Translated by Hinh
Lately I’ve grown used to writing without obsessively polishing every sentence. I just write, splashing out all my thoughts at once. Wherever my mind goes, the words land. Wherever the words repeat, it means my thinking has tied itself into a knot.
I am running. Stopping the running should be easy enough, but the torrent of thought has no rest mark at all. What are you chasing? Yes: maximum use of time, efficiency, my machine must remain forever ONLINE, computation cannot go offline. Every waking minute has to be used for something. Thoughts that cannot stop run away from the body; they scream for focus, concentration, and deeper thinking, yet all that urgency kills creativity instead. I stare at the matrix as if staring into a blank field, trying to use an ordinary human brain to grasp some vast, ominous knowledge in an instant. There is no peace. A frenzied heart leaves no room for deep thought.
Sometimes I transplant seedlings in a greenhouse. It is not exactly a delicate craft, but like those bead-puzzle videos people love now, it is full of endless repetition. I have to lift a tender green seedling from the culture medium with a certain technique, then place it into soil without harming it. The soil must be prepared in advance, with a loose and moist upper layer. Then I move them one by one, and hours pass while I complete the task.
Did I find inner peace? No. But my brain rested for a short while. Or perhaps it was mourning the time that had already left. Every day I live as if it were the last one. Countless desperate struggles and sprints bring nothing but more exhausted nights, more caffeine, and worse tomorrows.
There is an elaborately decorated café called YOLO, and I understood at once: You Only Live Once. I do not know whether placing it inside a busy teaching building is meant to encourage study, or to warn people not to spend a finite life trying to conquer infinite knowledge—to enjoy things first, maybe. The signboard felt like pressure on my shoulders. I sat on a cramped little stool and pulled out my laptop.
First I spent two hours reading papers, debugging AI, and with its assistance finished a review-style assignment.
Then I pulled out a stack of IELTS writing materials. I began trying to understand the structure of sample essays and what exactly I ought to say.
Time to rest, right? So I took out a stack of letter paper. It was time to use my break to write little life updates to pen pals at home and abroad.
The person beside me was suddenly shocked. He said—
You never really stopped. You finish one thing and start another, and hours go by.
Shouldn’t you stop and rest for a while?
I said, this is rest. Isn’t this rest? Then I filled four or five pages with handwritten greetings to friends across the ocean, in foreign languages.
And then I asked myself: is this right? I was indeed living inside YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE as if it were the last day. As if everything were for self-improvement. Was it? I felt no improvement. I felt anxiety—boundless anxiety—and urgency. Caffeine and sleep deprivation certainly contributed to that terrible mental state. Then I realized I could no longer stop—no brakes—only acceleration—until, in one exhausted moment, I would plunge over the edge.
I do not have any driver’s license. But in truth I am the most dangerous kind of motorcycle racer—mentally.
That can’t be good, can it? I say this with no pride whatsoever, because it has already drained me dry. Sometimes I am so tired I can barely climb the dorm stairs. Sometimes I drink too much, trying to numb a mind that is no longer very nimble to begin with. I seem only able to do simple things; long-term exhaustion has killed parts of me. And yet creativity briefly returns after I take sleeping pills—like now. Once again I hammer a membrane keyboard into a storm of noise, fast, faster, faster, just to keep producing.
I have lost patience for receiving input. It seems that way. That is not right. How am I supposed to observe the world like this? I need to stop and look. To watch the white fluff floating by the roadside. To watch it become someone’s allergen, causing a fit of coughing and a blocked nose. I see everything at the macro and micro scale; I become everything at the macro and micro scale. I try to merge myself with nature, to expand the borders of body and mind until they can fit inside it, only to find that nature has long existed inside my shell.
Is that too idealistic?
No.
Tomorrow, I want to see a spring flower in bloom. Hear a bird call. Pause for a moment beneath the teaching building, then take one deep breath of this badly polluted air. I will decide what nature looks like in my eyes. Another day of learning from Kevin Flynn—let us try stopping.
That’s enough nonsense for today.