The day before yesterday, I went to visit my friend's house and heard his friend talk about his childhood. I felt a lot. He said a lot of things he experienced when he was a child at one time, and I remember two of them. Although they are small things in life and permeate the hardship of that era, in his description, that kind of hardship has the greatest satisfaction and the most genuine happiness.
My friend had a simple life when he was a child. When he ate clear soup noodles, he cooked some scallions in the pot, and the whole village could smell the strong smell of scallions. He said that the clear soup noodles cooked in the iron pot at that time, which did not even have a green vegetable, were a delicacy that he would never eat again in his life. The smell of scallions always stayed in the initial journey of life.
When my friend was a child, he lived in a mountain village in the northwest of China. At that time, let alone fruit, even pepper was rare. Occasionally, people from other parts of the village took chilies to sell. Every family exchanged food for some green chilies. All the men, women and children in the village put one or two green peppers in their pockets. Occasionally, they picked up a small piece and put it into their mouths to taste. It was the best snack they had ever eaten in their life. Now I live in a villa in Beijing, drive a car, and have a meal filled with dishes, but I can no longer taste the flavor of that time.
What impressed him most was that when he was five years old, he saw persimmons for the first time in the winter. The frozen persimmons were two cents each. At that time, twenty cents was a bottle of vinegar and a kilogram of kerosene at home. It was impossible for him to have twenty cents to satisfy his cravings. After enduring it for several days, he finally couldn't help it. He secretly took two eggs from his chicken house, and took his sister to the supply and marketing agency for several miles to exchange two frozen persimmons. Because they didn't dare to let their parents know, the brother and sister walked hand in hand while eating frozen persimmons in the ice and snow. When they got home, their mouths were almost frozen, but their hearts were not happy. He said that it was the sweetest thing he had ever eaten in his life. Until today, he would buy some persimmons every year and put them in the refrigerator to freeze them. When they were tough, he would take them out and chew one.
My friend smiled when he said this. I could hear the happiness in his tone, but there was also a trace of sadness that could not be concealed. He said that those happy and poor days would never come back, but they were the happiest days.
Perhaps today's young people will not understand this sentence, and even children will not understand it, and may not even believe that our generation has gone through those years. I saw a sentence a few days ago, and I liked it very much. I didn't remember the original sentence, which roughly means: I wish I were a child. I would smile when I gave a candy, and cry when I fell down. I don't need to disguise myself as totally different, and I don't need to try to suppress the mood that has already broken the dike. The experience of the person who wrote this sentence may be different from that of my friend, but the taste that permeates in the middle of a few crosses is the same. When we go farther and farther on a brighter road, so that we can no longer remember why we started, nostalgia has become a lingering dream for generations. There are sweet and bitter, and we will cry and laugh when we say it.
A friend said that he didn't believe in fate, so when he was young, although his elders' fortune telling concluded that he should not leave home, he still studied hard, went to Beijing to university, made a living here, and had his own career. I asked him how he would be today if he had believed in his destiny? Without thinking, the friend replied, "He is happier than he is now. He must be a poor and happy countryman in poverty. He has given birth to a bunch of dolls. Maybe he has become a grandfather.".
I asked him whether it was better to believe in fate or not. This time, he thought a little and replied: whether to believe in fate is actually an excuse. The key is to believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself, life doesn't exist. On the other hand, if you believe in fate, everything you encounter in this life will be doomed by accident. If you don't believe in fate, those so-called destinies are actually accidental.
This friend is a person I admire very much. He is younger than me and has probably experienced more things than I am. It can even be said that he has experienced more things than any other person of his age in the past 20 years. One year, his experience was supposed to be selected for "Moving China", but he refused because he felt that he came to Beijing from a mountain village and experienced life and death, In the end, it is just a matter of doing what a young person should do and doing one's duty to parents and family to gain a firm foothold in Beijing. The reason why I appreciate him is that I understand a sentence from him: as long as a person does not give up the pursuit of a better life, he will not be abandoned by happiness.
We ate the dishes he cooked and drank the sweet wine he brewed. The best dish to drink was his pickled pickles. I have been to many countries and places and tasted many delicious foods, but I think his pickled pickles are really delicious, with a taste of years in them. He said that these were all learned from the adults in the poor years when he was a child. During the years in Beijing, he would brew some sweet wine and pickle a jar of pickled cabbage every year, embellishing the present life and eating the flavor of those long gone years.
"Can those happy and poor days come back?" I asked him. He shook his head. "I can't come back."
He said that his greatest achievement in his life was to go out of the mountain village and start his own small business in Beijing. His biggest regret was that he had been in Beijing for 20 years. He was busy driving, making money, and struggling. He forgot that he came out to live a happier and happier life. He made a very vivid analogy: life is a circle. Most people have followed the circle's established path all their lives, but they have never been able to walk out of the circle. Because they do not know that the circle is composed of countless dots, and each dot has a tangent line. Just fly out in the direction of the tangent line, which can not only break away from the circle that is considered to be fatalistic, And it can fly far without taking detours. But once he flies out, he will never return to the original track, and is destined to be a bird flying alone, and every point on that circle will become his memory and the object of his onlookers.
Everyone has the best memories hidden in their hearts. Most of those memories are related to poverty and happiness. The reason why they think it is beautiful is that it will never come back. In fact, it is because they left it that they feel it is beautiful and regard it as the best day. Life is always like this. Cherish today and look forward to tomorrow; When you go to tomorrow, you can't forget to look back and see yesterday, so that you can understand happiness more and life is more complete.
