A Brief Escape

Last Friday I invited my guqin teacher over for a lesson. As he tuned my strings he said, "You've kept these strings stretched too long; they've gone bad and need repairing. From now on, loosen the strings when you're not playing, to protect them."

To me this was a double-edged Zen saying. Not only my strings—I myself had been taut for too long and needed to loosen up and care for my body and mind.

I have not had a large block of rest time in ages. If I do not turn off my phone at night, I cannot sleep at all—there is always someone who does not care whether you need rest, expecting a doctor to be on duty 24 hours, preferably for free.

I get up before four every morning to read; by day I see patients, read, and write. More and more patients keep accelerating my pace. I would not claim to be among the smartest people alive, but I can say for certain I am among the hardest-working; most people spend less than half my time studying and working.

For me, the slow life is a childhood memory from long ago. At day's end I am often utterly exhausted. In the morning I open my phone and find messages some patient or family sent in the dead of night, already pressing: "Why haven't you replied? Could you please respond?" Through the screen I can feel their impatience.

To say my mood is unaffected would be a lie; unpleasant things happen often. Patients and families frequently come to doctors carrying emotion. A doctor's work is a matter of life and death, allowing no carelessness, so I must stay fully alert. Over time I have lost the ability to adapt to an ordinary pace of life.

Bow and relax, tension and release—that is the way of civil and military. Strings need tension and slack; people do too.

This morning, after finishing work, I gave my study a thorough cleaning and watered the plants well. Once done, I will step out of this small room and head to a far place to live for a few days a different life.

Confucius said my Way is threaded through with one principle. In fact anyone's basic tone is fixed and consistent. I am naturally quiet; my "far journey" is just moving from one quiet state to another.

The material things I need do not reach even one percent of what I now obtain. I used to say I ask for little and have enough; the real state now is that I ask for very little and have too much. But I have to raise my threshold a little, because without it my workload would swell beyond control.

It seems my fate. I remember in high school, chatting with my teacher in the corridor, he urged me not to carry a savior complex. Perhaps he already saw that, given my character, I was doomed to a life of toil. Then it was endless study; now it is endless study, work, and writing.

I am a highly self-disciplined person. When I see clickbait saying "the more disciplined you are, the freer," I laugh. Discipline does not make you free; it only brings greater unfreedom—which others do not understand.

Most self-disciplined people eventually become workaholics, because long discipline makes them experts in their field. By Malinowski's view, everyone is a part of society's great machine; would the machine leave a capable expert idle? That would violate the law of putting things to use.

Anyway, a person who cannot rest is foolish. My talent is limited; though I do not expect to become very clever, I do not want to be a fool. So starting this year, I think I will often take brief escapes—a few days out of my world, disappearing from the view of frowning patients and families. Find a quiet place to breathe, take in fresh air, and release the unpleasantness of work. Then return refreshed to continue working and studying.