Firstly
At the end of the year, the various social and cultural activities that I was required to participate in were suddenly jammed together, so I became "important"
"Getting up, one friend even exaggeratedly said that he could almost sort out my recent schedule from the newspaper news.
Is this really the case? I just felt empty and empty.
Unexpectedly, among the endless calls, an old voice suddenly interrupted. After the other party announced his name, I couldn't help but stand up holding the microphone: That was Mr. Mu Ni, my Chinese teacher in middle school 30 years ago. He said on the phone that during the Spring Festival 30 years ago, I collaborated with my classmate Cao Qi and drew a New Year greeting card for him. That New Year's card was lost when the house was first searched during the Cultural Revolution. The old man said: "Can you draw a new one and give it to me as my most precious collection in my later years?" The old man's voice was so sincere. A little shaky.
After putting down the phone, I immediately concluded that this would be the most meaningful thing in my busy year-end activities.
I was sitting at my desk, and the happy but miserable middle school life in the early 1960s appeared in my mind. At that time, there were strangely many outstanding scholars hidden among middle school teachers. I remember that the supervisor of our self-study class in the first grade of junior high school was actually the famous scholar Mr. Zheng Yimei. , now it sounds like a luxury. When I moved to high school, I changed to another school, but there were still many scholars. My English teacher, Mr. Sun Jue, has dual attainments in English and Chinese classical literature, which are rare even among university teachers today. Mr. Mooney is also a man who has seen the world. At least at that time, we saw three or four books he published in his youth in used bookstores. For some unknown reason, he hid in middle school and became a Chinese
Chinese teacher. I remember that when he was teaching us Chinese, my composition won the grand prize in the city's competition, which attracted teachers from other schools to come to our class one after another. Teacher Mooney was very enthusiastic, and the course content became more and more in-depth. He also picked some particularly difficult questions to ask me on the spot. I almost couldn't answer them once, and the situation was very embarrassing. I complained in my heart:
Teacher Mooney, you knew there were so many people attending the class, why didn’t you say hello in advance when you asked me such a difficult question?
Later I finally figured it out: This is a scholar, and he doesn’t know the slightest bit of dexterity.
Even the most immature eyes can roughly discern the brightness of knowledge and personality. We were only fourteen or fifteen years old at the time.
We had been foolishly thinking of ways to be grateful to these teachers. According to the children's intuition, these teachers seemed to have suffered a lot at that time. Because of some political involvement, life was not going well. During the winter vacation, we finally came up with an idea. The whole class agreed to visit all the teachers’ homes on New Year’s Day to pay New Year greetings. At that time, middle school students could not afford New Year's greeting cards, so they could only draw some blank sheets of paper and send them to each house on foot in groups. We agreed that we couldn't eat anything from the master's house. He timidly knocked on the door, hurriedly picked up the earthy New Year's cards, muttered a few words and left. There were many teachers, and they were all sweating while walking. There was a group of hurried young pilgrims on the festival street.
Cao Qi and I drew New Year’s cards on behalf of the whole class. Cao Qi was better at painting than me at that time, so he should have done more painting, and I was responsible for writing. No matter what I draw or write, I can't surpass the level of a 10-year-old middle school student. However,
Just that childish scrawling was engraved deeply in the heart of an elderly man, etching through 30 years of time.
Today Cao Qi is a well-known calligrapher and painter, working in an art publishing house. I have seen his work printed in calligraphy anthologies and even calendars. There is also an exhibition of his paintings in the gallery.
When he heard Teacher Mooney's request,
like me, he immediately stopped what he was doing, selected a piece of good rice paper, and respectfully drew a New Year's Eve painting
Supplied and quickly sent to my college. I have already polished a thick inkstone, written the whole story on the top of the picture, stamped it, and sent it to be carefully framed. Now, this volume of calligraphy and painting has been sent to Teacher Mooney.
Teacher, please forgive me, we have forgotten the pen and ink written 30 years ago, and lost the purity that cannot be copied.
We can only use two pairs of middle-aged hands to roll a book. 30 years of ups and downs for you.
In front of you and writing for you, all the names and titles on our heads have been shaken off, leaving only two sincere students.
Only in this case can we transcend the hustle and bustle and realize some kind of human love that spans time and space.
