Yan Zhen's "The Water of the Waves" is a novel that is rare for me to read in one sitting, and people call it a modern "official appearance", and it is also a book of irreconcilable contradictions between ideals and reality, which clearly shows the helplessness and compromise of an intellectual in the real world.
"The Water of the Waves" is the most recommended book after Doudou's novel. Because after reading it, there is really a feeling of shock to the heart, and at the same time there is a "deep sense of powerlessness" that everyone will experience in reality.
The protagonist of the book, Chi Dawei, was assigned to the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine after graduating from graduate school, but he was ostracized because he was not sophisticated, high-minded, and could not observe the color, and after a few years, he was still "miscellaneous" in the office, watching that Ding Xiaohuai, a college student who was not as good as him, was on the throne, and he was still in a dispensable post wasting his life, what he learned was useless, and a piece of gold was buried in a coal pile, unable to emit the golden light.
Before marriage, a person can get by and live, regard himself as high, and do not ask for others, but after marriage, he cannot enjoy the joy alone with a wife and children.
The wife must live in a good house and get well dressed, the son must go to good school and receive a good education, people must be sick, they must live their faces, and they must fight for their tough breath. Keep the previous mentality, do not think of making progress, can not put down the face, take what to compete with others, provide good conditions for the family.
Chi Dawei has always lived in his ideal world by keeping his self-considered "good man" truth:
What kind of person is a person, other people's eyes are shining, with this bit of snow, this understanding, being a good person will not suffer losses, there is justice in the world.
Then I am also a person, I also have things that are not smooth, and I do not go along with my own heart to go to the eyes of others, so what have I become?
However, external pressure makes him forced to change, inner self-esteem makes him unable to yield, this contradiction between ideals and reality torments him, tears his self-esteem, and at the same time doubts his previous cognition and education countless times in his heart, which is right, which side should life be biased towards?
Today I know that the truth in the world can be kneaded into the shape that people are willing to pinch like soft mud, and it depends on who will pinch it. But people are pinched according to their own interests, where is justice?
However, people can not live in the ideal all their lives, the ideal must be subordinated to reality, man is a social animal, ungrounded people unless they are far away from the world to be a pure monk and Taoist, or keep the poor and live a life, but if a mortal marries and has children, he will not be able to help himself.
In the face of countless realities, Chi Dawei had to bow his noble head, to beg Director Ding, whom he had once looked down upon, to do things against his heart, to learn to stand in line in the official arena and pat himself on the back, and even to ask others to do things in a low voice, these were the things he had once despised and despised the most
People's changes always depend on what their hearts want, you seek wealth, you will let yourself become inflamed and attached to the situation, only for profit; you seek fame, you will let yourself straighten out your style and become a model; if you want to gain fame and fortune, you can only wander in the "gray area", and there is a restless heart under the style of a righteous gentleman.
Chi Dawei, under the guidance of the "nobleman" and the current situation and persecution of the family, finally made a compromise with reality. The experience of people who have come over always has to listen, the detours in life have gone too far, some people are confused and confused all their lives, they can't find a good exit in their lives, and they can only fall into the abyss; some people meet nobles, and when people click, like pressing the sober button, they suddenly realize that life is smooth and go to the peak; and some people, no matter how you beat, can't wake it up and pull it up, only live in a dream, half dream and half awake, and live a confused life. I am afraid that I will hurt others and harm myself.
Think it through, think through the head or want to understand, my life's experience is not to be blind, to see things clearly, can not be long, the information that should be heard to hear, but to be dumb, see and hear the heart of the number on the line, but do not open your mouth to say anything. In short, you shouldn't say it, you said it's your fault!
Chi Dawei from the determination to change, to the moment when he bowed his head and put it into practice, his life began to go uphill, he found that after the original change, he was not as bad as he imagined, as long as he still adhered to the bottom line of his own life, although he felt that he had lost something in his heart, but compared with what he got, fame, status, attitude, etc., were always worth it, he regretted that he had wasted nearly ten years of time, realized too late, but finally learned the essence, in his own, previously unseen "gray area" with ease.
There is no best choice in life, and any choice comes at a cost. The whole question is what price you are willing to pay.
There are a lot of character psychological descriptions in the book, which is the entanglement of a person's contradictory thoughts, the process of conflict and battle between ideal and reality, and in the end, which side wins, then a person will always change in action. These complex characters' inner worlds, but also the most wonderful part of the book, representing many of you, me, him, everyone has been entangled, and everyone has compromised, the ideal is very full, but the reality is full of powerlessness.
In the final analysis, there is no home in material life, but it is better to find things on this side well anyway, and if there is no direction, you always have to find a direction for yourself, otherwise your life will be gray. First of all, to live, and then how to live.
Chi Dawei finally sat in the position of the top hand with his "cultivation", got the best house, got the envious eyes of everyone, stepped on the feet of the people who had previously looked down on him, his wife went from hating him to being proud of him, and then got the best job, the children were also treated preferentially, everything in life changed, and the reality was more dignified.
It turned out that the dignity and purity in his heart that he thought was worthless in reality, trampled on, ridiculed, and looked down upon, and the dignity he got in reality was enough to allow him and his family to live a better life and live a real quality. He understood: only by giving up small freedoms can we get great freedom.
In the past, Chi Dawei had lived in the vacuum world set by himself for too long, and had forgotten that he was still a social creature, and that he still had the responsibility of raising a family, and the needs and obligations of putting what he had learned in his life to work, which was also the responsibility of an intellectual, husband, and father.
Being a good person is my principle of being a human being, but the meaning is already slim. Why be a good person, I can't find a solid reason to answer myself. I used a little brain, used a little bit of capable means, and solved the problem. In fact, perhaps, many things are not as difficult as they think, the problem is that their faces should be put down, put their hands out, do it, and have enough psychological endurance. But if I hadn't been forced to the brink of extinction, how could I have made that gesture?
The enlightened life will eventually usher in a new world that belongs to him. The blind spot of human nature is that everything starts from the perspective of the self, everything thinks in a subjective way, thinking about yourself and others in this way. All attitudes are related to emotions and interests, which can be completely objective.
The ability to force a person to make a change is still subjective, like Chi Dawei, if it is not an accident that stimulates his state of existence, how difficult it is to make a person completely change.
Just as Ding Yuanying in "The Heavenly Dao" once said: There is no truth in sentient beings, only likes and dislikes.
Therefore, as long as they are people, they all decide and judge a thing through their own joys and sorrows. If people want to look at problems objectively, it is difficult to be truly objective unless they stay out of the matter and do not care about themselves.
Thinking from God's point of view, either this person is a saint, or he is trying his best to separate himself from the "authorities" and analyze the problem without the will of the self, but in this way, how cold-blooded it seems to everyone.
There are two kinds of logic in life: the logic of conscience and the logic of survival. The responsibility of conscience is to expand their own living space.
Of course, the book has also been adapted into a TV series called "Years", directed by Liu Jiang and starring Mei Ting and Hu Jun. It's just that TV dramas will always be adapted, and I can't read the psychological activities of the protagonist from the author's language, so I always choose to read books and rarely watch adapted TV series.
"The Water of the Waves" is Yan Zhen's second novel, which tells more about human nature than many of the rules of survival in the official arena: how should people live, so as to live out value and success?
As the book says, and it's one of my favorite quotes:
Man's greatest enemy is himself, and heaven and earth are not limited to man, and man is limited to heaven and earth!
The biggest constraint of people is their own heart, how to break through themselves, is the ultimate that people have to think about.