We have many desires for this world, and after having enough food and clothing, living and working in peace and contentment, we look forward to having a lot of money and a prominent position, and at the end of glory and wealth, we also look forward to being at ease and living an elegant life.

But after a certain stage of life, you will find that most people have only a small part of their expectations.

At the end of last month, I received a message from a former senior who told me that he had received a PhD acceptance letter from his favorite university that day. I'm especially happy for him because I know it's not a good success.

The senior's experience was not smooth, and he was even crazy in the eyes of many people, because three years ago, he had a very decent and well-paid job.

Before deciding to resign from his job, many friends gave him advice: "You can't lose your job, you can review while working, and then resign when you get the exam." But after only hesitating for more than two months, the senior quit his job directly.

It was the next three years of torment that paid for this decision. Because he was desperate, two consecutive Kaobo failures hit him very hard.

The senior's circle of friends still retains the state he sent when he finished the last course in March this year, and he said frankly: Two years of taking the exam means enduring poverty because of unemployment, having to consult the psychiatric department of the hospital because of pressure, and letting himself wander on the verge of depression because of failure.

Knowing that he had suffered so much, I couldn't help but ask him: "Is it worth spending three years to do something and finally making yourself so miserable?"

I especially liked the senior's answer, he said, "I just want to do this now, and I don't really need people to think of me." What I've done in three years is just to make myself who I am at this age. “

It is really a great thing to be able to abandon the idealized life in the eyes of the public and focus on achieving oneself.

Life has always been fair, you enjoy comfort, the pace of progress is slower, you strive for excellence, and life is less leisurely. But if you want comfort and excellence, there's no best of both worlds. Don't mix yourself up in the middle of all kinds of desires, which will only make life tense and stagnant.

In the midst of endless desires, you first have to ask yourself, what do you really want, what is the most precious?

I particularly liked Strickland, the protagonist of Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence", who abandoned all his life to pursue his own artistic ideals.

He was originally a husband, a father, a bank clerk, and a decent social person, but after realizing what he wanted, he had the courage to remove one identity after another, just to paint seriously.

Adults wander the world as if they were playing a game level, and each additional identity unlocks a new skill and an additional possibility to clear the level. But no matter how many sixpences were picked up all over the ground, the moon could not be seen overhead, and the road ahead remained dark.

A few days ago, on a whim, I spent several days sorting through thousands of electronic photos stored on my computer. I've always had a habit of taking pictures, that is, I will take many photos of the same scene and the same person, and finally I don't filter them, and I will store them all in the computer.

The photos were piled up in dense clusters, and I barely looked at them again because of the sheer number and duplication of them. The surviving photos were like dusty old storage boxes, so cluttered that I didn't want to open them again, and I completely lost the memorial meaning.

It took me a long time to delete most of the photos, and in the end there were less than 100 left. These are less than 100 photographs, which record my unforgettable moments over the past ten years.

Looking back at the finished photos, I found a sense of age and heaviness that I had lost for a long time. They no longer seem superfluous and cumbersome, because what is left behind is the most precious, and it will make me want to open it from time to time and want to remember it deeply.

The same is true of life, when all kinds of prejudices, interests, contradictions, and disputes are superimposed again and again, life becomes a clueless thread, making it impossible for people to move forward.

Only by being willing to throw away those complicated distractions can life gradually become clear towards the direction of the heart.

END

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