My Son's Progress This School Year

A few nights ago I came home late from my study. By the time I arrived, my son had already cooked a whole table of tasty dishes—and "tasty" is no exaggeration; every dish was well done, especially the braised pork ribs, which neither his mother nor I had ever cooked to this standard. This is the fruit of long training; the boy has done no little amount of cooking this year.

This is the thing I am happiest about—happier than if he had scored full marks on an exam—because I no longer need to worry that he will starve in this life. That he can take care of himself is my greatest and most fundamental wish for him.

I do not want my son to grow into a useless person who knows only how to study and take exams. I have always encouraged him to work actively and to tinker with the things he enjoys. My entire wish for him comes down to six words: never starve, and be happy.

I feel that over the past school year the child has become much more sensible. After entering junior high his grades slipped for a while, but I never worried about that decline, nor did I coach him on how to climb out of it; he groped his way out step by step on his own. In the second semester of eighth grade his grades began to rise steeply again.

I have kept telling the boy and his mother that a child's growth needs patient waiting—that one day, once he has discovered something he loves, he will throw himself into it and learn something useful. That is exactly how I myself came through. As long as the skill he learns is enough to put bread on the table, there is no harm in taking things calmly.

Speaking of putting bread on the table, it is really not that hard. Lower your standard of living and almost anyone can get by. Bacon said that the two things humankind can never satisfy are the stomach and the bank account; both keep swelling endlessly, and that is the true root of all our misfortune. The person who is content once he has eaten his fill and kept warm is a blessed person.

Lord Russell observed that many wealthy merchants can earn in a few minutes enough to live comfortably off for a lifetime, yet these millionaires are anxious about their business every waking moment, always hoping to make still more. Because of this craving they sink into anxiety from which they cannot extricate themselves; even when they travel and relax with their families, worry still etches their faces.

So what is hard for humans is not getting by, but satisfying their ever-swelling desires. I do not want my son to end up a fool led by the nose by desire. He need not aim too high—whether in scholarship or in wealth, enough is as good as a feast.

I brought him into this world hoping he would perceive the beauty of this many-splendored world and enjoy life's brief but lovely course. Bringing him here without his consent has already done him wrong; to pile a string of boring desires onto his head would be a crime against the child.

I hope to see the boy grow a rich and full inner life. That goal is even harder to achieve than scoring high marks or getting into a good school—there are too many people in this world who, despite attending excellent schools and receiving fine educations, scarcely develop a full inner life. Their whole lives are pulled this way and that by prejudice, arrogance, or desire; they live monotonously, under heavy pressure, utterly dreary—hardly worth emulating.

To have a full inner life one must first have a free spirit. And a free spirit is truly the rarest thing in this world. I am gratified to see that my own son, in this matter, has inherited my tradition. He is gradually able to think independently, has a strong love of freedom, and is willing to endure for freedom; he is coming to disregard the ridicule of onlookers and is ready to fight for his liberty. This is the rarest quality of all.

That I have lived freely into my forties is largely thanks to my own courage in disregarding others' ridicule and my own willpower in defending my freedom. On this point I can say proudly that more than ninety percent of people in this world fall far short of me. It sounds arrogant, but I have earned the right to be bold on this one matter. I hope my son's life, too, will be unbridled in just this way.

My son came to terms with being an ordinary person years earlier than I did. At his age I still believed I would become a great man; only in recent years have I gradually realized how absurd that youthful bravado was—and how absurd, too, the very title of "great man" and the dream of becoming one.

Naturally I hope that my son, soon to enter ninth grade, will grow into someone who "loves freedom and knows how to live," while also working his way into a desirable high school and then a desirable university, and receiving a good education. But if he can only get into an ordinary high school and an ordinary university, or even fail to get into university at all, I think that is perfectly fine. I will not fall into anxiety over his future, let alone manufacture such anxiety to repress him.

In my view, among the enormous number of people in China suffering from depression and anxiety disorders, their parents' conduct while raising them has a great deal that deserves self-criticism. On one hand, over-indulgence and over-protection by parents turn children into "learned helplessness"; on the other, the parents' own anxiety and repressed emotions directly damage the children's mental health.

Accumulate day by day, let a deep store slowly give off its light—a child's growth cannot be accomplished overnight. I hope that next school year my child will rise another step in mind and ability, and in future live more at ease and with a freer temperament.