Tormenting My Body in the First Half of Life, to Be Tormented by It in the Second—How Absurd

The more patients I see, the more I dislike the lifestyle of modern people.

I have developed deep doubts about the customs and institutions of our society. Obviously we humans are not such clever creatures; we have made our own living environment worse and worse, and our own lives worse and worse.

Previously I rarely saw happy adults; now I rarely see happy people—even those children who ought to be carefree are living under increasing pressure. Their anxious parents are shortening childhood more and more. Fierce academic competition has plunged children from an early age into a lifeless state of living, and youth suicide is becoming more and more common.

The world is absurd, yet most people take the absurd for the proper and the proper for the absurd. People simply do not know how to live. The crowds on the street hurry by, everyone striving for all kinds of "things," and few are willing to stop.

Nine out of ten people live by tormenting their own bodies: excessive mental stress and overtime work, abundant yet junk food, bad air and water—these are turning normal people into "patients." There used to be many healthy people who never went to hospital; now there is almost no one who goes a whole lifetime without hospital.

Diabetes, hypertension, cancer, allergic diseases, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease—the culprits triggering these modern high-incidence diseases are almost all the same: a damaged environment, poor diet and lifestyle, and a life and work under enormous stress.

What is happiness? How many people have actually felt happy? Can the wealth and status we desperately chase bring us happiness and joy? The pleasures of the palate are easily satisfied, but after the wine cups and goblets clash, the excess fat and salt consumed are slowly sending people to the gates of hell.

For years I have resisted being captured by society; I do not want to become a sacrifice of modern society. While it offers people dreams and temptations, it also loots their souls bare.

Busyness is becoming modern people's only common trait: "All under heaven bustle for profit; all under heaven rush for gain." 2015–2019 were my busiest years; in the busyness I almost forgot what my original intention in studying medicine had been—fame and fortune can drown others, and they can drown me too.

I used to live a free, leisurely life of few desires and small wants. Not to say that others envied me, but at least I myself was quite content. Reading as I pleased, living as I liked, striving in moderation, enough food to fill my belly and enough clothing to cover my body, asking for nothing more. I had no high demands of my child either; with an attitude of letting nature take its course and waiting for the flowers to bloom, I watched him grow up happily. My wife once said that among China's 1.4 billion people, hardly anyone could be as carefree as I.

Yet I was foolishly assimilated step by step by this absurd society. Looking back at the road traveled, I feel it was hardly worth it. The various rules by which this society runs are all as absurd as a lump of excrement; I had long since seen through it all and rebelliously chosen a path of independence from the world.

It is precisely that independent spirit that has preserved a little of my inner spirituality. There are really not many people who, like me, after leaving university, read whatever they pleased with no purpose for twenty years—earlier I was simply living according to human nature; I had not forgotten the joy of being human, and did not chase anything that went against human nature.

Deep in my heart I know that the life I lived in earlier years was the life a person truly ought to live—healthy and happy, light in burden, with zero pressure. But in recent years I have been gradually, imperceptibly led down another road, a road that is hard and painful.

I too have been paying the price of tormenting my body in exchange for fame and fortune, and, like everyone else, waiting for my body to torment me in the second half of life.

I am trying hard to stay awake, and trying hard to break free from this whirlpool.

In the second half of my life I will return to the life my heart truly loves. I can serve this society, can contribute my own strength to some very small group in exchange for the resources I need to survive in this society—but I will stop in moderation. I do not want to live too tired a life, nor do I want to torment my body to collapse and then spend a huge price fighting the torment my body inflicts on me.

I do not want to walk the road that most foolish modern people are walking. None of my wishes needs to be fulfilled in a hurry; I can spend my whole lifetime slowly fulfilling them. Even if I still have not completed my wishes by the time of my death, that is fine too. As long as I have not wasted my years, there is nothing to regret. In the affairs of the world, success need not be mine. I am willing to enjoy the pleasure of effort, but I do not care whether the result is perfect.