With this deep feeling, I am qualified to say to today’s teenage friends as a middle school student 30 years ago:
Remember, you may already be creating some kind of eternal. Some of the things you do every day will be regretted immediately, and some will have the weight of decades.
Second
I mentioned earlier that I won an award for an essay when I was a middle school student 30 years ago. How much more do I have to say about this little thing so far back?
I want to say something.
About two years ago, one of my middle school teachers brought me a very strange letter. The recipient of the letter is me,
but the address written on the envelope is my middle school and class 30 years ago. The teacher had retired a long time ago and went to school to collect his salary that day.
Occasionally he saw this letter in the mailroom. He couldn't understand what was going on. Driven by curiosity, he worked hard
I found out my home address and delivered it in person.
When I opened the letter, I finally understood that it was written by a female junior high school student in a rural area in northern Hubei. Not long ago, their school sent the students a newly published "Excellent" "Selected Compositions", which included the composition I wrote 30 years ago, and my "number" at the time was still printed before the signature, so this middle school student misunderstood. She generously called me "classmate",
and suggested exchanging an essay with her every month, especially those essays that "the teacher doesn't like but I like"
.
The teacher who brought the letter smiled when he found out the whole story, and immediately stared at me seriously, lost in thought. For a long time, he said philosophically
"Actually, she today, You are who I remember; who you are today is who I was back then." No, this little rural girl unexpectedly brought the years of her life together, making me and my teacher. They all felt dizzy
. She used her childish strokes to neatly outline the ravines of time.
It took me a lot of thinking to write her a reply. I was afraid that she would be embarrassed when she knew the truth, and I was willing to have a conversation with her for a while in a kind of carefree and pure state of mind that had passed away for a long time, but this might turn into an adult versus a child.
Teasing her will eventually make her sad. After much hesitation, I decided to talk to her in a very relaxed tone in my reply, without mentioning my profession, which made her feel that this kind of correspondence was extremely normal and natural. No
I would like to mention it casually, that was my composition many years ago.
It seemed that the child was still frightened. She didn't know how to deal with such an adult, so she could only ask her parents for help.
My parents were both middle school Chinese teachers and knew me well, so things became even more troublesome. The second letter I received from her
The beginning of the letter was: "Dear Professor..."
The vortex has stopped, but the ravines of time are still raggedly across. In front of you.
As you can imagine, communication will become a bit difficult in the future. She really wanted to know from me how to lead to the Hall of Literature and Art, but her tone could not be relaxed.
She suppressed her true self and became a "asker" who was eager for quick results. In addition to being formal, the words in the letter also have a sense of decoration, which must have been revised with the help of her parents.
We communicate less and less, but I often see myself 30 years ago in my mind. The teacher who sent me the letter was right.
I was a bit like her back then. I loved literature and art obsessively, but as long as I extended my love a little, I would fall into trouble
Entering a world of adults, I look forward to the passing of time every day.
I remember that I wrote my award-winning essay while sitting on a small bench in a summer evening. It seemed that I was doing it to cope with my summer homework. As soon as I finished it He ran out to play. One day I was very surprised to see it
published in a newspaper, and there was a long and grand comment at the back, covering everything from the review of the topic, the selection of materials, the details of the selection,
the speech. I praised them one by one for their accomplishments, and I immediately became serious. At an extremely grand awards conference,
I saw an extraordinary university teacher sitting on the rostrum. According to the chairman of the conference, he was the most distinguished person in Shanghai this time.
The chief judge of the essay competition, I thought to myself, the comment after my essay was probably written by him. He spoke, his voice was rich, knowledgeable, and humorous. He explained the article so clearly while the whole audience laughed.
I was almost completely absorbed by it. He subdued. After the meeting ended, I quietly followed him. He was speaking to some other adults. I really wanted to hear something more and see how he walked, how he waved his hands, and how he moved his legs. From then on,
I often thought of this university teacher when I was reading and writing, and wondered how he would tell me to read and write
if he were in front of me. This kind of speculation was often Unfounded, so I became distressed. In short, this university teacher who did not know me at all
showed me a certain height and style, but also took away my ease and ease, and I finally
Yu said goodbye to his teenage mentality because of him.
