At 6:45am on Friday, I sat on the bus to the airport and grappled with this sudden feeling of engorgement. Something felt strangely large and swollen and I vainly tried to pinpoint its physical location, all the while seeing this perfect mental picture of pinching a slippery blackhead. Later I realize that it was probably just nausea caused by motion sickness and the general discomfort of being awake so damned early.
Walking or sitting in a moving car induces the bad habit of contemplation. I thought, So this is me at age thirty: fiercely independent, proud, confident but with serious weaknesses, idealistic, compulsive obsessive about picture hanging and folding plastic bags, all the time trying to become a better person, a failing perfectionist in short (is there any other kind?).
Sometimes I think about more important sounding questions, about equality and freedom, about whether that dirty uneducated bastard sitting across the bus from me should really be given the power to decide how to spend my tax dollars. I think about the distribution of wealth, about the placement of the self professionally and socially, about opportunities and short cuts, about the structure and machinery of a functioning society. At age twenty I was busy nursing a broken heart while breaking others. Now I feel like I’m finally ready to start caring about others. Maybe everybody goes through this. We start in a small narrow musty caccoon, grappling with the balance of emotion and reason, and only after much struggle do we emerge into the wide world beyond. Who knows what comes after that.
So at age thirty I feel ready to embark on the next stage of my life. I want to learn how the world works. I want to learn everything from the turning of the leaf to the stock market. I want to learn history and humanity. Maybe I’ll finally learn to love and care for others the way I’ve learned to love and care for myself, only to learn to stop caring at age forty.
Of course ultimately none of this matters. You can’t take anything to the grave with you. Everything we’ve ever loved and held dear will be lost. This is life. One day the rose in your hand will turn to dust. This inspiration came from seeing my new roommate’s ugly furniture. My beloved apartment will revert back to a bachelor pad, after all the parties and the weddings and the happy beautiful people. MY happy beautiful people. How sad is that.
So yes, life is meaningless, but it tastes, oh, so good.
(This marks the 301st post on this blog. 
巧克力猫王
来自遥远的巴比伦
E文真烂啊.看了半天都不明白您说的是啥…
最后一句蛮不错地.
我还想加,点……可以不.
味道很好.就是忒多忒麻烦了.酸甜苦辣.统统到了自己这里,说是好.
％％％％％
呵呵，发了一顿牢骚而已。你加得很好啊。味道确实有很多种，而且俺的态度是”宁滥勿缺”。：）
－－琪子
打你!
你发神经啦,居然写了一大堆日语.
％％％％％
是鸟语，鸟语！！：）
－－琪子
太哲学，太有境界了
％％％％％
:p 再往下是不是要说，太装B了？俺也觉得不太好意思。想一想还成，写出来好像就太过分了。可是又想给30岁盖个章。
－－琪子
Wonderful writing.
I could tell you are an academic. Only academics think this way. And you sound like you are in the humanities–you are deeply concerned about human beings. Economists would not write this way.
That’s just my educated guess.
Let me know if it’s correct. Drop me an email.
shamux 爱特 gmail com
%%%%%
Hehe, partly right, partly wrong. Half academic, yes. But not in the humanities, just a humanist.
– 琪子
Hmmm… Half academic? What does it mean?
I should add that you sound like an academic at 30. No more, no less. 呵呵
％％％％％
Half academic = 身在曹营心在汉 ＝ 东不成西不就 ＝ 一瓶子不满半瓶子咣荡，成吧？
And I maintain that not every academic is explicitly introspective.
– 琪子