The hope of life Zhang Baotong 2018.8.26

Life is precious, but life is sustained by hope. If a person has no hope, then his life has no meaning. Yes, no one wants to die because there are still many things in this world that we miss and cherish. These beautiful things are nourishing our lives like sunshine and rain, and our lives are full of expectation and hope. If you think about it, if there is no expectation and hope in life, without the moisture of sunshine and rain, then what kind of life will it be?

There is an old man named Mbah Gotho in Indonesia, who was born in December 1870 and is 145 years old this year. His 10 siblings, four wives and all his children have died, with the last relative dying 30 years ago. He now lives with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. However, these grandchildren and great-grandchildren have no common language with him, and their feelings are very indifferent, so he feels extremely bored and lonely in the world, and he just wants to die early. Because he has long lost his expectations, and he has no hope of continuing to live.

I used to have a long time when I didn't understand Xiang Yu Wujiang's self-slaughter. I think he can cross the river, return to Jiangdong, and lead the children of Jiangdong to make a comeback. However, later I realized that Xiang Yu was not unable to return to Jiangdong, but that he felt that the Jiangdong children he brought out were almost all dead, and he had no shame to meet Jiangdong's parents again, and he also knew that if he returned to Jiangdong, he would lead the Han army to Jiangdong and make the people of Jiangdong suffer misery. That's why he lamented, "But now that I am trapped here, the death of this day is not a crime of war." Because he thought that the reason for such a failure was that God wanted to destroy him. This is the reason why Xiang Yu is completely desperate.

During World War II, Japan invaded half of China's rivers and mountains, frantically burned, killed and looted, in a vain attempt to turn our country into a Japanese colony. However, after Japan's defeat in the war, many Japanese Kwantung troops committed mass suicide in order not to be captured by the Soviet army and to express their allegiance to the Japanese emperor. The Japanese soldiers first killed all the seriously wounded and children, then killed the Japanese women who accompanied the army, and finally shouted Long live the emperor, and all committed suicide by disembowelment. The reason why the Japanese soldiers committed such extremely cruel and hysterical acts was because they felt that their extremely crazy hopes and dreams had all been dashed, and that they could only be punished with justice if they continued to live.

The most tragic and tragic suicide in Chinese history occurred during the Battle of Yashan. In January 1279, the Yuan army attacked Yamen, and arrived at Yashan one after another, forming a three-sided encirclement of the small court of the Southern Song Dynasty. The Song army decided to abandon the exit of the bay and engage in a final decisive battle with the Yuan army. The Song army's thousands of warships were arranged in a long snake formation, and the dragon boat of the young emperor Zhao Yu sat in the center, ready to welcome the arrival of the big war. However, the Yuan army blocked the bay, cut off the fresh water of the Song army, and started a war of attrition. On February 6, the Yuan army was divided into four routes, and the Han general Zhang Hongfan launched a frontal attack, using a camouflaged large building ship to condescendingly break the Song ship and reach the center of the Song army. Song general Zhang Shijie saw that the defeat was decided, and led the remnants to break through. Soon after, he fell into the sea and died in a violent storm. The young emperor Zhao Yu was trapped on the boat, and the 43-year-old Prime Minister Lu Xiufu saw that there was no hope of breaking through, so he resolutely carried the 8-year-old Zhao Yu on his back and jumped into the sea to die for the country. After hearing the news, Empress Dowager Yang also committed suicide by jumping into the sea. The soldiers and civilians committed suicide and martyrdom one after another, and they did not surrender their righteousness. The next day, there were more than 100,000 floating corpses on the sea, and the mountains and rivers changed color. This naval battle marked the decline and fall of Chinese civilization and the end of the classical era of China. This is the greatest tragedy in the history of the Chinese nation.

Chinese culture is broad and profound, with many sayings such as "the mourning of a husband is greater than the death of the heart, and the death of a person is secondary", as well as "it is better to die than to live" and "life is hope". I once watched Yu Hua's "Alive", which said that people do not live for some kind of hope, but for a kind of patience. Endure the happiness and suffering that life gives us, the boredom and mediocrity that life gives us, and even the despair and fear that it gives us. In fact, as a traditional Chinese culture, it is not advisable to let people kill themselves. When a person dies, he turns into a light smoke, his soul drifts away, and he disappears forever from the world. Because of the disillusionment of hope, the injustice of the world, the physical pain, the despair of feelings, the extreme grief and the heinous crimes, many people still choose to end their lives by suicide. Such as Emperor Chongzhen, Jin Aizong, King Shang, Fucha, such as Qu Yuan, Xiang Yu, Wu Zixu, Lü Buwei, such as Guan Tianpei, Wen Tianxiang, Chen Tianhua, Ding Ruchang, such as Aristotle, Hemingway, Marilyn Monroe, Van Gogh. Each of them died for both subjective and objective reasons, but there was also a common cause, which was the disillusionment of hope and the despair of life.

Judging from the suicidal tendencies of foreigners, most of them are due to illness, poverty, and affection, which lead to despair in life. From the perspective of Chinese suicidal tendencies, many of them are related to the social reasons and background at that time. Especially among many celebrities in modern and contemporary China, there are also many people who commit suicide because their hopes are dashed, such as Lao She, Sanmao, Gu Cheng, Fu Lei, Ruan Lingyu, Rong Guotuan, Yan Fengying, Zhao Shuli, Fan Changjiang, Leslie Cheung, Zhao Dan, and Yang Shuo. We are deeply saddened and deplored by their suicides. In our modern concept, they really shouldn't end their lives because of a moment of despair. Because how many people like them are enduring political persecution and life suffering, and how many people like them are also enduring the pain of illness and emotional suffering.

As Shakespeare said, "Life or death, that's the question." "How to deal with life is a very serious and heavy question. To live is to face life and everything in the world. This world is inherently full of calamities and sufferings, with luck and happiness, bad luck and misery, long nights, winter and spring, and willows and flowers. If they can be more stoic, tenacious, and survive the cold winter, they will be able to usher in the spring flowers.

To cherish life is to cherish life. To cherish life, we must take money, love, family affection and responsibility beyond life lightly. In fact, these things are really insignificant compared to life. To cherish life is to fill it with joy and hope. Because happiness and hope make life extremely joyful and beautiful. Helen Keller was a blind, dumb and deaf woman, and her teacher, Miss Sullivan, was highly myopic and eventually lost her sight in her later years. But they have been living tenaciously and happily. Helen Keller writes in If You Give Me Three Days of Light: "The next morning I will greet the dawn once more, anxious to find a new joy, for I believe that for those who really can see, the dawn of each day must be a new beauty that will be repeated forever." According to the deadline of my imaginary miracle, this will be the third and last day of my vision. I will not have time to spend on regret and longing, because there is so much for me to see. "What an optimistic and beautiful state of mind! With such a state of mind, life becomes a miracle. And this miracle is to be able to see the ordinariness of life vividly and beautifully, and to smell the breath of spring in the cold winter of life.

There is hope when people live. With hope, people have the sunshine of life. Yes, winter is coming, will spring be far away?