Life is like a spinning carousel. The scenery flashes before our eyes, and the people in our memories have long been forgotten in the passage of time. The dreams we once had seem to dissipate with time. Those things we thought we could rely on become fragile in the face of constant challenges. People often talk about “fate”, but I know that fate is nothing more than the trajectory of our trivial choices.
I remember that when I was a child, I always heard some stories about fate. The heroes in those stories often made some great choices under the guidance of fate and saved one world after another. When I grew up, I gradually realized that the so-called fate is not the glory and greatness that people yearn for, but piles of dust and those seemingly insignificant details, which quietly change your life every day of your life.
When I was young, my father always liked to tell me: “Life is not a game of victory, but an effort to constantly avoid failure.” At that time, I didn’t quite understand the meaning of his words. I always felt that he was trying to persuade me not to pursue those unattainable dreams. However, as time went by, I finally understood that it was a summary of his many years of life experience. Because no one can escape the ruthlessness and heaviness of life. No matter how hard you try, there are always some obstacles that cannot be crossed.
I once walked through a desolate city corner in a cold winter, wearing a worn-out cotton coat. The cold wind blew through the broken streets, making a low whine. There were few people on the street, and occasionally a few people hurried by with anxiety and uneasiness on their faces. Their eyes were full of innate indifference, as if they had no hope in facing the world. I stopped and looked at the dim sky in the distance, and my father’s words flashed in my mind: “Life is sometimes like a thick wall. The more you want to cross it, the more it will suffocate you.”
At that time, I could only smile bitterly and keep moving forward. Isn’t life like this? It makes you fall into the abyss without hesitation at the moment when you just have hope. The cruelest thing is that all these tortures never speak, and they quietly eat away at your inner strength every day.
My mother is often such a person. She never likes to express emotions, and she never says even the simplest greetings. Her world seems to be only about trivial matters in life. She is busy with housework and taking care of the family every day. It seems that everything is going on step by step. When I was young, I didn’t understand her silence. I felt that she was just living for a certain responsibility, but not really living out herself. Until one day, I found that in her ordinary world, there were countless pains and helplessness.
Her health was getting worse, but she never told us. In her eyes, our future is more important than her own life, even though she has long felt powerless. But every time I tried to ask her, she always used a smile to cover up the fatigue hidden in the corners of her eyes, “It’s okay, child, Mom is fine.” Her words were like a sharp knife, piercing the softest part of my heart. At that time, I suddenly understood that the mother’s love was so heavy, and the pain she endured was accumulated in this silent dedication.
After I became an adult, I began to get used to loneliness and indifference. Every day, walking along this unknown street, seeing those people in a hurry, I always wonder: Are they also like me, carrying invisible weights on their shoulders? Are they also crying silently for their dreams that have gone away? Life has gradually become a helpless normality, in which we are all like sand in an hourglass, eroding little by little.
Sometimes, I would stand in front of the window at night and look at the endless darkness outside. Those unknown lights seemed to be telling me some distant voice, but I could never hear it clearly. The boy who once believed that he could change the world has long disappeared in the long river of time. Instead, he is a tired adult who has long forgotten his original dream and no longer expects life to give any answers.
However, this does not mean giving up. We still move forward in this endless cycle. As my father said, “Life is sometimes like a wall, but everyone will find their own gap.” Even if the gap is small or almost invisible, its existence will give you a glimmer of hope at some point.
Perhaps life is full of suffering and injustice, and what we have to do is to find our own light in it. No matter how weak this light is, it is still worth it for us to live in this heavy world.