Others Are Not Worthy of Envy; We Are Fine as We Are

Many people in the world envy others’ lives, always feeling their own life is not as good as someone else’s, and must catch up with or even surpass others before they are content; as a result, their happiness is very low. Others feel that other people’s lives are nothing special and that their own is just fine. I belong to the latter group. I quite like my own life and am unwilling to pay too much attention to others’.

So I do not need to compete with anyone; I only need to live wholeheartedly in the way I want, arrange my own space according to my own tastes, and design everything about myself. Personally, I think people who have their own convictions about life are less easily led by others or brainwashed.

In 1999, I dropped out of university and went to read at the National Library. I was dirt poor back then. With the support of my paternal and maternal cousins, I rented a single-story room in Shangdi Shucun for 80 yuan a month. Every day I rode an old bicycle that someone had discarded to the library.

I spent about a hundred yuan on a few potted green plants and set them under the eaves of my room. I picked up a lot of bricks and two long planks and built a simple bookshelf by my bed. Then I bought a desk lamp from a small commodities market. I survived by writing articles for a bit of honorarium, and that life made me immensely content.

Twenty years have passed, and now I have my own study and studio. One of the bookshelves in it I picked up at a secondhand market fifteen years ago for 80 yuan, and I still use it today. This cabinet was probably once used as a store shelf; it is extremely sturdy. I have so many books that they are stacked on it three layers deep.

Of the other two bookshelves, one was provided by the landlord when I rented, and the other is a thick steel filing cabinet I bought earlier; both are also packed three layers deep with books.

I have filled my balcony with green plants—bargains I picked up at flower markets at different times, and I have basically kept them all thriving. Except for a few flowerpots I bought, the rest were either given by friends who were moving or picked up by myself beside the trash bins in my residential compound.

For getting around I still use a bicycle, except that it has changed from the secondhand bike I bought back then to a brand-new Phoenix bicycle I bought now.

Today’s life and the life of twenty years ago are, for me, not essentially different; the happiness they bring me is about the same. As long as I have books to read and flowers and plants for company, I am fully content.

Around the National Library there are quite a few oddballs like me, but most cannot stick to this kind of life for twenty years the way I have. Many people read books around here for a while and then rise to wealth and prominence. I am still an ordinary commoner. I cannot fly, and I do not want to fly. I chose this life because I love it, and I have no wish to end it.

I have seen many people become successful; some were my old friends. Some even mocked me for never being able to get off the ground. None of this affects me in the slightest. I am immersed in my own happiness and only feel that my own world is wonderful; I see nothing particularly lovable about other people’s lives.

People whose spirit is internally guarded age slowly. As one decade after another has passed, among those who once kept me company, some have gone bald, some have gotten cancer, and basically all show signs of weariness. A Sichuanese buddy who was once fabulously successful, a year younger than me, has had a brain tumor for several years now. I have not heard from him for a year or two; I do not know whether he is still alive.

I am still myself, my appearance unchanged, my mindset as steady as ever. To others my life may look neither good nor bad, but to me it is simply wonderful. All these years I have lived freely and done things my own way, never having to bow and scrape to read anyone’s face. How carefree! From emperors and generals down to peddlers and porters, no one in this world can make me feel the slightest twinge of envy. Is that not delightful?

An older woman once said to me: “A blessed person is never flustered.” I think these eight words are simply excellent. If a person is unhurried and unflustered, they naturally enjoy quiet blessings.

In this world, a life is at most a hundred years long. Sumptuous feasts are nothing special; plain tea and simple food also fill the stomach. After unhurriedly experiencing all the sweetness and bitterness of this life, who does not have to report to King Yama in the end? However well others live, what is there to envy? As long as I am happy and content, that is enough! Would not being frantic be undignified?

In raising my son today, the thing I hate most is using other people’s children’s achievements to goad him. As long as my child is satisfied with his own state, I am happy for him. One need not be self-satisfied, but one must be self-contented. The self-contented person does not suffer; the suffering of the discontented is self-made.

The cultural masters of the Republican era advocated “an independent spirit and a free thought.” I have the audacity to append a line of my own: “a calm attitude and a joyful heart.” I venture to think that for a person to possess “an independent spirit” and “a free thought,” these must be grounded in “a calm attitude” and “a joyful heart.”

I have a life stance that I sum up as: “What others abandon, I take; what others discard, I gain; what others contend for, I avoid; what others grab, I relinquish.” To Mr. Lin Yutang this would look like the stance of an “old slick,” but it has benefited me enormously.

Over the years, holding to a “calm attitude” and a “joyful heart,” I have maintained my “independent spirit and free thought” and survived by the principle of “what others abandon I take, what others discard I gain, what others contend for I avoid, what others grab I relinquish.” I neither envy anyone nor torment myself. Amazingly, I have managed both to contend with no one in the world and to have no lack of food and clothing, living a rather interesting life. Is that not also very good?

My life experience tells me that if one is forever envying others’ lives and discontented with one’s own, one will hardly be able to find peace. But if one is full of love and contentment for one’s own life, one can very quietly do the things one enjoys.

The American writer Thoreau spent two years and two months living independently by Walden Pond to show that he did not wish to be a lodger in civilized society. For someone who grew up in the countryside, the life Thoreau experienced was everything that happened around us every day in our childhood.

So, in spiritual essence, I, a person from the countryside, have never in my life been a lodger in civilized society. I love nature, I love independence, and I have never lost myself in the trivial formalities of civilized society. This, perhaps, is exactly what makes me different!