During the Spring Festival this year, my high school classmates and I went to an 18-year-old appointment.
We are from a liberal arts class in a middle school in the suburbs of Beijing. In 2012, 100 days before the college entrance examination, everyone wrote down their wishes, put them in a peach-colored heart-shaped box, and agreed to open them ten years later. Later, for various reasons, the ten-year covenant became twelve.
The promise of the 18-year-old was finally fulfilled at the age of 30. On the fourth day of the first lunar month, in a McDonald's in my hometown, I, as the organizer, opened this dusty box of time. From 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., 16 of the 47 students in the class came to the appointment.
The present and the past are in dialogue, the ideal and the reality are intertwined, and adulthood and youth beckon. We talk about the family of origin, the college entrance examination, love, marriage, work, choice, ......Some people changed their fate through the college entrance examination, and some people did not slowly dissipate until 12 years later; Some people use marriage to hurt the original family, and some people have not been able to be understood and affirmed by their parents; Some people go out to wander, while others choose to return to the suburbs to live an ordinary and stable life; Some people can't accept the "involution" workplace, and some people set up a "value promotion" personality ...... for themselves
Each of us is confused, struggling, looking for answers, adapting, self-consistent, and trying to live in the various propositions given by the times.
The box that has been dusty for 12 years holds the wishes we wrote down when we were 18 years old. Photo by Beijing News reporter Liu Siwei.
Xiaomi: Reconcile with your 18-year-old self.
I hope my parents are healthy and everything is fine.
I wish I could get into a good university first, then have a good job, and then take good care of my mother. ”
12 years ago, Xiaomi wrote these three lines of wishes.
She was my tablemate. I still remember that in the evening self-study in the third year of high school, she lay on her desk, tilted her head to me and talked to me about her family, and silently wept. Her father cheated and did all the ridiculous things, and her mother worked as a cleaner to support the family alone, and she had a hard time. Later, her parents divorced and her mother remarried, and the relationship between her and her father has been very stiff.
When your original family is not good, you have no imagination about a happy family, and you feel that all the families in the world are so bad. At the age of 18, she didn't dare to think that what her original family owed her was compensated for in her marriage.
I attended her wedding a few years ago, and at the ceremony, she choked up when she said, "I never thought that I would meet someone who would be so tolerant of me." Her father was also present at the wedding, and the "father of the bride" with a corsage shared a face with his daughter, sitting tense in a chair like an outsider.
Over the years, Xiaomi's attitude towards her father is still indifferent and alienated, she doesn't want him to participate in her life, and she basically doesn't talk to him, it is her lover who reconciles and maintains the relationship between father and daughter. During the New Year's holidays, my lover will remind Xiaomi to give my father a little money; Dad was sick and hospitalized, and it was his lover who ran before and after, and even took the initiative to scrub his father-in-law's body. As a daughter, she thinks she can't do it to this extent.
12 years have passed, and the damage brought to Xiaomi by the original family still exists, but fortunately, as she wishes, everything is getting better. She now has a good job and can create a good life for her mother and herself. Among Xiaomi's wishes, only half of the sentence was not fulfilled - she failed to "get admitted to a good university", and the difference of a few points slipped into the second book.
Our homeroom teacher, Sister Yan, was a thirty 30-year-old woman back then, who always talked about "grades and rankings are not the most important, living happily is" and "either studying or traveling", and practiced it. Such a teacher suddenly "changed his temperament" before our college entrance examination, and began to nervously "occupy" the evening self-study test papers. Everyone is like a great enemy.
Although the college entrance examination cannot decide everything, it has also changed the fate of some people to a greater or lesser extent. The most lively and cheerful girl in our class, one day before the college entrance examination, suddenly began to study in retreat, refusing any communication, and she fought hard and was admitted to the "211" in a southern provincial capital; The female student who ranks first in the class all the year round, her first choice is Peking University, and after repeating her studies for a year, she studied at a local double non-school and became a civil servant after graduation; Xiaomi has always been obsessed with her failure in the college entrance examination, "very sad, like the sky is falling", so much so that in the past 12 years, she has not dared to take the initiative to speak every time she sees her high school class teacher.
On the evening of the Chinese New Year's Eve this year, she once again met Sister Yan, the head teacher, on the street. 30-year-old Xiaomi, who seemed to be suddenly relieved of the failure of the college entrance examination, took the initiative to take a photo with the teacher for the first time and posted it to the class group.
