Author: Spring blossoms
Pictured: From the network
Each of us wants others to understand us, and of course, for some reason, we also feel ignored and ridiculed.
Gradually, he became a hedgehog, learning to wrap himself with sharp thorns, and also using thorns to separate himself from others.
In "The Grace of the Hedgehog", the French writer Myolier Barbary portrayed two such outliers in the eyes of others, Paloma and Renee.
They all had self-doubt and self-imprisonment, but after some redemption and rebirth, they won the turnaround.
Renee is a very ordinary middle-aged woman, she is bloated, poorly dressed, not very good-looking, for 27 years has been working as a concierge in a high-end apartment, the daily work is to open the door, close the door, clean, deliver letters, repetitive and monotonous.
In the upper-class apartment where she worked, her presence was extremely low.
In the eyes of others, she is a vulgar woman who is boring and will only watch soap operas all day to pass the time.
Paloma is a smart girl who grew up in a wealthy family, she is 12 years old, she has seen through the truth of life prematurely, she hates the hypocrisy of her congressman's father and her mother's greed, and she seems out of place with her surroundings at school because of her precociousness.
To this end, mom introduced her to others:
Paloma was a weird kid.
Full of pessimism and world-weariness about the adult world, one day, she suddenly thought of death, and the date was set for her 13th birthday.
In the countdown days, she decided to make a movie that documented the world she saw through her eyes.
The high-end apartments are inhabited by well-dressed, upper-class people, and no one pays attention to the mediocre concierge Renee, nor to the strange child Paloma.
Of course, they also do not care to be paid attention to, they prefer to hide in their respective worlds to talk to themselves, enjoy their spiritual life, resist everything in the outside world with "thorns", and refuse to reconcile with others.
The newly moved Mr. Ozu has a pair of discerning eyes, he discovers the advantages of Paloma, plays chess with her, teaches her Japanese; "happy families are the same, unhappy families have their own misfortunes", and in the first conversation with Renee, he discovers her difference.
It was he who broke the wall of hearts built by the two ladies with "thorns" and unveiled the other side of Renee's real life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" >: See you meet me, people with the same frequency will eventually meet</h1>
The simple concierge had only one room with a door, but the only room was not used for the bedroom, and Renee arranged it as a study.
In the study, she drank black tea, ate dark chocolate, read Tanizaki Junichiro's books...
There, she had a wall full of her favorite philosophy books, art books, lots and lots of dark chocolate, and her beloved cat.
When she finishes her daily routine, when she turns the TV to silent, she takes a piece of dark chocolate from the refrigerator, sits down at the table, breaks a piece of chocolate and puts it in her mouth, while feeling the chocolate slowly melting, while reading the book in her hand.
At that moment, she was no longer the concierge Renee, she was the supreme queen of her own spiritual kingdom, she herself was a world.
She did not ask others to understand, and even, in order to be able to keep the job of concierge, the world outside the study, she disguised herself more like an ordinary janitor:
Bloated, grumpy, sloppy.
When the book in her bag fell out, she panicked.
But Mr. Ozu spied her rich inner world the moment she blurted out the lines of Anna Karenina, and he admired her and encouraged her.
Renee also slowly opened her heart, she trimmed her hair, changed into the clothes and shoes that Mr. Ozu had given her, and they ate together, watched movies together, and talked a lot and a lot together.
In the process of their relationship, the most touching scene is:
Renee wears a dress and a beautiful scarf given by Mr. Ozu, and when Mr. Ozu is dating, she runs into the occupants of the building, who do not recognize her and call her Madame.
Renee said happily, "She didn't recognize me."
Mr. Ozu said: "She never knew you".
It's really a very gentle sentence. As it is written in the book:
"We are all lonely hedgehogs, and only people with the same frequency can see the unknown elegance of each other's hearts."
Mr. Ozu and Renee are both emotionally delicate people, so he understands her, he can see that she is different from others except for an ordinary concierge, and he can see the rich heart under her rude appearance.
Because the frequency is the same, he will understand you, he will understand you, and he will see that others can't see it.
But there is indeed beauty in you, or he knows you better than you do, and he will help you discover that "you are far more worthy of love and respect than you think you are."
See you, meet myself.
Many of us are born ordinary, ordinary looks, do ordinary work, live ordinary lives, but so what?
As long as we are not desolate inside, our lives cannot be desert.
No matter where you are, as long as you have a heart that wants to live a better life, no matter where you are, you can open up your own oasis.
Ordinaryness is never a reason to prevent us from living our ideal life, laziness and self-mediocrity are our excuses for giving up the good.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" > love the people you like, do what you like, is a happy life</h1>
The novel begins with Paloma's "suicide" plan and ends with Renee's unexpected death, but the intervening between "suicide" and "death" is redemption and rebirth.
Renee's rebirth was awakened by Mr. Ozu.
At first, Renee did not dare to accept Mr. Ozu's offer, and in her heart, she did not believe that two people with such different social hierarchies would become friends in the secular sense.
But Mr. Ozu was warm and friendly, and he invited her to dinner, gave her a hardcover book, and gave her enough respect and understanding.
A little bit, Renee's sensitive and fragile heart gradually stretched, slowly put down the disguise, and calmly talked to him about the "Red Bean Snow Mountain", showing her rich soul nourished by various books for 27 years.
Paloma had this to say about her:
"She reminds me of a hedgehog, covered in spikes, like a real fortress. But I think that she, like these lazy little ones on the surface, is actually very delicate at heart, sexually lonely, and unusually elegant. ”
The precocious Paloma was tired of this hypocritical life:
"A person's life is like being in a fish tank, and in this world, adults are like flies on the window, bumping around in the fish tank with their whole lives."
Renee and Mr. Ozu's "love" allows her to see a new world beyond the perspective of the fish tank, and it turns out that people can still live like this:
Love the people you like, do what you like, no matter what kind of eyes the outside world looks at you and how to evaluate you, you just have to be as elegant as a flower.
In a sense, Renee's death also became the beginning of Paloma's rebirth, making her re-examine how naïve her idea of "suicide" was—what mattered was not death; it was what you were preparing to do at the moment of death.
"Renee, what were you going to do at the moment of your death?"
"You're getting ready to love someone."
Everyone is a hedgehog in their daily lives, just the vast majority are not so elegant.
People are always used to living outside with an identity and doing what others think you should do.
On the other hand, they lose themselves in the process of confrontation with the outside world.
The reason why Renee can live gracefully in a humble identity is because she is sure of herself in her heart, and her connection with her inner self is very strong.
There always has to be some meaning in people's lives.
The rebirth of Paloma reminds us of every ordinary person:
Maybe we've all self-doubted and self-denial and self-imprisoned.
But people cannot live as an island, connected with the outside world, need to break the wall of the heart, self-breakthrough.
Therefore, no matter when and where, we must strive to be a soul-rich person, maintain confidence and interest in ourselves, maintain understanding and respect for others, and maintain fraternity and kindness to society.
END
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