For the Next Five Years I Will Close My Door to Visitors and Focus on Full-Time Study

Recently I have finally readjusted myself to my earlier state, and my child at university is gradually entering their own life path. I have lived through all the storms this life has to offer. The deepest pains—birth, aging, illness, death, and parting from loved ones—have tormented me half to death. Now that all of that is past, looking back at the road behind, my heart is no longer stirred.

Years ago I wanted to set aside various chores, settle my mind, and study full-time for a few years to improve myself. But the opportunity has only now truly arrived: my workload has been controlled, there are no further worries at home, and my mind has gradually settled; I can again devote most of my time to study, and I am returning to the focused state I had in high school.

It is hard for a middle-aged person to suddenly pause a career to receive a higher education aimed at self-improvement. Only when timing, terrain, and human harmony all align can we pull ourselves out of the mire of life and follow our heart's desire. It is gratifying that, at my age, I have secured this opportunity for myself.

I want to devote the five years from age 45 to 50 mainly to self-improvement: systematically study biology, TCM, Western medicine, and psychiatry, update my knowledge system, and complete a degree in medicine. So over these five years I will control my workload, enter full-time study, and ensure that study comes first.

I have persisted in studying medicine and writing in the medical field for over ten years, written millions of words of medical articles, followed an apprenticeship path, and accumulated extensive clinical experience. My life has been inextricably bound to medicine; I cannot leave this field. Since I have decided to devote myself to it as a lifelong career, I will better myself, receive more formal medical education, master more systematic medical knowledge, and in future conduct medical research more comprehensively, better relieving patients' suffering.

I am a more persistent person than most; from childhood to adulthood, my greatest strength is that I can always persevere, unafraid of dullness or difficulty. This is no boast: I have persisted in daily writing for half my life. Repeating a monotonous life day after day is intolerable to most people, but for me such a lifestyle fits my nature perfectly. So persistence is, for me, just a matter of following my nature.

I believe I can sustain this five-year full-time study path. I will try to continue updating articles daily, sharing my study notes and daily life, and long-term patients under my care will continue to be followed. But new workload will be strictly controlled; I need more time to study. Even if I can only work until 70, from 50 to 70 I still have 20 years to work. A craftsman who wants to do good work must first sharpen his tools; devoting five years of full-time study to the next 20 years of work is well worth it.

These years of practice have also given me the idea of writing two monographs: one on TCM anti-cancer treatment, and one on TCM treatment of nervous system diseases. I have accumulated some experience in both fields and formed my own set of ideas, which is distinctive and has been validated in practice. These also require time to complete, so I really need to manage my time more efficiently.

A middle-aged person of my age, once settled, can set aside distractions and focus on his career. We have experienced and seen both the glories and the miseries of the world; we have taken all the falls we were meant to take. We have laughed, cried, been excited, hopeful, disappointed, desperate, resigned, and even fallen. After countless ups and downs, disillusionments and rebirths, I have calmed down, developed resistance to all temptations, and all that remains is a heart that still stays alive amid the plainness. I hold no unrealistic expectations for the future, nor am I pessimistic.

It was not until age 45 that I truly realized I may indeed be somewhat different from most people. One morning I drove my wife to work and walked with her. On the way, she said to me: "You are different from everyone around us. From junior high to now, the person I've known has always stood apart. Your personality, ideas, interests, and life choices never follow the usual rules."

I used to think of myself as normal, but now I am gradually accepting the fact that I am a bit different from normal people. Someone once suspected I had Asperger syndrome—another name for which is high-functioning autism. I reviewed many memories of my life and do not think I am a typical Asperger patient, but there is indeed some resemblance; perhaps I have Asperger traits. I was lively and sociable as a child, but from late adolescence on I gradually lost interest in socializing and became more and more focused on academic research.

No jealousy, no hatred, dislike of socializing, focus on one's own work, and the ability to persevere—these are some traits of high-functioning Asperger syndrome; Einstein was a typical Asperger patient. For most of my life I have felt no jealousy or hatred. I used to think reading had changed me, but when I reviewed my childhood I found that even before I could read I had no jealousy or hatred. Back in childhood, when those who had bullied me fell into trouble, I felt not schadenfreude but genuine compassion and sympathy. So this trait is innate and has nothing to do with upbringing.

If a person is by nature not jealous or envious of others, the internal friction that consumes normal people through comparison and concern over others' opinions simply does not occur. If by nature he also does not nurse grudges, then basically he will never experience resentment or long-term grievance. So most of the time I calm down easily and read and study single-mindedly. In high school, my powers of concentration and efficiency already set me apart in my classmates' eyes and gave me a great academic advantage.

But unlike Asperger patients' difficulty maintaining intimate relationships, my ability to care for others and express love is strong; people around me experience me as warm and flexible. Few of my parents, partner, child, relatives, teachers, classmates, or close friends feel I am poor at expressing emotion; they usually find me humorous, kind, and dutiful. My whole life I have avoided excessive socializing and interpersonal conflict, so I always go out of my way to avoid trouble and avoid hurting others, and I always have compassion for the vulnerable. This also fated me, unseen, to choose relieving others' suffering as my life's work.

Whether or not I am a high-functioning autistic, I have to admit that I am very uninitiated and inactive socially, and lack the social skills normal people have; there are indeed social deficits, but I have no intention of changing them. This introverted trait can save me a great deal of precious time over a lifetime, allowing me to devote myself more single-mindedly to the research I love. If a "defect" does not affect one's quality of life but instead lets one focus more on one's life and career and increases one's happiness, then it is actually a good thing.

I hope that in the next five years I will not be disturbed too much. There are always readers who want to get to know me, and I have politely declined them all. I also dislike being the focus of a crowd. Originally I wrote purely to give the people I served some unified popular science and save my own time, so I wouldn't have to reply to each individually; but gradually more and more people began to follow me. Among those who follow me, there are always some who, having eaten the egg, keep wanting to see the hen that laid it. As that hen, I am naturally unsociable; every day there are many papers to read, many exercises to do, many things to do, and I cannot be in two places at once, so I must close my door to visitors.

Thank you all for following me. May it be better to remember than to meet; let us forget each other in the wide world!