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【Personal Growth, New Path】
Author: Bella
1 A more serious condition than depression
In recent years, with people's attention to mental health, there is a word that has exploded on the Internet: hollow heart disease. I believe that without too much explanation, many people can understand this word, and even resonate. As the name suggests, hollow heart disease is an empty heart: there is no goal and ideals, you don't feel motivation and enthusiasm, you don't know what you want to do, and you lose confidence and expectations in life.
Professor Xu Wenkai, who coined the concept of "hollow heart disease", once observed that first-year freshmen at Peking University include undergraduate and graduate students. 30.4% of the students hated learning and thought that learning was meaningless, and 40.4% of the students believed that life itself was meaningless, and the most extreme case was to give up on themselves.
If you pay attention, you will find that this is not just happening in a particular group. For people living in the present, feelings of emptiness and powerlessness often arise: they are busy but always feel that they are not fulfilling, they want to be free from stress, but they don't know what they want to do and what they want to do. The expectations that were once had will be defined as "impossible to achieve" by themselves with the passage of time and the repetition of experiences, and then discarded in the dust of the years. It's not that you don't want to stop, but you really can't stop, because everyone is running forward, and even the people who are running with you can't tell why they're running or where they want to run. In short, living in a strange circle of "exhausting yourself and killing others".
Let's take another closer look at the term "hollow heart disease". Since hollowness is a disease, it shows that our heart should not be empty, it should be filled. What can fill our hearts, or what can satisfy the needs of our hearts? The answer should be joy, peace, value, meaning, purpose, motivation, passion, hope...... These are the things we once had, then lost, cherished, and now questioned.
It is not difficult to understand why when our hearts are empty, we are anxious, restless, fearful, sorrowful, bored, irritable...... Our heart is like a container, if it is not filled with living water, there will be stagnant water pouring in.
We want to avoid these painful experiences through competition, comparison, avoidance, and numbness, but there will always be a moment of surprise that awakens the anxiety and emptiness in our hearts. We want to increase our power through skill, power, prestige, and status, but the dead heart, the empty heart, cannot control these inanimate things.
In fact, it is not what we have acquired that we have power, but that we have the power before we can properly harness and use it. The most typical example is "The Shawshank Redemption". Andy's entry into the prison seems to have been deprived of his freedom and innocence by fate, however, the arrival of Andy, a symbol of freedom and hope, is a redemption for the prisoner and the prison warden. His hope for freedom is not a desperate scream and violent rebellion, but to bring freedom to the present and seek it in the present. When broken life shines with eternal light, the prison is no longer a place of death. You can't find any other reason than inner abundance and strength to sustain a man who has been chiseling a wall with a small hammer for nearly 20 years to finally open the door to freedom for himself.
2 You can't do things you can't think of
So if you say that I don't have that power now, or that I didn't have that hope in the first place, how can I make my heart full?
You have to find someone or something that will give you strength and give you hope. We can understand it this way that a person cannot do things that he himself cannot think of. If your lifestyle is set in stone, and the people around you live like you, then you will naturally think that this is what life looks like, and people all over the world are more or less the same way of living. However, just as you cannot find water in a dry land, you cannot find vitality and vitality in an empty heart. The only way is for you to go out, out of your own world, out of this little circle, to see what other different ways of life are in the world, and what different ways of life will bring.
The development of the Internet and the popularization of books have provided us with great convenience in obtaining information. You see, you pay attention, you look with curiosity, you can see different lives.
When you read "Resurrection", you can feel the awakening of the soul and the redemption of a person by the truth; when you read "The Smiling Man" and listen to Hugo convey justice and fair judgment through the mouth of the protagonist, you can see the power that is higher than human nature; if you read "You Shall Fly Like a Bird to Your Mountain", you can see the people who still live such unfortunate lives in this era, but can get rid of the shackles of fate......
If you listen to the words that enlighten life spoken by wise teachers and scholars, you can find that there is really a distance between those words that can awaken people's souls and chicken soup for the soul; if you go to see those aspiring doctors, judges, scientists, and artists, who devote their lives to a great cause, and the fascination with the great cause completely makes them lose interest in the world's reputation, you will know that the popularity of celebrities and Internet celebrities is not worthy of our obsession.
3 Spiritual power, set sail from here
That's the power of the classics, that's the power of example.
One more thing, why are more and more people advocating reading the classics and non-utilitarian reading? This is because the truth and wisdom contained in the enduring classics are always alive and speaking to us. You look at the time when you're writing about the present, you look at it and you're writing about other people's stories, but you find your life in it.
It seems that these things are useless, they can't change your life right away, and it's impossible to say that after reading a famous book today, you will acquire a certain skill tomorrow, and you will be able to use this skill to monetize the day after tomorrow. But you see, there is much more we can't see in this world, even in this universe, than we can see. Our vision is limited – and this vision includes both our vision and our thoughts, emotions, and will. It is such limitations. It reminds us not to limit ourselves to what we can see and what we have received, that infinite needs can only be met by infinite supply and strength.
When you need to choose, when you encounter setbacks, when you encounter temptations, when you can't see the direction ahead...... It is not the resources you have and the skills that you have that provide you with strength and wisdom, but the spiritual powers, the things that fill your heart.
Of course, this is not to exclude knowledge and ability. On the contrary, when your heart is satisfied, when your heart is nourished and strengthened, you will have the ability to distinguish what is worth learning and what not to learn, only then can you know what I am learning this for, how I am using what I have learned, and only then can I use this wealth to achieve meaningful goals, not to turn myself into a walking "multi-skill storeroom".
At first, you follow the example and read the scriptures, but you don't fully understand why this person is doing this, what value and attraction this thing has, what it means, and what it is useful for my life. However, the shocking power of life can exist beyond reason and cognition, although you can't see or say clearly, but you will definitely feel the core of the light, and you will be warmed by the eternal flame.
The building of life is not an overnight process, but a slow and long-lasting process that will continue throughout our lives. When we are young we need to learn, when we are adults we need to be built, and when we are old there are still the mysteries and joys of life waiting to be explored and discovered. This is the abundance of life, this is the flow of life. Only endless life can attain endless joy and strength, and only infinite, eternal mysteries are worthy of our curiosity and can light up our lives.
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[Since you're here, don't go.] Focus on "The Vow" and let's meet again in the next topic. 】