We have always liked to celebrate the resilience and tenacity of life, but we often ignore the vulnerability of those who have endured inadequacy in love for a long time.
The first time I read the book "Silent Confession" was when I was a sophomore in college, and the deepest feeling at that time was that none of the family told the truth, and they were not honest at all.
Now that I read it again, in addition to the emotions of suffocation and calling, what comes to mind is Liu Liangcheng's sentence in "One Man's Village":
Looking back on people's lives, many of us were born in a daze, and then inexplicably were given a lot of expectations, when I was a child, I often heard my parents say that I want to be a teacher, a doctor, a police officer, and ...... when I was a child
We all understand the feelings of our parents, but the reality is often that:Many people have been hurt by the expectation of "in the name of love", and this hurt is not physical pain, but running all the way on the path of other people's expectations, but forgetting to take care of their true selves.
"Silent Confession" uses the fall of a flower girl to make me rethink to the endHow should people live this life in order to live up to themselves.
The Four Disciplines of the Fan "Cloud:In life, we must accept the fixed number and pursue the variable.
Everything that happens in this world is only existence, there is no good or bad, but we live in a world of duality, and it is easy to put some things against each other.
* Marilyn in "Silent Confession" is such a person: she is overly obedient to the norms of human society, has always looked at problems in a binary opposition, is enslaved by obsession, loses herself, and indirectly kills her daughter Lydia.
When she was young, Marilyn was an outstanding female college student.
Single-parent family, she has had a dream of being a doctor and scientist since she was a child, she can't get used to seeing her mother as a home economics teacher, and she wants to work hard and become different.
So she immersed herself in studying physics, did chemistry experiments better than boys, and finally was admitted to Harvard with her own efforts.
Things seemed to be going the way they were imagined, until Marilyn met James, a college professor, in her junior year.
James, a descendant of Chinese immigrants, began to feel deep down that this boy must know what it was like to be different, and then she fell in love with him with an inexplicable fantasy.
However, James' greatest wish is to be ordinary, and then the two of them start the wrong love story with mismatched expectations.
Later, Marilyn became pregnant unexpectedly, and they moved to a small college together, and Marilyn failed to finish her studies, so she said to herself: When I give birth to the child first, I will come back to continue my studies.
I didn't expect her to wait for 8 years.
Later, Marilyn's mother died, and when Marilyn was sorting out the relics, she found that her mother didn't seem to have left any traces of herself in this world, and she didn't even have a **.
She also discovers that her mother's most precious thing is the cookbook, and she suddenly feels angry at the insignificance of her mother's life, and she must not live such a life.
She remembered her unfinished studies, remembered her career as a doctor who had never had a chance to start, and she suddenly collapsed and despaired in that moment.
She was thinking, "If I didn't have a husband and no children, I could still do it." ”
So she decided to run away from home, and she left a small note for James: ".In fact, I have never been able to fulfill my deepest desires. ”
But for Lydia, who was only 5 years old at the time, Marilyn's mother's non-resignation was tired of her, she was not good enough, and if she had been more obedient, her mother would not have run away from home.
So, in order to save her mother, Lydia killed the needs of her true soul and put on the same as her mother liked: she became fond of medicine and fulfilled her dreams for her mother.
We all know the result of this, Lydia died, committed suicide, and everyone couldn't believe it.
Reading this, I believe many readers have imagined the same as me: if Marilyn had not said goodbye, if it had not been for her perennial unhappiness, if it had not been for her poor communication with James, the tragedy would not have been caused.
We all understand Marilyn's loneliness and frustration, but we can't support her not saying goodbye.
Life is never either/or, two days ago there was a popular Internet chicken soup sentence, I quite like it, that's what I said:Which page the wind blows to read which page, when the flowers bloom to see when.
Life is nothing more than an experience, how easy it is to miss and regret, so we must have a more light and non-demanding mentality, and do not have to force work on some things that are not caused.
Letting go is not resigned to fate, but accepting it all, and only in this way can we have enough adaptability and flexibility to blossom elsewhere.
Marilyn, who ran away from home, soon found out that she was pregnant again, and had no choice but to return home, unbeknownst to her daughter, Lydia, who had made a decision in her heart
"As long as my mother can come back, whatever she wants me to do, I will definitely say: Yes mother, yes mother. ”In the days of running away from home, Lydia found the cooking book that her mother Marilyn had taken from her grandmother and threw it away, and she wanted to express her desire that as long as her mother did not see the book, she would not be sad.
But when Marilyn came home, she read the message that her daughter was telling her that I would never live like this.
She felt that her daughter must want to realize her own career, and she thought that she must do her best to help her daughter realize her dreams and never limit her daughter to the family.
In this way, she pinned her hopes on Lydia for a moment, and poured all her love and support into cultivating Lydia.
But Lydia didn't like the thick, big, incomprehensible medical books at all, and even at Christmas, her mother gave her gifts from books that disgusted her to the point of disgust, such as "The Coloring Atlas of Human Anatomy" and "Famous Women of Science".
She wanted to throw it away, but she couldn't because it was her mother's dream.
What's even more desperate is that Lydia has to bear the "high hopes" of her father James.
