If People Disregard the Laws of Nature, Nature Will Disregard Them in Return

Although my home in Beijing is very close to Zhongguancun, I have not been there for many years. During my time in Beijing, I rarely stray beyond a two-kilometer radius of my home. That bustling, steaming Zhongguancun, China's most important center of science and technology innovation—I once spent time there, chasing modernity and mouthing the foolish words that I would change the world.

Nowadays I deeply question modernization. I would rather live in my birthplace—a village in Huanggang, Hubei. I love the pristine way of life there, and I love a mountain hollow near my village, with an old temple nestled in it.

If I had a kindred soul who could keep me company there long-term in a life of farming and reading, I would happily stay forever. But my son's mother left the mountains and will never go back. Living alone in the mountains long-term is lonely, and it is hard to care for the family. So I chose a compromise: now and then I stay in the city, now and then in the countryside.

Since turning thirty, the glittering life of the city has basically been off-limits to me. Even when I live in the city, I have not visited a busy district like Zhongguancun for nearly a decade. The fast-paced life here, though cheerful, overdraws a person's physical and mental energy. I am a frail person with little capital to overdraw. After five in the evening I rarely leave home.

I also hate it when my life is disturbed for no reason—especially by uninvited guests who show up without being asked and take up my precious time; it disgusts me. Time is life, and no one may consume another's life without consent. I can share all sorts of things with others, but I cannot let my own life be consumed in such a disrespectful way. In modern society it is hard not to be disturbed.

Modern life is also hard to find peace in. Some people linger, unable to tear themselves away, in the world of neon and wine; some lose themselves on the fields of fame and gain; people are led by the nose by all sorts of pursuits, noble or otherwise. Socializing and staying up late have become routine; working overtime, and the insomnia caused by the pressures of work and life, are turning humans into a strange kind of animal—we come from nature, yet we live an utterly unnatural life.

Recently the medical circle has repeatedly seen so-called elite talents die young. A 50-year-old specialist at the Sixth Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University died young of cancer; a 32-year-old doctor at Beijing Tongren Hospital died suddenly; a 31-year-old young elite at Xiangya Hospital died suddenly. Why would a group of medical experts who fight disease and death drop dead suddenly? In the final analysis, they buried their own lives. Staying up late long-term, living day after day in tension and anxiety—sudden death is only to be expected.

While people sing their praises, I inwardly despise how they studied medicine up their backsides. Doctors who do not even know how to protect their own lives—I cannot imagine their skill being very high; it is a chilling joke.

Likewise, sudden deaths among scientific and academic elites are common. Our whole society has caught a mass anxiety disorder; everyone feels heavily pressured and is striving to climb upstream. Starting from childhood, there is no happiness to speak of.

Modern children's study and daily life are intensely stressful; everyone scrambles to get into good schools, and once in a good school they worry about rankings. This anxiety continues until adulthood; once grown, anxiety has become habit, and habit is extremely hard to break.

I have not pressured my son to study the way his father and uncle did, treating top ranks wherever he went as his mission and driving himself hard. As long as he feels relaxed with himself, whether he is a top student or not, whether he comes first on exams or not, really does not matter; nor does whether he goes to a good school.

His father does not need him to win any face for the family. When other people's children excel, I wish them well, but I do not envy them. As long as my child does no harm to others, I can accept whatever he is and gladly share life's joys with him. The one thing I cannot accept is his doing things that disgust others.

The patients I treat come in all kinds. I watch them live against the laws of nature, watch them develop very unhealthy habits, watch them walk down the road to ruin—and the astonishing thing is that we simply cannot stop them.

Some smoke and drink even after getting cancer; some at risk of heart attack keep staying up late, fighting for career and fame. People are like clockwork wound springs, unable to stop swinging.

Many tell me that external pressure forces them to do this. To be honest, this is just an excuse people make for themselves; in truth they cannot escape the habits they have formed—habitual behavior and habitual anxiety are turning this animal that came from nature into a species that completely flouts the laws of nature.

Many people know full well what is damaging their health, yet keep deceiving themselves: tomorrow I will change. But this self-deception is only truly corrected after an irreversible tragedy occurs—by which time it is too late. There are also some obstinate souls who, even with life hanging by a thread, still cannot change their habitual thinking and behavior.

We do not respect the laws of nature, so of course the laws of nature will not respect us. What ruins our own body and mind is our ignorance of, or contempt for, the laws of nature—ignorance probably accounts for a smaller share, since many natural laws have already become common sense; contempt accounts for more.

Every two or three years I move my home. The old ancestors said a cunning rabbit has three burrows; I want to be a cunning rabbit. The Buddha said a person should not lodge three times under the same tree, lest he grow attached and in the end be burdened. Stay in one place too long and the effect of accumulated, hard-to-reverse habit inevitably sets in. One needs the courage to abandon one's old burrow in order to live more lightly.

We modern humans have lost many of life's skills and wisdom—many people live under heavy pressure and burdens. Because we cling too tightly to the tree we always sit under, to our own little burrow.

Especially in a modern society where the division of labor grows ever finer, we emphasize deep cultivation in narrow fields, and as a result many people become mechanical over a lifetime. They lose the flexibility a person should have, and lose the chance to release body-and-mind stress through a diversified life. All of this violates the laws of nature.

Behind the seemingly ever-richer modern life lies, precisely, a breakout by humans who have turned away from the laws of nature, seeking escape within a rigid and dreary modern existence. A truly healthy, diversified life is not the kind most people now live, addicted to all sorts of low-grade entertainment.

Returning to nature and following even the most basic natural laws is already very hard for humankind.