I Once Wanted to Change the World; Now I Feel I Should Change Myself

When my father named his two sons, he was quite grandiose: he picked our names from Zhuge Liang's line "one's ambition should be lofty," hoping his two sons would one day hold lofty ambitions and accomplish something magnificent. Honestly, from childhood onward, the name "Zhiyuan" (lofty ambition) has constantly spurred me, making me always feel I was an idealist with grand aspirations, and taking for granted that I was no ordinary person. For this reason I have indeed always put in great effort, striving hard to realize my ideal of rising above others.

When my son was born in 2005, I named him "Siyu" (thinking of the universe), hoping that whenever he became hot-headed in future—whether thinking himself invincible or being plunged into anguish by some blow—he would think of this vast, boundless cosmos, and from that reflection understand that, in this endless expanse of time and space, all our grand ideals in life, all the inextricable grievances and loves between people, and all the petty vexations of life are as insignificant as specks of dust. Just as Du Fu wrote: "You and your kind will perish, names and all, yet the great rivers flow on, unceasing, for ever."

My son's name reflects, to a degree, my reflection on my own attitude toward life; it reflects an idealist's disdain for his past life ideals and for the various troubles those ideals brought; it also reflects a deep-seated rebellion against my father. Of course, I was not the only one rebelling against my father's younger self—his later self did too. In old age, my father began to feel that many of his youthful ideas were absurd, pure encumbrances life ought not to have.

When I was in high school, my respected teacher once sighed in class, saying that for many years China had produced no great scholar who was learned in both antiquity and the present and versed in both Chinese and Western learning. At the time, fancying myself the apple of my teacher's eye, I took that sigh as an encouragement that I should one day become such a great scholar. For the sake of that sigh, after graduating from university I actually plunged into the National Library and read for nearly twenty years, reading extraordinarily widely, all to live up to my teacher's expectation of being "learned in antiquity and the present, versed in Chinese and Western learning." To this day I am essentially still in that state; my life is extremely simple—besides treating and saving people, I read and write, with little leisure or entertainment. For a while I thought a person like me must be a rare sort in the world, rather like that independently minded pig in Wang Xiaobo's stories—rather conceited, in fact.

For a long time I believed I bore a mission to change the world, took it for granted that the world should become better according to my expectations, and thought I was qualified to lead the currents of thought in society. This laughable arrogance sustained the grandiose me as I ran wildly on, excitedly and tiresomely dictating to the world and pontificating on other people's attitudes toward life.

Until one day I suddenly realized that all my ideas and behavior were in fact a kind of bigotry and arrogance born of an excessive sense of self-importance. This bigotry and arrogance not only made me critical but also made those around me feel wretched. Such reflection gave me the chance to re-understand the world, to re-understand myself, and to re-understand others.

There are many people in this world who spend their whole lives immersed in the beautiful dream of changing the world and refuse to wake up. Hitler's dream, abstractly put, was also to change the world; it merely ended up bringing disaster upon humanity. We rarely doubt our own outlook on life, world outlook, and values; we always find it easy to believe that what we think is right. We rarely consider that, as a speck of dust in the mortal world, merely one member of this colorful human world, we are no different from anyone else. When we use our will to force others to live and think according to our ideas, we are in fact crushing them and demanding the impossible—especially when those others do nothing to harm others for their own gain.

In the past, reading Schopenhauer, I remember a classic line of his: "The most painful thing in the world is to have one's will imposed upon by another." Sartre's line that "hell is other people" also resonated deeply with me. In the past, from my own standpoint, I felt I had been made things difficult for by many people in this world and lived a wronged life. Now I often look at myself from others' standpoint, and feel that over the years I have been making things difficult for others too. I also remember another classic quote from Pascal: "We often have to prove we are normal by accusing our neighbor of being mad." Like the other two lines, I have shifted from taking my own standpoint to taking others', and feel that my former glib pontificating on other people's lives was really quite improper.

This transformation has finally turned me from a "sharp-tongued wise man" into someone with a spirit of self-abasement and self-reflection; from someone talkative and full of complaints into someone who loves silence and greets people with a smile; from someone who chattered endlessly about changing the world into a gentle person who strives to change himself.

Now I am like a ferryman standing by a river of suffering. I chose to study and practice medicine; many people, beset by physical and mental ills, come to me hoping I can ferry them a stretch, across to the other bank. Sometimes they get what they wish; sometimes, because my ability is limited, the crossing cannot succeed, and they still struggle in this river of suffering and, disappointed in me, go looking for the next ferryman. Either way, in the end only I am left, still standing on the river, waiting for the next drowning person who needs ferrying.

Such a profession lets me witness life and death departures day after day, tasting all the flavors of life in failure or success, recognizing the smallness of my own strength and the boundlessness of nature's power, and infinitely humbling the proud head I once held high. Time flies, life and death are swift, the world is unpredictable and ever-changing. Before real life, one day we will all kneel down and recognize that, as one of the countless multitudes, we are utterly insignificant. This realization is like a basin of water, dousing the arrogance, bigotry, fault-finding, and impatience we once had, and making us quiet, humble, tolerant, and gentle.