains tend to have a beginning and an end, so for unfinished things, they will continue to ruminate and reminisce.
In the process of witnessing the funeral again and again, witnessing one life story after another, Kobayashi gradually understood the meaning of life, from often regretting to falling in love with the job, no longer caring what others think.
After watching too many regrets of being separated by life and death, Kobayashi gradually completed the reconciliation with his regrets.
For years, Kobayashi's mind had been regurgitating two things: one was the cello he had left behind, and the other was his hatred for his father.
At the age of 6, his father abandoned him and his mother because of an affair, and he resented his father for many years.
His father had made an agreement with him that every year he would pick up a stone by the river in his hometown and give it to him. In Kobayashi's heart, the stone has long become a symbol of fatherly love, silent and heavy.
The sudden departure of the father made this agreement annull. Kobayashi kept the stone that his father gave him when he was 6 years old, and every time he took it out, he would hate his father once.
How to reconcile the regret of not being loved by my father?
In this special job as a mortician, he found the answer.
Kobayashi was wiping the body of a deceased "girl" when he suddenly touched the "thing" on the lower half of his body, and he realized that he was a transgender person.
After a brief argument between the family, the mother accepted the child's psychological gender and insisted that her son be buried in the girl's makeup.
Before the funeral, my father fell to his knees and cried bitterly: even if he is a girl, he is my favorite child!
Seeing the way they cried bitterly, Kobayashi thought about it: the people living in the event are tortured and entangled with each other, and no one can bow their heads and be soft.
Only after letting go can you realize your former stubbornness.
After that, Kobayashi began to try to touch his regrets.
He no longer often turned over his father's relics, no longer often recalled those past events, and let go of his hatred for his father.
He took out his cello again, not for the purpose of performance, but only to express his mood and enjoy the sound.
After drawing a complete circle of regret, life can move on.
Face the loss and complete the delivery in your heart
Most of us will regard regrets as an object, as a shield for our escape from reality and inner conflict.
And the best way to jump out of the whirlpool of regret is to accept reality, let go of obsession, and let the unfinished events end in the heart.
Of course, acceptance is not a matter of moments, but a process.
"On Death and Dying" mentions that in the face of loss, our psychology has to go through five stages:
Denial – pretending it didn't happen;
Anger – why does this happen to me?
Bargaining – what if it didn't happen?
Depression – depression, getting by;
Acceptance – Let go of the past and meet the future.
From the initial anger to the final acceptance, whether it is the loss of a person, the loss of a relationship, or the loss of an opportunity, we have to go through a process of acceptance within us.
Just like Kobayashi, it took 30 years to accept the loss of father's love.
Until his father died desolate and lonely in a foreign land, Kobayashi personally dressed him, shaved his beard, and completed his burial.
Among his father's relics, Kobayashi finds evidence that his father has always loved him—a stone that carries the good memories of father and son.
Kobayashi finally completed the delivery of his father's love in his heart and confirmed that he was loved.
Kobayashi had the opportunity to complete such a delivery himself, but many people did not.
But we can use other ways to complete the flawed circle in our hearts.
You can write a letter to the lost person and the lost emotion that will never be sent, and express your emotions and apologies freely and unabashedly.
For example, in the face of a missed lover, you can unrestrainedly recall the beauty of the past, express your apologies for the hurt, and then tell him in your heart: You go, I should also move forward.
In the face of your own regrets, such as feeling that a quarrel did not play well, you can go back to the past moment and tell yourself at that time: You were not strong enough at that time, it was not your fault that you did not do a good job, and you should not let yourself be wronged in the future.
We've probably all had this experience:
The melody of a song suddenly appeared in the brain, and it could not be dissipated for a long time.
In fact, the best way is to sing the song in its entirety, and the brain will magically stop the melody.
Those things that have not been completed, those regrets and regrets, are also a melody of composing life, let us walk through it in our brains in its entirety, and say goodbye to it!
Planning | Autumn and autumn
Edit | Six notes
Family relations are not harmonious, and it is really difficult for people to be happy
If you don't heal the stuck spots and problems
They will repeat the same pattern of pain and cannot extricate themselves
I want to live myself and live a new life
Welcome to collect 0 yuan,
Experience the 3-day "Prelude to Love" | Family arrangement class
Receive free teacher Zhang Defen
"Meet the Unknown Self" audiobook
↓↓↓