The Slow Pace of My Hometown Is Healing Me
Days in my hometown pass slowly. Apart from the elderly and children left behind, few young people are seen in the village. The countryside and a first-tier city full of hurried young people feel like two different worlds: the countryside is peaceful and quiet, the city is cramped and noisy.
In the countryside there is no subway, no noisy wet market, and even buses are now rare. In the increasingly hollowed-out villages, most houses are unoccupied, locked year-round. Some have already become ruins, with one or two sturdy trees growing up through the center, piercing the roof and their crowns shading the whole house. It is no exaggeration to describe these once-bustling villages as desolate.
Fewer than ten villagers remain in grandmother's village. When I arrived, my cousin's wife did not recognize me and warily asked what I was doing in their village. I told her I had come to see grandmother's old house and explained who my mother was; only then did she relax. She told me she had to be wary, because only a few elderly people and children were left in the village. Some criminals scout the village by day and strike by night, so strangers entering the village always put them on guard. This is the reality of a small mountain village.
The hometown is no longer the hometown of old; rural society has changed greatly. Yet it is still the hometown of old—scattered relatives still live there. Talking with them, I learn many things I did not know before. For instance, another elderly person in grandmother's village recalled many stories about my maternal grandmother and my parents, things I had not known. Through these stories I can see the personalities of my maternal grandmother and parents more clearly.
This year I have lost one relative after another, and my own health has at times faltered; I have encountered psychological difficulties and been troubled by negative emotions for a while. Most recently, my cousin's death delivered another blow. For several days my mind was in a state of excessive grief and numbness. I rushed home and organized and chaired a meeting of our generation in the family to discuss helping my cousin's family, arriving at a preliminary plan.
For the first couple of days I was absent-minded, constantly misplacing things; when people spoke to me, it took a long time for me to respond. At breakfast in the county town I ran into a junior from high school (two grades below me); she recognized me at once and chatted excitedly with me for ages. Honestly, I did not recognize her at all, and until we parted I had forgotten to ask her name—which was impolite. Running an errand in the county town, I filled out a form while seriously distracted, and was sharply scolded by the clerk. To that scolding I too was utterly unresponsive.
My father asked me to rest at home for several days before leaving, not to rush back to work, and he even stopped me from reading. Still, quite a few patients consulted me on WeChat; one patient took up three hours of my time, and I dealt with it as a matter of course. I understand the hardships people face seeking medical care; as long as I did not feel too exhausted, I kept helping them sort out their problems. At the same time, I finished reading Aaron T. Beck's classic Cognitive Behavior Therapy of Personality Disorders and kept up my daily writing. The power of habit is strong; it lets a person keep moving forward even in great pain.
I rode my bike to Li Shizhen's cemetery, visited grandmother's old village, and every day after meals I walked around the Medicine King Temple near my home. The scenery of my hometown has not changed much; the greenery is even a bit better than before. The air everywhere is faintly scented with osmanthus; the late-autumn sun feels warm on the skin, not hot. The tangerines have turned yellow; the hills are covered with them, more than can be picked. Whosever orchard they grow in, when thirsty you may freely pick a few to taste, and no one minds. With a shortage of rural labor, tangerines are worthless, and most of them end up rotting on the trees.
Dawdling through my days in the hometown, I gained a chance to catch my breath, and sadness and worry imperceptibly faded. Here, just as the psychologist Jung returned to his own childhood state to heal himself, I search for the clues of who I am. Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? The answers to these questions can be found in this land.
The local customs, the personalities of my parents, of my paternal grandparents, of my maternal grandparents—all these gradually clarify for me the answer to "Who am I." A person's personality is not rootless water; regional culture and family culture together shape it. Whether that personality is good or bad, clarifying its origins is of great benefit. It frees us from confusion about "who I am" and lets us see ourselves more objectively. It also helps us discover our own character flaws and steer toward fortune and away from harm.
Personality is neither good nor bad in itself. As long as it adapts to the environment, one lives without suffering oneself, does not cause suffering to others, and maintains basic relationships—it passes. Passing is enough. I consider my own personality passing, because most of the time I am happy in life, and the people around me are basically happy too. We all suffer for a while when life deals blows—that is only human. If a person felt no pain at parting or death, that person would be frighteningly numb.
At twenty, my brother said my sympathy was overflowing and that I was a blind optimist. The so-called overflowing sympathy, put another way, means strong empathy. People with this trait are not typically blind optimists, because empathy lets us deeply apprehend the suffering of others, which can easily pull a person into pain and depression.
Yet I do have the traits of a blind optimist. Two things that seem impossible to combine have somehow combined in me, and one can only marvel at the wonder of creation. I am blindly optimistic because my mother was a thoroughgoing blind optimist; I simply inherited her genes.
My mother was the kind of person who, no matter how hard life was, could adapt and be genuinely happy. She always wore a smile; when something upset her, a chat with the neighbors would let it go. That gene of hers keeps me from sinking in negative emotions for too long; once I notice I have them, I can quickly pull myself out.
During these days in my hometown, I gradually accepted the fact of my cousin's early death and finally came to peace with it. Everyone dies; sudden death involves less torment than other ways of dying. If I leave this world in the future, I too hope to go by sudden death rather than by a long chronic illness. Lifespan is not really important. For someone in pain, a shorter life may mean less suffering; for someone happy, having already tasted life's joy, length matters little. When a person dies, a series of family problems follows, but there will always be ways to resolve them; even if there are not, the family will go on by biological instinct. Why worry?
On the question of life and death, I have gradually become more open-minded than before. I do not wish tragedy on my loved ones, but once it happens, the only thing left is acceptance. My cousin is gone; the sun still rises and sets. More and more acquaintances lie buried on the gravesite hill. Death is the unavoidable end of life. Now that I am past middle age, I should make peace with it. Early death is a matter of probability; if it happens, it happens, and there is nothing to cling to.
The obstruction in my chest gradually faded, and my mind began to wake. Blowing in the wind across the fields, strolling by the waters, cycling along mountain roads, eating in a nearly deserted town, watching the blue sky and white clouds, gazing at the dark green bamboo on the hills, watching cattle graze leisurely, watching people fish by the river, wandering aimlessly through the temple—the inner self began to fill out again. We are children of nature. We come from nature, die in a natural way, and return to nature; everything happens naturally, with no going and no coming, no increase and no decrease.
Then let everything follow its natural course.