01 How do you come back and be yourself?
How do you come back and be yourself, where exactly are you?
I believe that sometimes when you calm down, you often ask yourself questions that seem to have no answers. Where, exactly, is the real self?
From the sensations of the body, the sense of taste, the sense of smell, we probably think that there is a self in the world, and then we feel a lot of things.
But is the feeling real or unreal? Sometimes I can't tell if I actually smell that.
For example, sometimes you feel that you smell seawater at the seashore, the salty smell of all the air that comes with it, the smell of salt, the smell of dampness, or the smell of all kinds of creatures in the whole sea.
But as soon as I turned around, I wondered if I was fantasizing, because I wasn't so sure. Sometimes it feels like the visual is still relatively certain, because you see something and you can describe it.
I enjoyed reading the French writer Proust's "Memories of the Past". The whole novel tells about the tastes of his childhood, such as the complicated memories of his mother's night "Soufflé" that stayed on his taste buds.
The leftover taste of the dessert made by my childhood mother seemed to exist, and it seemed to be the taste of happiness that I had fantasized about. Does it exist or does it exist?
The most moving part of Proust's book is that it seems to exist and does not seem to exist, and so is the Dream of the Red Chamber.
In Cao Xueqin's later years, the family had fallen, very poor, and may even have become a beggar on the street.
However, he would recall the prosperity of his fourteen years before he was fourteen years old, and he had spent such a beautiful spring with so many beautiful girls in the garden, the fragrance of the flowers, and the taste of the food left on the taste buds.
The "Dream of the Red Chamber" he wrote at the end was actually a dream, because he was not sure whether the things in his memory really existed.
If an author is poor and reduced to a beggar sitting on the side of the street, the greatest thing that encourages him to survive in the end must not be the bowl of rice in front of him that others have given charity, but his memories.
He could describe in such detail the embroidery on the clothes of the girl who was with him at that time, the colors of the flowers, the events that in fact might have been forty years ago.
How could this author remember so clearly the color of his clothes and the smell of his body in his later years, and then describe them bit by bit?
You may wish to open the window of your other mind and let these senses stay longer in your own life.
02 Bitterness is the last lesson in life
At this age, I understand that my mother likes to suffer.
When I was fourteen or fifteen years old, my mother liked to cook a dish in the kitchen, using very bitter bitter melon, black and smelly tempeh, served with very salty dried fish, plus very spicy peppers, and stir-fried in hot oil. At that time, my mother loved to eat that dish, and she knew that I hated it very much.
So my mother used to cook that dish when I wasn't home, and then I served a little wine myself, which became a great enjoyment for her.
One day, I left school early, and as soon as I entered the house, I found that my mother was cooking that very difficult dish again. I can't imagine, how could anyone like to eat such a taste?
At that time, I couldn't bear any of these tastes, and could only accept sweetness, or a little bit of sourness. But why would a mother let her sense of taste be stimulated so intensely?
My mother happily told me that you don't understand how enjoyable this thing is. Mother said that when she was fourteen or fifteen years old, she was in a state of war, and many wounded soldiers were carried down from the front, so my mother had to help these wounded soldiers with a little medical training. Seventeen or eighteen-year-old boys were often seen on stretchers wounded, their bellies cut open by shells, and a large pile of blood and intestines left on the stretchers. The mother would use her hands to stuff those intestines into her belly.
I suddenly felt goosebumps all over my body, and began to understand a little why my mother ate such a bitter bitter melon, such a spicy pepper, such a smelly tempeh.
Mother's life seems to have encountered war too early, encountered sour, sweet, salty, spicy and bitter, a strange mixture of five flavors.
So I often wonder, can taste be a very strange memory in our lives? Will you spend your whole life trying to find something in your palate that is comparable to your memory?
When I told this story, my mother had no tears, she just drank a very strong wine and ate the very exciting dish.
I was born after the war, lived in comfort, and lived much better than my mother's generation.
In her later years, my mother was diabetic dialysis, and I was with her in the hospital when she was very hard. I found that saying that the last lesson is really a bitter homework, and you have to do it. When my mother was suffering from illness in her last years, I held her body and comforted her in her ear, letting her know that I was next to her.
It was a very bitter moment in life, but I suddenly felt that there was nothing wrong with this bitter taste. If this part of life is missing, if I wasn't around when my mother was dying, it probably wouldn't be a pleasant thing. Bearing that kind of suffering has also become a very important memory of me and my mother.
One day, if I want to write a memoir of the past, I probably won't avoid talking about bitterness. When I was young, I didn't like to suffer things, I didn't like to suffer. We say that we actually don't like that there are things that are not going well in life.
But suffering, probably at any time in life, will suddenly come out, to face a lesson.
The reaction area of bitter taste is at the root of the throat and tongue, and when I was a child, I was afraid that the powder would stick to the root of the tongue, because it was the reaction area of bitter taste. But now, I myself will buy very bitter bitter melon and come back to make a dish. I will feel that I have accepted that bitterness, and I feel that bitterness is the last lesson you have to do in life.
Whether it is bitter or smelly, it probably can't be completely avoided. I hope that we do not only have a variety of different tastes, but in life, we have the courage to face the phenomenon of life with five tastes and miscellaneous tastes.
Even if it is very bitter, you must be brave enough to hold your mother's body. There's nothing wrong with it, and if I hadn't done it then, I think I would have had more and more regrets right now.
This bitter taste in the sense of taste actually helps us to get through this lesson, and we can do this lesson more satisfactorily.
Edit: Wang Yun