The reason why I am reluctant to write to the middle school student in Hubei again is that I am afraid that my few words will cause her to lose a lot of things that she should not have lost so early. . The child himself will not feel anything about such a loss, but the older he gets, the more painful it will be. Life is like this. When you are young, you resent yourself for being young. When you are old, you resent yourself for being old. This often causes young and middle-aged people to be in a relatively calm state of alienation and judgment, thinking about people.
It was weird, and then he comforted the young and the old at the same time. I think the charm of young and middle-aged people in life lies in this two-way alienation and two-way comfort. Because of the two-way alienation, they become free and easy and calm; because of the two-way comfort, they become kind and powerful. However, precisely because of this, they sometimes feel annoyed and melancholy.
They still retain the sadness of saying goodbye to their innocent years, and sooner or later they will have a premonition that their old age is approaching. They were at the center of the whirlpool of human life, looking around and thinking about it, and couldn't help but be filled with emotion.
A year ago, I had another encounter with that university teacher. At that time, I was serving as the leader of the Chinese subject group of the Shanghai Higher Education Institutions' Senior Professional Title Evaluation Committee. Together with several other professors, I reviewed the applications of various universities for full and associate professors of Chinese subjects all day long. material. I suddenly saw his name on the list of those who had retired and wanted to evaluate the qualifications of a professor. Judging from the materials, although he has been teaching at the university, he is mainly engaged in research and guidance on middle school Chinese teaching. He has written many things and the quality is not low. However, according to the promotion standards of various universities in Shanghai, The professor's standards are not very good. He does not have complete academic works, and he is not in a domestically leading or internationally comparable position in a certain field.
Coincidentally, a few days later, I met him at an event venue.
He introduced himself to me first. He knew that I was reviewing professional titles a few days ago, but he only mentioned it casually and did not ask me anything. I can still recognize him.
He is indeed old, heavy and has gray hair. He told me very sincerely which of my books and articles he had read. I really wanted to tell him that he had read another article of mine 30 years ago. But I finally held back,
I didn’t dare to confess to him, I was his most devout admirer, and he once gave me advice that determined my life, that
I was only 14 years old.
What am I afraid of? The complicated emotions here may only be understood. If he had not been the judge of my first article to society, and I had not become the judge of his professional title 30 years later, things would never have been like this
Awkward. I don't think that this kind of cause and effect can add any color to me, because I have always believed that life is not a competition where you win and I lose, but more like a wilderness relay race that goes on and on. Who runs slower and who
runs faster is probably due to the environment and climate. If I encountered so many wind, frost, rain, snow, steep slopes and quagmire like him, , maybe even slower than him. He has given me guidance, and then his power is at my feet. There is only a mutual dissolution relationship, and there is no transcendence or being transcended. But, can he understand all this? If he
understands, can he understand what I can understand? When these communications are not yet available, I cannot cause even a hint of embarrassment in the old man's heart in order to uncover the fold of life after 30 years.
You see, being a middle-aged man is such a hassle. Just for an early essay, I was just trying to figure out how not to embarrass that little girl from Hubei. Turn this dilemma to an old man. How many years later, when I become an old man, will that little girl from Hubei come to comfort me like this? By then, will I be able to feel
this kind of comfort?
It’s a trivial matter, but when I think about it carefully, I can feel all the taste. I can only sigh inexplicably at the warmth and desolation of life
and the rush of time. Forceful and long.
A Western philosopher said that only old people who have experienced many vicissitudes of life will understand the true philosophy of life. The same sentence,
spoken by an old man, is a hundred times more profound than that spoken by a young man. I cannot entirely agree with this. Philosophy arises from the struggle between two opposing forces, so it is more popular among middle-aged people. All the truly outstanding philosophers of life in the world completed their ideological systems in middle age. In old age, the magnetic field of life has tended to one pole and tends to be single-phase middle-aged
People may not always express the confusion about the intersection of two forces in the appearance of philosophy, but most of them are in the magnetic field of philosophy
中. I think that 30 years ago I could not understand many of the secrets of life, and 30 years later I am already wandering on the edge of life, and the edge is only the edge after all. Therefore, not to mention other things, in terms of the experience of life, the most important thing is that now, I am middle-aged. For this reason, I wrote this sequel to the short article "The Weight of Thirty Years".