In the past week, the apps, social networking sites, and shopping sites I have used have all started to make year-end summaries.
Looking at one beautifully drawn table after another, row after row of numbers highlighted in red and bold, I felt not the satisfaction of the past year, but another emotion that was exclusive to this time:
Anxiety at the end of the year.
I spent so much money again this year, but I didn't save much;
This year, I didn't complete the goal, but I gave up a lot;
I didn't learn much this year, but I regressed a lot.
The horror of end-of-year anxiety lies in the concrete.
It will be specific to each number and each day to remind you how you are wasting your time.
You will vividly recall the vows you made at the beginning of the year:
"If I run 1 lap a day, memorize words for 30 minutes a day, and save 50 dollars a day, how many people do I have to surpass in the year? ”
And now it's the end of the year, and when I look closely, I find that not only did I not surpass anyone, but I was left behind even more.
I had to hope for next year.
So we ripped off the old cloth of 2023 and turned it into the flag of the new year with a casual wake.
Although this kind of action has long been familiar in the exercise year after year, but at this time, it is inevitable that the heart is still anxious:
Another year has passed, and there is not much room left for me to transcend.
It's a year older, and I have fewer opportunities to improve.
But have you noticed that this is a very strange sentence structure?
Because it has no subject.
Who has been leaving us space and opportunities? Who has been so limited, so demanding, so tight, and does not allow the slightest hesitation?
Maybe it's the social rhythm that keeps walking, or the people around you who are desperately running forward. But there is another possibility, which is ourselves moving forward.
The reason why we say that year-end anxiety is a special emotion is because the new year always reminds us:
It's time to start thinking about next year, the year after, or even decades from now.
Someone started the anxiety test a year in advance:
Someone is anxious about graduation and employment two years early:
There are also people who are anxious about life events ten years in advance, marriage, buying a house, and career:
Anxiety at the end of the year is like the penultimate question on a test paper, you always don't do it right, but you are in a hurry to do the next one.
It is also the end of the year, in this happy atmosphere, you are alone.
Writer Chen Danyan said in "First Person Plural" that in the face of this panic:
She will find a way out of a plant.
People are pushed by time, but plants really have time in their hands.
Each flower has its own flowering period and rules, with the Kawazu cherry blossoms blooming in February, the plum blossoms blooming in March, and the roses blooming in April and May.
They sprout in the spring, grow in the summer, harvest in the fall, and gather strength in the winter. When time comes, it blooms, and when time passes, it withers.
Plants do not have a "next stop", and they are never coerced by the outside world:
"Even if the world's airports stop, it will still bloom when it should be. ”
This is reminiscent of a sentence that once circulated on the Internet:
"The flower shop is not open, but the flowers are still blooming. ”
The answer of time is once again revealed, this time in a natural way. There is another reason why she advises us to keep ourselves as plants:
This makes it easier to "put down roots" in life.
A tree, a grass, a flower, are all blooming at their own rhythm and in their own way, but at the same time, in the invisible underground, they are also taking root at their own pace.
I saw a post where someone was uneasy asking how to deal with the upcoming 30.
The root cause of this uneasiness is our desperate desire to put down roots in our lives.
There is a guarantee of life, a prototype of ideals, and a standard answer to a perfect life.
But time is not like that.
Time takes root at a uniform pace, not in a hurry, but never lazy. When it rains, just absorb water, and when it dries, learn to hold yourself tight and reduce consumption.
Time is the post below, those varied answers:
Some people say that they will turn 42 next month, and they have learned a secret about adults: no one can figure out the things about life.
Someone is 39 years old, but she looks back on her thirties, and it is completely different from the social rules: divorced and started dating again, has two children, quit her job and started writing books, but it is also wonderful and happy enough.
Time is for everyone to have their own flowering period, to take root like a plant, and to bloom like a plant.
Time is the answer to flowers, and flowers are your answers.
Our bodies are also providing answers to how to get along with time.
The body is the most honest friend of time, and our body will respond truthfully and obediently to how time passes.
It's a rustic but effective biological clock.
One of the most important principles of Haruki Murakami's writing is to follow the body's biological clock to write.
