Listen to Rock

After graduating from college, I had a brief experience as a teacher.

It was a private high school that worked seven days to seven nights, with a one-hour break at noon. For that hour only, the school's doors were open, so students and teachers could go out and "let off steam".

I always walked along the street to the east of the school, to the slightly busy area, and stopped at a restaurant called "Yangzhou Ren".

"I had a fixed menu every day: one duck blood vermicelli soup, no duck liver, and two duck oil baklava.

During that time, I was always in a bad mood.

It seems that the moment of leaving the campus, I realized the preciousness of campus life. Although the work is also on campus, this campus is not the other campus, I want to go back to study, want to have a quiet desk again.

But this is a luxury.

The school management is very strict, and the workload is heavy, so I hardly have time to read; my undergraduate school is not known, and there is no certainty to apply for graduate school at top universities.

So, every day I struggled with myself: affirming myself, denying myself, hoping, despairing. ...... Along with the struggle of self was the struggle for time: reading professional books on the way to work, doing an English reading comprehension in the gap between classes and lessons; in the office, although the sound of people was booming, I was as quiet as water, with only one voice in my head: I want to fly out, fly out.

Therefore, I treasure the "duck blood vermicelli soup time" every day.

This is the only moment when I can get away from the crowd and have a moment of relaxation.

While waiting for the waiter to serve the food, I always have to drift off for a while, and then I form a habit - of asking myself once a day: What do you want? How do you get what you want? What should I do now?

The duck blood vermicelli soup came.

I poured a few drops of vinegar into the boiling hot soup, mixed it with some chili sauce, and then picked up chunks of duck blood with chopsticks, wrapped them around the long vermicelli, and served them in my mouth together. The strong taste sensation is still unforgettable to me. What's even more memorable is that one day near the exams, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to chronic sleep deprivation, so I put down my chopsticks and said to myself, "Stay up for a while longer and you'll be able to live the life you want, and then you'll miss eating a bowl of duck blood vermicelli soup in a snack bar and then going back to work hard."

A go for nearly a decade.

One day, I was discussing the cover of a new book with designer Xiao Qi.

Xiao Qi is a well-known figure in the industry, and in the past few years, he has won awards for binding design at major book festivals.

On this day, Xiao Qi lost his usual patience, and when I was still hesitating about the cover slogan, he tapped on MSN: "Have you got an idea yet? I have to go to see Xu Wei's concert."

Xiao Qi's MSN avatar was a blue lotus flower, and his signature: I'm listening to rock in Beijing.

The topic left the cover and turned to Xu Wei, rock and roll, and then to Xiao Qi's "dark years".

Many years ago, he studied environmental engineering at a junior college in Changsha and was assigned to work at the local environmental protection bureau after graduation. He thought to himself, "Every day I answer the phone, write materials, and do odd jobs when I was only a teenager.

So he picked up the brush again - a hobby he had once had - and began to study with a teacher, then simply quit his public job and joined an interior design firm, the more he did it, the more he felt his expertise was poor, and he enrolled in a nearby high school repeater class, where he was older than the rest of his classmates, so much so that almost everyone asked him. "How many times are you taking the college entrance exam?"

"Back then, it was stressful but joyful because every day you got a little closer to your goal." He said, "Riding home on my bike, my favorite part was the downhill part, with the wind whistling in my ears and my heart soaring."

One day, Xiaoqi heard "Blue Lotus" on TV, and as soon as Xu Wei opened his mouth, he was stunned. At that moment, his goal had an artistic symbol: "I want to go to Beijing to do design, and one day, I want to listen to rock and Xu Wei's songs in Beijing."

What happened after that we can all guess -

Whether it's schooling, or job hunting afterward, as soon as Xu Wei's songs started, Xiao Qi was like a shot in the arm, he said, "To this day, every time I hear Xu Wei's songs, I seem to be reminded that you got the life you want, so cherish it and keep working hard."

Xiao Qi went offline, he went to his Beijing to listen to rock.

For some reason, I suddenly remembered the bowl of duck blood vermicelli soup at the "Yangzhou People" restaurant a few years ago.

There was a time when every day at noon, I would silently recite "boil for a while longer, you will ...... then ......", I buried my head, when a chopstick of duck blood vermicelli, always I think there is a west window waiting for me ahead, and I am already in front of the west window, nostalgic for the efforts and experiences that are happening.

Now, there is no doubt that the West Window that I was hoping for at that time is also a thing of the past.

Xiao Qi is right, and I am often reminded that as long as there is a bowl of duck blood vermicelli soup on the table.

One always has to go around in circles to find the real and correct goals in life, right?

To achieve those goals, we often need self-motivation, we use some symbols to do psychological implication, suggesting that we can survive, and can reach the other side; when survive and stand on the other side, the influence of this implication is still there, duck blood vermicelli soup or Beijing, rock and roll, we have drawn strength from them, when we meet again, we can't help but pay tribute to the past struggle and dream When we meet them again, we can't help but pay tribute to the struggles and dreams of the past, and the struggles are also inertial.

What about you? What are your mental cues? What are the symbols used as hints?