James has diametrically opposite expectations for his daughter:He wants his children to be different, have a lot of friends, and be popular with the crowd.
Because James has been out of place because of racism since he was a child, he has always longed to fit in with his classmates and gain a sense of identity, but he has never been able to achieve his wish.
Lydia found out one day that she was just fighting a ** with her classmates, and her dad was very happy, and from that day on, she started pretending to hit ** to friends who didn't exist at all.
James saw that his daughter had such a good popularity, and happily bought Lydia all kinds of interpersonal books, urged Lydia to call unfamiliar friends, forced her to go to the prom, and expected her to invite her classmates to the movies.
But Lydia had no passion for such things.
Because most of the time I have to deal with all kinds of super difficult homework assigned by my mother Marilyn, and I don't have the time and energy to socialize.
That's all,Lydia spent the next ten years of her life busy with her parents' "expectations".
She learned to disguise, she learned to smirk, she learned to obey, she learned to cooperate, she learned to act, she learned to please others, but she neglected herself.
Teacher Dai Jianye once said such a passage:
"The hard work of your parents has nothing to do with you, and the pain of your parents has nothing to do with you, you don't need to rush to solve these problems, these are not caused by you, and you don't need to feel guilty, self-blame and self-kidnapping for these things.
My parents' lives were full of ups and downs and they had endured a lot of hardships, but these were caused by their countless choices.
Don't just be kidnapped because they said "it's all for you", wouldn't they have reached the pinnacle of life without you?
It's okay to love them and care about them, but that doesn't mean you have to bear their fate, you have a thousand ways to show love and gratitude, but the last thing you should do is sacrifice your life to be responsible for them. ”
How many people have been feeding their parents since they were young, and how many children have borne the cause and effect of their parents very early, and feel that it is not easy for their parents to endure hardships and suffering, so they overdraft their own energy to make blood for their parents.
However, people can really only be responsible for their own lives, everyone has their own life issues, children, he only came to this world with the help of his parents, and he has no responsibility to be responsible for his parents' lives.
Reading "Silent Confession", watching the story of Marilyn's family going around and around, I thinkThe world is changeable, and you need to think carefully before doing things in order to fully pay for your choices, otherwise the situation will get out of control and it will be easy to cause unnecessary harm to the people around you.
On the one hand, we feel how easy it is to miss and misunderstand, so we should cherish the person in front of us, and while the person who loves you is still around, we will tell each other about your fears, insecurities, desires, and even embarrassment and loneliness.
James would have told Marilyn earlier that he actually had low self-esteem, and that as a second-generation American immigrant, he was out of place in front of his white classmates, suffering from humiliation and inequality.
Tell Marilyn that he is actually eager to fit in, but his poor family and different skin colors have never been able to do so.
Even when he became a professor, the eyes of those around him remained the same.
Even when he graduated, he was unable to stay in school because of discrimination, and had to go to another school to teach.
Telling Marilyn about his inner embarrassment, that telling her to be different wasn't definitely a joyful thing, and even so, would she still want to be with him?
And Marilyn also told James about her dream, she wanted to be a doctor and a scientist, she wanted to be extraordinary, she wanted to be different, even so, would he still accept her?
It is true that in the early stage of love, we will be attracted to the other person's difference from us, we will be attracted by the other person's aura, and we will be desperate to put moths to the fire.
However, love will turn into fulfillment and dedication in the later stage, is James willing to unconditionally support Marilyn to achieve her dream of becoming a doctor? Or is he also the mainstream thought of that era, thinking that women should be husbands and children.
In the same way, Marilyn knows the terrified heart under James's glamorous exterior, will she still marry him without hesitation?
Love is often indebted: "Because of you, I have to commit to my family and be a housewife", "Because of you, I have to give up a high salary to be by your side", ......
However, there is one deficit that is completely avoidable.
That is to communicate in advance, while everything is in time.
How many interesting souls have been lost to another equally interesting soul, we can't change others, and we don't want to compromise for others, just before we owe them, we have time to set up our own frameworks, dreams, plans and principles for each other to see.At the end of the story of "Silent Confession", Marilyn and James confess their inner thoughts to each other, let go of the mustard, and get to know each other again.
Marilyn let go of her obsession, straightened her mind, and returned her attention to her family and her two children. James also saw his inner thoughts clearly and returned to his family.
It's just that this communication came a little late, and it could have been done without sacrificing Lydia.
"All our lives are to get rid of the expectations of others and find our true selves."
This is a sentence on the title page of "Silent Confessions".
From the very beginning of life, we have been given too many expectations: the eyes of our parents, the world, society, and others, we have long been unconsciously catered to, framed, and stereotyped.
Psychologist Carl Jung once said:
Your subconscious mind guides your life, and you call it fate, and when the subconscious is revealed, fate is rewritten.If we can see clearly that we have been living in some kind of cultural trap for a long time, in that cultural environment, we are required to be obedient, execute, do questions, take exams, and then repeat until **, and then get married, have children, and work ......
If we never doubt the legitimacy of this model, if we never doubt who is dealing the cards, then we will never see the cry of our souls.
And there are always people who are as humble as ants, and they can also emit a little light, and through this light, he sees himself as he really is.