With Joy in the Heart, Suffering Is No Cause for Fear

Howling winds and raging rain make birds huddle; clear sunlight and gentle breezes make grass and trees thrive. Thus heaven and earth cannot be without harmonious warmth for a single day, and the human heart cannot be without a joyful spirit for a single day.

— From Caigentan (Vegetable Roots Discourse)

Waking with nothing to do, I carefully searched the cabbages and found five cabbage caterpillars, one by one picked them up with tweezers and dropped them on the windowsill for the birds—forgetting to close the screen.

After breakfast, my wife and I started work. A sparrow that had enjoyed the caterpillars actually flew in through the window. Finding nowhere to perch, it looked around and decided my wife's shoulder was a fine spot, and settled there. She turned, spotted the uninvited guest, and shrieked.

I quickly shut the door and chased the bird around the room with a flyswatter. The panicked sparrow could never have imagined that the person who smiled at it every day and often treated it to caterpillars would now show it the door. Lost, it fluttered about until, cornered by us, it finally escaped through the window.

After escorting the bird out, our family looked at one another and burst out laughing, then went back to our tasks. The little visitor had filled the whole day with joy, equal to a trip to a famous mountain or great river, banishing the misery of confinement and the gloom of the slump to the clouds.

I was born in the late 1970s; my childhood was far harder than today. Then, money was tight for everyone and material civilization undeveloped. I did not have our first television at home until my twenties, and that was a hand-me-down: my aunt bought a new color set and gave us her old black-and-white one.

My father spent his life's energy educating his children; his watchword was always to invest in his children's intelligence. He was frugal and never wasted a cent. In primary and middle school I sometimes pulled a cartload of preserved pine-buds eggs with him to shops in the county town and township on consignment.

On the road my throat burned with thirst, but Father would not buy me a soda; he insisted on waiting until the next village and borrowing a gourd of well water. Well water is far sweeter than soda, he said. I did not think so, but I never begged, because I knew our family was poor and Father was under pressure. Looking back, I was a remarkably reasonable child, undaunted by hardship, sharing the household labor, never craving luxury.

We often had vegetable shortages as children; the countryside then had no grocery stores or markets—those were in the cities. Every year there were a few months when nothing was in season, and every family lived on fermented bean curd and pickled radish. Boarding for middle school, I went home on weekends and brought back glass jars of pickles, plus a sack of rice handed to the school cafeteria, which cooked it collectively. At mealtimes we traded tickets for rice and ate it with our own pickles. The school did sell vegetables, ten to twenty cents a portion, but our pocket money was limited; we bought fresh food only occasionally and mostly ate our own pickles.

I know now that pickles are unhealthy and that nitrites in them are carcinogens, and I rarely eat them. But then we had no choice; nearly all my classmates lived the same way. Yet we lacked no joy. We had all sorts of games—table tennis, badminton, basketball were our favorites. We also climbed the town water tower, then the tallest building, to test our nerve. When a village opera or open-air film came around, we were thrilled for days.

We could never have been as well-off as today's city children, with endless pocket money; even buying books meant scrimping. My older brother loved buying literary classics; he pooled our New Year and Children's Day money and the living expenses he saved while boarding, and sneaked to Xinhua Bookstore to buy extracurricular books. Reading alongside him, by the first year of middle school my Chinese teacher told me straight out that, in reading volume alone, I had outdone him and he was not qualified to teach me.

Our conditions were not the worst; my parents always told us how dreadful the Great Famine they lived through had been. My grandfather told us that in his childhood wars were constant and few village men lived past fifty. Seen against that larger backdrop, life improved with every generation. Young people now say they cannot eat a meal without meat; as a child I ate meat only a few times a year. That upbringing makes me content with simple fare. My spending remains modest and I rarely buy expensive things, which lets me live on solid ground, untroubled by want.

In high school, my math teacher once said: Zhiyuan, your adaptability is a fortune no one can match. I was then in the throes of Werther's young sorrows and did not understand. Now I do. My teacher, rich in life experience, had long read his students' traits and, through them, our whole lives. I think it is precisely this adaptability that lets me stay open and optimistic in both good times and bad. At my lowest, I once begged at Jinan railway station, the road ahead seeming pitch black; now I smile at the memory.

Hardship is unavoidable in every life, and in this age all beings inevitably suffer; some simply suffer more than others. Negative attitudes and extreme emotions spread on social media and affect wide circles, and some grow angry or depressed because of it.

People often pour out their troubles to me; I do not know how to help, only to listen. Some hardships are real, even utterly insurmountable—for the terminally ill, words are empty comfort. What can truly help is within each person; everyone must rely on inner strength to get through.

Some hardships we can overcome, others we cannot. We can only strive to overcome the former while accepting the latter. But life holds joys as well as hardships. Dwelling in the pain, anger, and fear of hardship is pointless; it only makes an already painful life more painful without changing a thing.

Life has bitter elements and joyful elements. Whether life is bitter or joyful depends entirely on where we place our attention. If we focus on the small pleasures everywhere in life, life is joyful; if we focus on pain, life is painful.

I am just one of the plain-living multitude, lacking the depth of great philosophers and scholars. But I think life does not require esoteric doctrines to be joyful; the ordinary events of an ordinary day hold indescribable delight, and perhaps the joy of awakening is no match for these innocent pleasures.