Wake up at 4 a.m. and go to bed at 9 p.m. Run when it's time to run, relax when you're tired, drink, listen to music, and tease your cat.
There is also a Xi that has always adhered to: "I don't go to the clockwork on Sunday." ”
He said: I will never disrupt my rhythm.
jokingly said that if he had worked harder, maybe he would not have been accompanied by the Nobel Prize every time.
But if you have a choice, even if it is really at the cost of running along, this relaxed and rhythmic life is still worth becoming the answer that we are looking for.
In fact, Haruki Murakami himself has had a stage of writing without sleep or food.
But in the end, he discovered that the body has its own time, and the healthier it is, the better things are when it follows itself.
Reader @西西 recently shared with me a very interesting Xi of life.
Her daily routine is divided by the four seasons.
There are 20 minutes of spring, usually in the morning, sitting on the balcony for breakfast, basking in the sun, and occasionally practicing 20 minutes of yoga.
There are 60 minutes of summer, sometimes chatting and eating with friends at noon, sometimes climbing up to the company rooftop in the evening to watch the sunset.
The afternoon is usually autumn, and the work that should be done is to be completed and delivered at this stage, which is especially rewarding.
Before going to bed at night, it is winter, soak her feet, get into the quilt to watch movies and write diaries, cover the quilt, turn off her mobile phone, and the outside world has nothing to do with her.
She said that in the early days of work, she was meeting deadlines every day, and she often felt that she didn't have enough time.
But with a clear division, the time becomes longer, and more importantly, with its own rhythm, life and work are no longer chaotic.
will be more focused when working,
In order to get to the next season as soon as possible,
Go and enjoy life.
Many times, the way we face time should not be to run all the time, to respect it, to go with it, but to let it flow rhythmically in us.
I would also like to share with you a story about time, from director Liu Juan.
She is a person who really "takes the time" to do things.
You must have heard of her "Nu River", a film directed and produced by Jia Zhangke, which took 7 years to perfect the script alone.
In 7 years, she went from being a creator to a teacher and a mother.
"Nu River" also accumulated its own expression, emotion, and time-space structure from the very beginning, and became a complete movie.
She said that movies are the same as people,
has its own cycle of growth and maturation,
A good movie must have passed through time.
Liu Juan mentioned a word that I was very impressed, called "raising with the times"-
Go with the clock and treat yourself well.
Pay attention to your physical changes, but also your emotional growth.
For her, practicing Tai Chi is a process of self-attention, and in half an hour of standing on the pile, she can clear her mind and give herself completely to time.
Slowly, the anxiety will become calm, the chaos will become focused, and you will have a better idea of how to treat yourself.
Finally, back to the original question: how do we deal with the pervasive anxieties of life?
Scholar Wu Bofan has an answer that I like very much: find the rhythm of life.
"Life is like a dance, and only by adjusting the background music to a rhythmic and rhythmic state can you really touch and feel its texture. ”
The four seasons of the year come and go, and the human body and soul are also experiencing spring, summer, autumn and winter, each season has a different rhythm, sometimes prosperous, sometimes withering, sometimes sowing, sometimes harvesting.
Therefore, it is more important to carefully recognize the instructions that time gives you, rather than chasing time in a daze.
Life is never in a hurry, it is fluid, there is a sound, there is a slowness and a hurry.
And those who listen carefully and treat it will surely find the answer from this flow.
Scholar Wu Bofan taught us another way to see life clearly and face panic, which is to look at trees. The roots that are firmly rooted in the soil will tell you some answers.
Not long ago, he went to visit the thousand-year-old ginkgo tree in front of the Capital Hotel to find the texture of time. Director Liu Juan filmed this scene into the short film "The Life of Time". They have a similar answer to time: grow with the season, grow in spring, grow in summer, harvest in autumn, and store in winter.
Only those who know how to raise with the times will be able to touch the texture and context of life more deeply, so as to stabilize the roots of life. It tells us that only when we eat modestly, do our daily life, exercise moderately, have a balanced mood, conform to the rhythm of the heart, and fix the fundamentals, we will have abundant vitality.
So, no matter what season of life you are in, go with it and go into the depths of time, and you will definitely have the answer.