Until now, I still have the same feeling of my childhood, the feeling when walking on the roads...
My first path was a small alley, an alley with a fence of mulberry and bright red hibiscus flowers. My father, fearing that I – a little girl of 1 or 2 years old learning to walk, would slip and fall – had packed bricks and mortar and laid them on the paths. It was only a very short distance to the village road, only about five or seven steps, but each time I walked, I felt steadfast and supported by my father’s love and protection.
The small alley welcomed me to a world larger than the house, the beautiful banks, the hibiscus flowers that were always in my sight. Starting with the village road, leading to the fields, the river, the sun shining brightly from the distant horizon, the grasshoppers flying chaotically on the dike with the flickering purple color of the clover, letting me meet many villagers rushing to the fields at dawn to plow and hoe...
The road to my village in those days was muddy and muddy on cold and drizzly winter days. I carried my sandals and walked barefoot on the mud road to go to first grade at the village temple. I touched the soil of my hometown, walked on the footprints of the villagers and the buffaloes that had gone before me. There were days when I could still feel the warmth of the people and the buffaloes that had gone before me. I always silently thanked that warmth, the warmth that helped me to walk steadily, and felt my heart filled with more love and tenderness... I always thought that the people who went before me wanted to leave me a little bit of warmth...
From the village road, I walked out onto many wider roads. “This world originally has no roads, people walk forever and they become roads.” I deeply understand and love the writer Lu Xun’s saying in its most bare meaning. Even though I had never heard of his saying during my childhood. But wherever I go, when I walk, I keep the habit of slowly looking at my feet, to think, I am walking on millions of footprints that have passed. I am walking on a road that was pioneered by the first person, and hundreds of thousands of other people have expanded it, made it clearer, and made it a path, a big road… I am walking through so much sweat, tears, aspirations, hopes, and sometimes even despair and misery. The footprints of people in pain, people in happiness, people in a hurry, people in leisure… But they have helped make my path today clearer, wider, and always warmer and more confident.
Later in life, I reflected on the story of the “path” - which had existed in me in the most naked sense - to see that all our “paths” are stories of the “path”. There are so many paths, so many forks in the road that we choose. We reach the shore by our own choice, by our awareness, by our experience, our awakening, our judgment, and if possible, whether you are adventurous or wise, be the one to open your own path. But certainly, you cannot deny history, you cannot deny that the path you have taken has the footprints of pioneers. You cannot deny that the path you have had to go through, to reach today's experience, you had to stumble and pay the price...
Netizens now often use the term “turn around”, meaning a sudden change in perception, ideology, thinking and action. Well, turn around. You still have to return to the road you came from to return to the finish line. Or you still have to go on another road to get to where you want to go, but how can you deny that you have had a journey together or maybe with bigger roads, it is the road created by our ancestors.
So, no matter what, let's say thank you, even though tomorrow we may go our separate ways...
Illustration: Document
