No Lofty Ambitions, a Natural Fondness for Farming

During the Dragon Boat Festival, the rain-lilies I had planted were in full bloom. Waking early and pushing open the window, I saw the flowers blooming on my balcony and felt great joy in my heart.

I did not know whether to describe them as elegant and understated or as gorgeous and charming; perhaps they were both. I was too lazy, like the Tang poet Ji Dao, to laboriously “push and knock” out the single most fitting adjective.

Ordinary people’s lives are just this simple: a little beauty is enough to lift the mood for a long time. Equally uplifting was receiving small gifts from some long-term patients during the festival. The mother of a child patient sent me some zongzi she had wrapped herself; another patient sent me a bit of a hometown specialty, bayberries. Their conditions have been well controlled by me; we have known each other for years, and I have also looked after them financially.

I rarely accept gifts, especially from patients I have just met—those I refuse outright. But small, inexpensive gifts from long-time patients like these I accept once in a while. Generally, what I accept are small tokens from patients over the years whom I have helped financially. This is reciprocity; accepting their gifts does not leave me with a guilty conscience. Sometimes one must give others the chance to be grateful to oneself; otherwise, later on, they will feel awkward asking for our help again—after all, no one likes to owe others too much.

During festivals, having such long-term patients remember me makes me feel that my work still has value—at least a few patients’ lives have been saved by me, and the happiness of their families has thereby been secured. They, like me, are ordinary people; for ordinary folk like us, having the family together, not separated by life and death, is the greatest happiness.

After dealing so often with the dying, I find it easier than before to feel content with my own life. Every day when I open my eyes and discover that I am still alive, and do not have to worry about that day’s food, a sense of happiness flows from deep within. Occasionally, when the flowers I planted bloom or the vegetables I grew can be picked and brought home to eat, my mood grows even brighter.

I have passed the age of boiling hot-blooded ambition, and no longer always dream of accomplishing earth-shaking great deeds—with my modest abilities, I could not achieve any great deed anyway. Compared with lofty ideals, I prefer real life in front of my eyes. In the study, reading books and writing articles and raising flowers; going to the vegetable plot to hoe the weeds and pick the greens. These simple, tangible pleasures already satisfy me greatly.

Occasionally running into a friend by chance makes it even more “a joy indeed.” Today, while I was working in the vegetable plot, the owner of a neighboring plot suddenly walked over and asked whether I was Dr. Zhou Zhiyuan. I was surprised and asked how he knew my name. He said he had followed my official account for several years, long reading my articles and never missing one. He had known since last year that I was farming at the foot of Xiangshan; it so happened that he also gardened nearby, so he had been hoping to run into me here, and had even sent messages to my official account back then.

He added that several times he had called my name aloud around here, hoping I would hear and we could become acquainted; regrettably, until now we had never had the fate to meet. He said that although he had never seen me, in his mind he had imagined I would look just as he now saw me. After I changed plots this year, the two of us unexpectedly became gardening neighbors.

I asked where he worked; he told me he was a teacher at the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China, and it turned out our educational philosophies were quite aligned. So all morning we worked and chatted away, much like the scene from my childhood working in my hometown. Back then, villagers in the fields likewise loved to work and talk at the same time. Finally we also exchanged produce: he gave me a zucchini, and I wanted to give him some cauliflower in return, but his own garden already had plenty. Since we are neighbors now, there will surely be many future chances to exchange homegrown vegetables full of insect droppings and wormholes, and to tease each other to ease the loneliness of gardening alone.

When I was young and headstrong, I once dreamed of one day becoming an important person. Now, after countless moments of peering into the toilet to see my true reflection, I feel content with this return-to-simplicity life before me. But I am not a nihilist; I still strive daily without fail, rather than prattling on about mysteries and wasting my life. It is just that my mindset is now very calm. If in this life I am lucky enough to achieve something by sheer fluke, that is no great thing; if I do not, I will feel no regret either. My beloved teacher once told me: “Only the natural and spontaneous is truly masterly.” I changed “masterly” in his words to “free and easy,” and took this eight-character maxim he gave me as my life motto.

I have consistently applied this motto to every part of my life and work. In the past I was not mature enough; when communicating with patients or families I could not yet be natural and spontaneous. Now, after long refinement, I can. Communicating truly and naturally leaves no later trouble nor burdens me too much; gradually I no longer feel the work is so hard.

Such ordinary, unremarkable days are truly wonderful.