The Old Dream of a Decade Ago Has Turned to Dust

Today I reopened an oncology monograph read years ago and found in the blank pages a clumsy poem I wrote in my thirties: 'Thirty years chasing fame and gain, helpless at Mother's illness, pleading to heaven. Old dreams and karmic ties return to dust; all things outside the self grow indifferent. Guided by qin and books through my remaining years, on the Qihuang path I often exhort myself. Immersed in scholarship, forgetting worldly cares, saving lives brings peace of mind.'

I must have scribbled it on a day anguished over my mother's illness. In a blink, my mother has been gone nearly ten years from gastric cancer. My life path turned irreversibly from the moment she was diagnosed—truly, old dreams return to dust. In my youth I hoped so to achieve something; now I have nothing to show for it, buried in books and having abandoned old pursuits. Looking back, I occasionally feel the gap between ideal and reality. But I am philosophical; after a fleeting letdown I quickly adjust and live on, content.

I am 42 now, with basically nothing accomplished. My schoolmates and childhood friends mostly do better; some are prominent. My income cannot match theirs, and my learning and medical skill are ordinary, with no achievement to show that I once studied alongside them.

Master Hongyi said of himself, 'Nothing accomplished, growing old.' I cannot yet say growing old, yet I feel time's pressure. My father expected great things of his two sons, naming us from Zhuge Liang's 'ambition should be lofty.' I, ambitious but unskilled, failed him; and like a dead pig unafraid of boiling water, I have gradually adapted, forgetting old pursuits and taking things as they come without shame. Ten years have indeed turned my old dreams to dust, remaking an ambitious me into an easygoing, unambitious one.

I increasingly care little for outside affairs. Everything has its own posture, and objective laws do not change by anyone's will. So I believe in letting things be rather than struggling.

My reactions to the world have dulled. When I read little, I made hasty, subjective judgments. Having read more these years (still nothing compared to great scholars, just better than my former self), I have learned to see from multiple perspectives—finding the reasonable side of the unreasonable and the unreasonable side of the reasonable. I can no longer judge right and wrong by hot blood alone, nor take clear stands for or against; I prefer silence.

More and more I am giving things up; not only old dreams but many old opinions have turned to dust. I often repudiate my past self; some find that strange, but I find comfort in the old saying, 'Aware now of the right, I see the past was wrong'—I am not alone.

'Aware now of the right' is endless: today I find yesterday wrong, tomorrow I may find today wrong. Reaching old age while overthrowing oneself is a lifelong joy, because overthrowing the self brings novelty; a long life of mere repetition would be deathly dull. I was a troublemaker as a child and enjoy overthrowing others, but others dislike it; overthrowing and pleasing myself is harmless to all.

Studying life science, treating cancer with TCM, and enjoying farming and reading have become my life's themes now. Themes differ by life stage; whatever their merit, they matter to each person. Without these themes strung together like candied haws, life would be tedious. The old dreams are gone, but new ties and dreams form new themes, enough to keep me from drifting aimlessly—and that is fine.