Reading Is Like Farming: Diligent Tillage Brings Abundant Harvest
In the main hall of the National Library reading room hangs a pale blue poster; its title is the line from the Analects, "Reading is like farming; diligent tillage brings an abundant harvest." I like this poster—it is clean and elegant, without a speck of flashiness. I also like this title: reading and farming are both things I love, and in both I am, roughly speaking, diligent enough.
The reason I use the words "roughly speaking" is not false modesty; it is that I really am only "roughly" diligent. At heart I am rather lazy: I do not like to bury myself in books, nor do I like meticulous farming. I tend to approach both reading and cultivation in a free and easy way, so my harvest is not especially abundant.
I simply persist in reading and farming. Reading goes on all year round, rain or shine. Whenever the weather is warm enough for farming, I keep at it without interruption, never letting the land go to waste. Most of my day is spent in the library: I study medicine in the morning, math, physics, chemistry, biology, and English in the afternoon and evening; I also tend a small vegetable garden at the foot of Xiangshan (Fragrant Hills). This tilling and reading make up the main content of my daily life.
My life has no alarm clock, no schedule, no progress bar. I sleep and rise early, falling asleep naturally and waking naturally. In the evening I sometimes go to bed at nine or ten, sometimes at seven or eight; in the morning I usually get up at five or six, and before rising I lie in bed memorizing some vocabulary. I take a short midday nap, and sleep eight or nine hours a night.
I read purely by mood, reading whatever book I like, regardless of anything else. If there are exams, I only aim to pass and get by, not for high scores. In gardening I aim only for a rough likeness, not refinement. So after five or six years of growing vegetables, my gardening level is still mediocre. My neighbors' gardens are as beautiful as flowerbeds, and mine always drags them down in appearance. The elderly men and women who garden alongside me inevitably offer occasional pointers or criticisms; I just smile it off.
Although everything I do is this rough, the life of tilling and reading is what I love most, so I keep muddling along in it. I plan to muddle along like this until I die, because no other life attracts me. There is no pressure of academic title evaluation, no one running KPIs on me. Of course, there are also none of the various social statuses and identity labels, and no capital for comparing myself with anyone. So I simply do not join any circle or compare myself with anyone.
Even so, in a year I can finish several dozen books, write several hundred thousand characters, and grow vegetables that are roughly enough to eat. Living on what I have learned, I earn a modest income to feed my family, and no one nags me to get ahead. I still have plenty of time to stroll in the park and bask in the sun, plant flowers and grass, tinker with musical instruments, ride my bicycle out to the suburbs regularly, and occasionally travel as a family to lift our spirits.
Because my attitude is too casual and I refuse to work harder, abundance is out of the question, but I have enough to eat and wear. Since coming into this world, I have only asked for enough to eat; whether I am warm or not does not matter, as long as I do not freeze. As for reputation and status in life, or posthumous glory, let them go to hell. There are all kinds of stages in this world, all kinds of stars and celebrities on them, and none of it has anything to do with me. What has to do with me is only my plot of land and the library.
Times are changing, technology is advancing, old and new keep replacing each other, and many people are anxious, worrying about this and that. But I am not anxious. Let it change as it will; I meet all changes with unchanging stillness. The king's banners on the city wall keep changing, yet I still love only reading and farming. In reading and farming, not knowing that old age is approaching, not knowing that death is approaching—isn't that rather fine?