Those Touching Moments Can Heal Us

In the afternoon I went to get a nucleic acid test, and after that went to a nearby wet market to buy groceries. I bought a chicken and a piece of beef, paid 184 yuan, and left to buy vegetables at other stalls. Just as I was near the market gate, the chicken vendor caught up with me and asked whether I had just bought a chicken and a piece of beef brisket from her. I said yes, and that I had paid through Alipay; I asked whether she had not received the money. She said no, that I had overpaid by fifty yuan, and asked me to wait a moment while she fetched fifty yuan for me. With that she went back to her stall, brought back a fifty-yuan note, and returned it to me. I was moved for quite a while; I had not expected the small vendors in the wet market to be so honest.

There were quite a few people in the market, everyone wearing a mask, and it was truly not easy for the chicken vendor to have found me. Probably because I had a torn backpack on my back, cloth shoes on my feet, and quite a lot of things to carry, I was highly recognizable.

Speaking of that torn backpack, that was another touching moment. Around 2015, I was invited to Shanghai to treat a patient who was reasonably well-off. I have always been casual and wore very cheap clothes and shoes; on top of that, my trouser leg had a hole in it. When I left Shanghai after the consultation, the patient's husband, a Shanghainese older brother, insisted on pressing a backpack on me, containing nike shoes and a few pieces of clothing. He said these were shoes and clothes his family could no longer wear and begged me to accept them. The fee he paid me was also three times what we had agreed before I went, and he earnestly invited me to visit Shanghai often and set up my office in one of his idle properties; he wanted to refer patients to me.

I was very flustered and repeatedly declined, but in the end could not turn down his kindness and accepted the backpack. The older brother repeatedly told me that the bag was one he had used and was already broken, originally meant to be thrown away, and that the clothes and shoes were also given by others and did not fit him well; they were not bought specially for me—and that was the honest truth. The bag was indeed a backpack with a broken zipper, and the shoe and clothing sizes did not fit me either. I gave the shoes to my father and the clothes to my son, and I have used that old backpack ever since. The bag has now torn a big hole, but I still cannot bring myself to throw it away and carry it to the wet market almost every day. He also wanted to pay me a sum every month to support my research, telling me to name my own figure so as to ensure I had no worries about food and clothing; this kindness of his I declined.

In daily life, people constantly show us goodwill, and this is the most touching part of the human world. The great majority of people are not bad; there are often touching moments that warm us. The very keyboard I am using at this moment was given to me by a reader; although he has never met me, he has read my articles for many years. He felt that someone like me, who insists on writing every day and often replies to others' consultations online, badly needed a good keyboard, so he specially chose a mechanical keyboard he himself used and a good mouse to give me. Indeed, this keyboard and mouse he gave me make my work much more comfortable. As I type, I often think of him.

Most of the time I decline gifts others offer me, only making an exception occasionally. If the giver is well-off and the gift will not burden them much, and I have a chance to repay them, I will accept. But over the past decade, the number of such exceptions has been in single digits; I cannot bear to burden anyone. I am deeply grateful for every gift. I was once invited to treat a patient in the countryside of Ningbo, and on my way back his family picked some juicy peaches from their field for me. A thoughtful auntie had also prepared a very handy fruit peeler for me. Nearly ten years have passed in a flash, and I still keep that peeler and use it all the time. Occasionally, when peeling fruit, I think of that kind family.

A few years ago, the son of this patient saw a set of ancient thread-bound medical books and asked me whether the set would be useful to me; if so, he would buy it and give it to me. I quickly stopped him, because that set was expensive—twenty thousand yuan—while its modern printed edition costs only a few dozen. I have no interest in possessing or hoarding antiques, and I was even less willing for them to spend that wasted money. With this genuine feeling, I am more than content.

One should cherish one's karmic connections and one's blessings. My heart has never been like a desert; it is always full. Because many people have crossed paths with me, and in the moments we crossed paths, they moved me. Precisely because of these touching moments, I always feel the human world is beautiful. It is not that I do not know there are bad people in this world; I have also encountered unpleasantness in this world. It is just that my eyes do not always fixed on those bad people, nor does my heart dwell on unpleasant things for too long, and this lets me easily maintain a positive and optimistic state of mind.

Perhaps life is becoming more and more unsatisfactory, with more difficulties than before, but there are still no small number of joyful moments I encounter in reality. Yesterday I was tending my balcony vegetable garden behind the house, and in less than half an hour three people told me that they come by my balcony garden every day to look; these dozens of pots of vegetables make them feel much more at ease, so they had come specially to thank me. This took me somewhat by surprise; it turns out that in this building, besides me, there are quite a few people who need this "better-than-nothing" miniature pastoral life to heal themselves. I am happy that my small vegetable garden has healed them.

As long as we are willing to look and observe carefully, life will certainly not lack such touching moments. They will, like sunlight, dispel the gloom hanging over us, keep us away from depression, and keep our hearts from being so narrow.