Live as you’re dead.

I never used to think living like a dead person would be my wish someday.

Since my childhood, I’ve thought about being a lawyer, a singer, a diplomat, a writer, a news anchor, a columnist, a coffee shop owner, a book store clerk, a boutique salesgirl……all these fancies based on one common assumption, that life is a positive thing and I want to live the most out of it. Unfortunately I have thousands of doubts about that now. It’s not in a bad way, you should now.

I try to reflect on myself for some moments everyday, but the pure loneliness makes me unable to clear my thoughts every time. When people start to pity him/herself, all of his/her judgments become unjustifiable. Hence I realize that I need to get rid of the self-pity thing before any thoughts come up. It’s difficult and almost impossible, but worth a try.

Work is tiring, actually not bad. I can’t say it’s something I’m passionate with, coz all the passions about things you haven’t really experienced is just a lie you told yourself repeatedly. It’s a bubble that can break at any moment, like the property market now. And getting back to the topic, being a journalist is never my deemed terminal, but an experience that I think would be favorable to what I really want. (What I really want is another question here.) Like when you’re on the way to somewhere, stop at some critical points will make the journey more meaningful and the destination more enjoyable. But with all the discretion to choose the path, and a terrible decision maker as I am, I really don’t know whether I’m right about mine. Not to mention what the “destination”, or “discretion”, really means. Just by giving them a second thought I get myself totally messed up.

That leads to the start of this post, when I tried to get something out of all these inconclusive pieces, maybe live like a dead person isn’t that bad as it sounds. To even sound crazier, maybe I am living like a dead person, and everyone else is too. We all crave for liveliness and we all have had that. It certainly tastes sweet. But look at everything into the essence, you see a black hole and you feel bored. Most terribly yet quite fairly, the more you want to squeeze out of the life which you were given unexpectedly, the faster it’s eating back at you.

Some like to pitch life as an enemy to battle with, which sounds too serious to me. But if it has to be, taking it easy is probably the only way to win. And in the battle of mine, I know I don’t have to win, I always can pretend to be dead, for a while or for long. That doesn’t really matter.

我从来没有想到“像死了一样活着”有一天竟会成为一种期待.

小的时候大人总是会引导我们对于未来的幻想.我爷爷曾说:”希望你成为一个外交家.”于是我想过成为一个外交家.后来又听大人说:律师是个赚钱的行 业.并且小时候的价值观里律师绝对是劫富济贫的角色,于是我又开始盘算着成为律师.而再后来的作家,出道或仅仅是酒吧歌手,摄影师,新闻主播,专栏撰稿 人,咖啡馆老板娘,书店小妹,名牌服装店店员…所有这一切对于职业的幻想,无论贫贱富贵,其实都是建立在一个共同的假设上,即生活是令人期待的,而我 必须让自己尽可能地从中体验些什么.而渐渐地我对这个假设产生了动摇.倘若这种动摇能使我更接近真实,那么这其实并不是一件坏事.

我试图每天都对自己的生活进行一定程度的思考,但一种带来窒息感的孤独却让理性思考成为困难.当一个人开始自怜自已,这时候所催生的所有思想都变得 失去参考价值了.因此我知道如果想要试图将一些事情弄明白,就必须先彻底摆脱这些无谓的自怜.这很难,简直不可能,但值得一试.

工作有压榨之嫌,而除了投入和产出的严重不成比例以外,我并不感到糟糕.但如果要做到绝对诚实,我也无法再大言不惭地说这是我的激情所在,因为假如 还没有体验个透就言说激情,那么激情不过是一个不断对自己重复的谎言罢了.就像现在的房地产市场一样,泡沫总是一碰即碎的.更何况做一个新闻记者从来不是 我笃定的终点,我只是一直相信记者是更接近真相的人群,而真相对我所真正希冀的总是有好处的.(我真正希冀的是什么,这又是另一个棘手的问题了.)当一个 人走在一段遥远的路途上,或许是需要在途中去拜访一些别的景色的.那些景色会让旅程更成熟,也会让目的地更令人欢愉.问题的关键是,当我被赋予对这条路径 的自作主张的权利时,我开始慌张,担心自己走了错的路,看到了不对头的风景.我向来是一个糟糕的决策者.更不用说“目的地”或“自由选择”这些字眼究竟意 味着什么,稍加探究,已毫无头绪.

于是又回到了文章的开头.当我试图从这些零碎的线头里强行发现些什么的时候,我发现,或许像死了一样活着并不像它听起来那么可怕.更夸张一点,或许 我正在像死了一样活着,或许所有人都正在像死了一样活着.我们渴望生命的鲜活,也都曾拥有过那些激烈快乐着的时刻.那样的过去必然是难以忘怀的.而当你看 向所有事物的最深处,那本质上的虚无看起来就像一个黑洞,你感到无聊透了.最可怕的是,当你越是想要从生命中榨取尽可能多的快乐,生命往往也正加速吞噬着 你.这其实是个公平的交易.

有人喜欢把生命渲染成一个需要去与之战斗的对立的存在,这种比喻对我来说太严肃了.如果这场战争势在必行,或许别把它当真才是唯一的胜算.而在我的私人战争里,胜利不是一件必需品.我知道我永远可以选择像死了一样活着,一会儿,或一辈子.时间其实并不重要.