In early autumn, the weather is getting cooler and the leaves are starting to turn yellow. At this time, I felt a touch of desolation but also a touch of peace.
Every morning, I go for a walk in the fields and enjoy the tranquility. However, an unexpected life accident brought an unexpected change to my retirement life.
One day, I was enjoying the beauty of autumn when I received a phone call from the factory where I used to work.
Although I am retired, I know all about these devices and I didn't hesitate to say yes.
When I came to the factory, I saw the leader saying to me with a worried face: "This problem is very serious, and you need to solve it with all your might."
Seeing that I was about to make a move, the leader suddenly raised his hand and closed the office door, and then lowered his voice and said, "Lao Wang, this time the problem is very involved, and you need to go all out."
The title "Lao Wang" shook my heart, and it was what the leaders called me many years ago when I was in this factory.
After leaving this job for half a year, I thought I had been with the dust here. Now, however, my heart is being pulled back to this familiar work scene.
I started working on the equipment and threw myself into it. Over the course of a few days, my hands seemed to reintegrate into the equipment, operating nimblely, as if time had not erased me from my work, and everything was still so smooth.
In such a working environment, tranquility and loneliness are intertwined, and I am once again overwhelmed by this contradictory state of mind.
When I got home, my wife saw my tired appearance and asked with concern, "What's the matter, you don't seem to be in a good mood."
Her words silenced me, and I didn't expect her to touch my feelings. Perhaps, she was right, after retirement, the change in life was too sudden for me.
In this state of mind, I began to return to the factory frequently and continue to work on equipment repairs. Slowly, I found myself feeling as if I had regained my passion for my job.
When I heard her words, I felt a warm current welling up in my heart. Yes, I always thought that after retirement, I could enjoy that peaceful country life.
What I needed was a balance, another pursuit of work and life.
While trying to find a work-life balance, I found that new conflicts had arisen in my family.
He seemed to be becoming more and more rebellious, no longer obeying my words, and even being abusive and vexatious.
Whenever I tried to persuade him to change, he always vehemently contradicted me, even accusing me of only caring about work and not caring about my family.
I'm annoyed by how things are going, and I want to fix it, but I don't know where to start. During this time, I was caught up in tensions between work and family.
As time passed, the son's attitude began to become more cold. Every day when he comes home, he always closes the door and listens to music or voice calls to friends, as if the whole home has become strange and boring to him.
In this predicament, I began to secretly reflect, perhaps because my work attitude and way of doing things gave my son a wrong example.
My son's rebellion hurt me, but it also inspired me to think new about my family. In order to re-establish communication with my son, I decided to take the initiative to communicate with him and listen to his thoughts and complaints.
Slowly, I noticed that my son's attitude had eased and we were able to come to a common understanding on some issues rather than black and white arguments.
However, just as the family relationship was gradually easing, some problems began to arise in my body. A recent medical check-up revealed that my body was showing some warning signs and needed further examination and conditioning.
Faced with physical problems, I had to readjust my work and family life to find a more balanced state.
Before I knew it, I found myself in a contradiction that I had never seen before. Work, family, health, every aspect requires more effort and attention from me.
Perhaps, this is life, full of unpredictable variables and contradictions, which I need to face calmly and find a way out.
I wondered how I could find that balance. In the process, the communication between my wife and I also became more frequent and deeper.
However, at this moment, an unexpected thing happened in our family. My daughter, Xiaoli, needs to move back home temporarily to live with us due to work.
However, when she actually returned home, we discovered new problems.
Xiaoli has lived outside for many years, and her lifestyle is very different from ours. In the days we spent with her, we found more and more generation gaps and contradictions.
Xiaoli is very independent, Xi to the way of living alone, and has her own maverick views on many things.
Such contradictions are becoming more and more prominent in daily life. The way we approach problems and our attitudes towards them are also starting to diverge.
Faced with this situation, my wife and I began to fall silent. We all realize that this is not just a temporary contradiction, but a conflict about the outlook on life and attitudes between three generations.
Perhaps, my wife and I need to listen more and understand Xiaoli's world. We also realized that Xiaoli, as an independent individual, has her own lifestyle and planning, and we can't blindly intervene and guide.
Now, however, both of us feel like we can't get out of this predicament. We had achieved our own balance and accepted the arrangements of life.
How to adjust our living conditions and how to solve this family conflict has become a knot in our hearts.
Soon, a new problem crept in. It was a weekend afternoon, and I was about to go out to buy some groceries when my wife suddenly said to me, "Can you help me with these bills?
A hint of displeasure flashed across my wife's face in the face of my hesitation, and I knew I couldn't say no more. So, I put my plan down, sat down and started working on the bills.
I started to wonder why I was always working hard for my family, why my retirement life was still so busy, and why I spent a lot of energy on household chores.