Xiaomi said that it was that regret that brought her to the trajectory of her life today. Xiaomi and her lover met through an introduction from her college classmates. She said, "I'm very satisfied with my current life, and I'm very happy." ”
30-year-old Xiaomi reconciled with her 18-year-old self.
In 2012, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, our class took a group photo in front of the stones in the cherry blossom garden. Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Uncle Kai: I've been on the road to "seeing the world".
Parents are alive and healthy!
Read all the books in the world and eat all over the world. ”
We haven't seen each other in 12 years. When meeting, there was no politeness and greetings, Uncle Kai put down the canvas bag, put out the Marshall speaker, took off the leather jacket, and the T-shirt showed off his attitude: "Romanticism or barbarism", there is a kind of carelessness that looks at the world. He was dressed in a sophisticated way – his nails were the same color as his glasses, and he wore a single stud earring and a silver tailband. The image is very different from the old man in school uniform 12 years ago, but it is very consistent with his identity as the former director of the head advertising agency.
But at the moment, he is unemployed. As a mid-level sandwiched between his boss and his employees, he was badly torn apart. Uncle Kai is the kind of "leader", the cherry blossoms in Yuyuantan are blooming, and he will take his friends to see the cherry blossoms during working hours. "But the boss thinks about the input-output ratio, and if you go out and see the cherry blossoms, you may not be able to come up with an idea that matches your wasted time. ”
Uncle Kai has a colleague from a large factory, and after joining the company, he began to submit an "hourly report" to the boss to report the progress of the work on an hourly basis. The boss recognized it and promoted it throughout the company. From the boss's point of view, Uncle Kai can understand: "Let everyone work tightly and create value all the time." But from a human point of view, he doesn't understand. Survival of the fittest, a colleague was promoted to director, and he resigned.
Uncle Kai has always been a very "Buddhist" one, he always holds a copy of the "Book of Changes" before the college entrance examination, and most of the time he is silent, like a brown bear with sad eyes.
Now I know that he was suffering from depression at that time, and reading the Book of Changes was looking for answers, and since then he has been rebuilding his cognition through reading, looking for ways and meaning to live.
He put "the parents are alive and healthy!" "As my first wish. He said that his depression came from his family, and that his mother's elders had died as a result, and that his mother had committed suicide three times so far.
After quitting his job, he wanted to change to a fun job, and his first thought was to find a stylish bar and work as a bartender. This simply turned his parents' outlook on life upside down.
People should have a regular job, be a teacher, go to a state-owned enterprise, even if they are a worker, it is good to have a skill. Dad persuaded him bitterly. While watching "Game of Thrones", he drooped his eyelids and nodded perfunctorily: "Well, that makes sense." ”
He and his parents never seem to be able to understand each other, and the generation gap is as deep as the Mariana Trench. "I don't care what they say, it's like watching a guy keep hitting the south wall, but the south wall never breaks. ”
But understanding is not a necessary condition for love. It wasn't until the last few years that Uncle Kai realized that his parents actually loved him very much. A few years ago, my parents quarreled, and he persuaded them to divorce, "You have sold the building, and it is okay to take the money to travel, I only ask you to leave me the bungalow in your hometown after you die." The house, he said, was more than 300 square meters and had a vegetable garden. He sketched out his future life: filling a few rooms with books, basking in the sun and reading books in the yard, and tending to the vegetable garden when he was tired.
His words were really listened to by his mother - she bulldozed the house in her hometown and laid a foundation that could build a six-story building, leaving enough foundation for the second half of her son's fantasy life. "She said, "When we're dead, you can build as high as you want. From this incident, Uncle Kai began to realize, "Even if my parents don't approve of me at all and don't understand everything about me, their love for me is pure." ”
Some love is hidden deep and takes time to discover it slowly; Some love is surging and can rekindle hope in life.
Now Uncle Kai is talking about "a good love", the other party is a "post-00s" girl, enthusiastic, cheerful, and noisy life, and he admires her from the bottom of his heart.
She made me re-open to the world. Uncle Kai, who has seen the vastness of the world and the colorful life, now reads the book he wrote 12 years ago, "Read all the books in the world, eat all over the world", and feel embarrassed by his own inadequacy.
