Time Can Wear Away a Person's Edges, but It Cannot Change Their Fundamental Character

Last night I was chatting in another boy's dorm room in our class with a student who wanted to join the study group I had formed, and I forgot to check my phone. After we finished talking I glanced at it: the class group chat was in an uproar. The trigger was that the student responsible for the classroom keys had failed to open the door in time, sparking a fierce argument—but the deeper cause was not so simple.

Seeing that the situation had already escalated into what looked like a brawl, my adrenaline surged sharply, and I immediately stepped forward and loudly stopped everyone. I exhorted the two boys who had started it; when exhortation failed, I immediately suppressed them in my capacity as an elder. Through an effort of seizing the ringleaders, wielding both kindness and severity, appealing to feeling, and reasoning, I quickly extinguished the dispute and averted a greater crisis.

The strange thing about this matter is that thirty years ago I did exactly the same thing, and the situation was almost identical to last night's. That time, the trigger was that the student in charge of the dorm keys had failed to open the door in time, sparking a fierce quarrel; the whole class split apart and was about to descend into a brawl. My adrenaline surged then too, and I immediately stepped forward to stop it, turning the tide at a critical moment.

That crisis was ultimately calmed when I proposed using class funds to make a dorm key for everyone. This time, after suppressing the disturbance, I likewise proposed making several extra classroom keys and distributing them to several students, so that the problem of no one opening the classroom door in time would no longer easily arise. That earlier turning of the tide directly caused me—who at the time had been most unwilling to be a class cadre—to be pushed by the head teacher and nearly all classmates into the position of class monitor. The difference this time is that I am already 46; it is impossible for me to be their class monitor again. But being able to subdue the 130-plus classmates at a critical moment is no less than being their monitor.

After the incident settled, a young man in the class who gets along well with me said to me in the restroom, "Uncle, your presence of mind is truly enough to command a thousand troops." This boy had been injured playing ball a few days earlier, and I had taken him to get a tetanus shot. Since entering school he has been injured three times, and I have treated his wounds each time. He is very well disposed toward me, and this incident deepened that goodwill.

One girl caught up in this storm was quite outstanding in ability, conscientious and responsible in her work—the kind of person among post-00s students who dares to take responsibility and dutifully fulfills her duties, a rare sight. But much of her work had offended her classmates, leading to her being besieged. If I were hiring employees, I would give priority to choosing someone like her, because she is diligent, responsible, self-disciplined, and full of energy. After all, the standards society uses to select people for jobs are entirely different from those used to select student cadres at school. She is the kind of person who can bring good economic returns to an enterprise, but among students she is not very popular; students love freedom and dislike being constrained.

After the incident, I asked her out alone to eat at the school's small cafeteria, did ideological work on her, told her to stop the strife, and persuaded her to resign her student-cadre post to avoid the storm; she agreed. I am very optimistic about this girl's future, and she happens to be a member of my study group. I plan to mentor her well in a comprehensive study of TCM, Western medicine, and psychiatry, helping her quickly move past the negative impact of this incident. While doing her work I said to her: "Time can wear away a person's edges, but it cannot change their fundamental character. Your foundation is strong conscientiousness and excellent self-discipline; with such a foundation, your future is boundless, and you need not mind temporary gains and losses."

Actually, this saying was not only for her; it applies to me as well. Thirty years of years have worn away my edges, but they have not changed my fundamental character. Having wandered in this world for half my life, my disposition is no different from when I was a youth; it is only that, polished by the years, I am no longer so sharp-edged.

What I am doing now, forming a study group at the university, I also did back when I was in first grade of junior high school. Except that then I founded a literature club, gathering a group of classmates who loved literature. More than thirty years later, I am in a medical school, forming a group to study medicine together—it is almost like copying the homework I did at fourteen.

People often say, "If I could go back to the past, I would do such-and-such." I have been fortunate to truly let myself return to thirty years ago at my present age. Facts prove that the person you were then is still more or less the same now. The slight differences are merely the result of the years polishing the edges.