Relieved to have lost it

A folder containing thousands of MP3 files of my favorite songs, painstakingly collected since I was 15, was completely deleted. The folder vanished with a single stupid click of my own, during a moment of idle daydreaming, wanting to keep myself busy by cleaning up my computer. I pressed Shift+Delete repeatedly. Rectangular files, yellow and blue, disappeared one by one with a faint "whoosh" sound. By the time I realized that among the many that had vanished was the music folder I had cherished for so many years, it was too late.

I stared blankly at the screen for a long time, feeling as if the folder had vanished, taking with it a whole sky of memories from my fifteen years of youth. My family was poor. At 15, of course, I didn't have my own computer. In 2003 and 2004, my friends and I, from the 80s generation, saved up our breakfast money and occasionally skipped the last class to go to the internet cafe near the school. I remember that cafe vividly, with its rusty sliding iron door that creaked violently every time a customer came in or out, as if it were about to fall off, about 20 old computers crammed together, screens flickering with all sorts of applications in the dim neon light.

The first songs I liked were heard at that internet cafe. The worn-out, dirty, and smelly headphones, clung tightly to my head from serving dozens of customers every day, pouring into my ears the sad, unfamiliar songs of Jay Chou, JJ Lin, Show Luo, Wang Leehom… Back then, Yahoo! was booming, and friends from all over the world, who knew each other through youth forums, would send links to listen to Chinese music, translate the lyrics, and urge me, “Listen, it’s great!” as if “popularizing” a vital part of youth culture.

The lyrics are so sad:Dandelions by the elementary school fence / are a beautiful scene carrying the fragrance of memories / The cicadas from the football field at noon / after so many years, still sound as beautiful as ever / Folding wishes into paper airplanes to send them off / because we couldn't wait for that shooting star / Carefully tossing the coin of fate / without knowing where it will go / The promise from childhood still appears clearly / We made a pinky promise and believed that / the promise to wander together is the only stubbornness of yours that still remains now…I downloaded and saved all the songs from that era, songs imbued with the fragrance of jasmine, the dreams of childhood idols, memories and hopes from afar.

This folder contains thousands of songs, collected from fragments of youthful memories. Within the folder are smaller files, divided into stages of my growth. The 2000s, the 2010s, the 2020s. During those years, sometimes I liked Chinese music, sometimes I loved Vietnamese bolero, sometimes I listened to Trinh Cong Son's music, or UK music… The music was a jumbled mess within the order of my growing mind, and looking at it, I always immediately remember who I once was, what I was like during a certain period of my life. But now it's all over; I've lost them, lost the sadness, the joy, the memories, the nostalgia, the utter heartbreak, the overwhelming happiness…

I thought about that loss for a long time, feeling very sad and regretful. But then, strangely, the more I thought about it, the calmer I became – a calmness like the still surface of a lake after a stone falls into the water. The lake knows that deep beneath the mossy bottom, a sediment of stone has fallen and remains there forever, but what does it matter? That's enough, knowing that is enough. Perhaps what's past is what should be past, what's lost is what should be lost. When we accept loss, it also means we accept letting go of our own possessiveness.

My music folder, containing thousands of rare and valuable files, always filled me with anxiety about losing them during software installations, drive changes, and other storage modifications. Unconsciously, it became a burden on my mind. Now that it's gone, all that heavy burden has dissipated. I accept that memories, both happy and sad, will fade with time and the limited memory of humankind. I accept forgetting who I once was, what I did, and where I was. I accept that my present self is built upon countless broken versions of the past, whose stumbles, mistakes, and failures I can no longer remember. When I realized this, the loss suddenly wasn't terrifying anymore; only boundless relief remained…