The world is too big. But Uncle Kai has been on the road to "see the world", he said, the goals he wrote down are all trying to be completed, and he has never deviated from the line.
Let's go ahead, we're only 30 years old. Run. He said to himself.
After the 2012 college entrance examination, all the teachers and students of our class took a graduation photo on the playground. Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Old Cat: Return to the suburbs and live an ordinary and stable life.
May all of us succeed in our studies and be happy for life.
May I have wealth, talent, things, and integrity.
Make me happy and make everyone happy. ”
At first glance, the old cat's life is the most contrasting. Who would have thought that the old cat who skipped class, smoked, and fell in love in high school turned out to be an elementary school teacher now.
He wore a classic jacket for middle-aged people in the system, walked with his hands behind his back, and lost twenty pounds. It doesn't look fat, it's not lazy, and it even looks a little reliable. When I'm not smiling, this face still looks a little unfamiliar.
I've never seen him not laugh. The 18-year-old cat is like a fat, lazy and greedy cat, the big dimples on the fat face have never disappeared, and he mingles with a group of noisy friends all day long, wriggling his fat body to chase and fight, as if wasting time is his main business. At that time, he said, his happiness was like a cloud, very empty, "I just clubbed my chin and did nothing, and I was very happy." ”
When work, marriage, and children follow one another, the old cat's happiness is nothing. Now his happiness is based on concrete things related to work and children.
When people reach middle age and have been in the workplace for many years, many people put on masks and set up personalities to choose the most suitable protective color for themselves. There is a free and casual male classmate in the class who doesn't like to study, and now the character of the unit in the system is "a Beijing native who does not seek to be motivated and gets by"; The well-read, talented boy set a record for high scores in the public examination in his hometown, and he created a character for himself that "has ideas at work, values honor and promotion", but he still hopes to do something to make the world a better place, just like his dream when he was 18 years old: "The heart of the group is good, and the laughter becomes poetry".
No one is acting at work, everyone is acting. They said to me. The free-spirited old cat put on a serious mask, he was a reliable teacher, and he sincerely felt sorry for those children. He looked at the children still sitting quietly in their seats for ten minutes between classes, as if they had no awareness of being able to go out of the classroom to play since they entered school, and couldn't help but sigh: "I was still playing with sandbags in my junior year of high school!" ”
The old cat never wanted to be a teacher. In the two directions of normal and non-normal, he decisively chose the latter, because he didn't want to be a teacher.
After graduation, most of the students in the class went to work in "Beijing". In the eyes of outsiders, we are "Beijingers", but for us who have been living in the suburbs until the age of 18, Beijing and our hometown are two completely different worlds. As a "Beijinger", I had never taken the subway before I went to university, and it wasn't until the second half of my freshman year that I figured out how to take the subway. Therefore, the hometown is the hometown, and only the urban area of Beijing is what we call "Beijing".
At the beginning, Lao Mao worked in a company in "Beijing", commuting by subway, and the Huilongguan subway station near the company was among the top ten in the number of Beijing subway stations.
I especially can't stand a crowded place. It would have been a happy day, but as soon as I got on the subway, everything was interrupted. The old cat said.
Later, he bought an electric car to commute to work. "But you still have to take the subway to go somewhere else! The old cat emphasized. The question is never in the subway, the question is: "A bed in a big city or a suite in a county town?" ”
The old cat chose to leave "Beijing" and return to his hometown. The primary school in his hometown recruits teachers, the salary is good, and his parents are satisfied, so there is no reason why he should not come back. Every morning, he drove from his home in the county town to the township to work, and all he saw along the way were trees, rocks and reservoirs, all the way was beautiful, clean and comfortable, and he no longer had to hug the suffocating crowd on the subway.
He said that he is very adaptable to this kind of life, can find real happiness, and he is also very accepting of this self who lives an ordinary and stable life, "Accept it, and there will be nothing." ”
In this dialogue with 15 people after 12 years, lasted 12 hours, and everyone completed a look back at their original intentions. Although we are ignorant at the age of 18, what we cherished then is still the other side that most of us are looking for today. Over the years, almost everyone has been moving forward along their original aspirations and tracks. This time, we took a photo of our 30-year-old holding our 18-year-old wish card. The countdown to the next ten-year covenant begins.
Beijing News reporter Liu Siwei editor Liu Qian proofreader Wang Xin.