Chatting with my roommate at night, I asked her what would make her happy, and she said with a smile that it was shopping after her salary was paid. Although she said that, in fact, every night when I typed on the keyboard, she would sit next to her and insist on drawing, and the two of them chatted with each other.
Some loves do not need to be said, but they always persist in actions silently. Even after a long day of hard work, we are willing to spend rest and entertainment time on it. Compared with various hobbies, I prefer reading books. This hobby is the strongest in college, and I often spend a whole day in the library by myself. Tired of work after graduation, I often ignore the book by the bedside and watch variety shows or idol dramas instead. This kind of mindless entertainment can easily defeat the love I say. This kind of liking of mine is often superficial and shallow.
In middle school, I liked to go to a bookstore to read magazines. I often hear people say that the bookstore owner is very boring. He sits there reading books all day long without a smile. He treats the books in the store more like treasures and cherishes them. Occasionally, naughty children will make him angry if they crumple or litter the books. Nowadays, online bookstores are developing rapidly, and the low price discounts of books make it more and more difficult for physical bookstores to survive. Many bookstores have closed one after another, which is sighing.
During the New Year of 2018, I went to my alma mater to meet friends and saw this small shop again. The owner was still busy in the bookstore as before, but there were hardly any readers. Seven or eight years have passed, my friends and I have changed, and the boss has long forgotten us. We stopped by the bookshelf and chatted casually with him. It turned out that the owner also did some small business to maintain the operation of the store. He said: “Although there are few readers, there are still people who need it. If there are people who need it, this store has a meaning to exist.”
He said it lightly and briefly, as if the living environment was not so bad. Stubbornly guarding the bookstore, even if he didn’t make any money, I admire him very much: this is probably the real love. Back in school, I used to privately say he was dull and uninteresting, and now I’m ashamed of my prejudice.
Perhaps, behind every bland and ordinary person, there is a paranoid self. He may be boring or impersonal, but when we touch his heart, all the previous prejudices will always be written off. And the reason why love is so charming is probably that it never changes due to the current state of life.
Stick to what you love and use a small bookstore to resist the whole world. The inner satisfaction is enough to support a person.
In this era, almost everyone can’t escape the clutches of loneliness, and is affected by it, big or small. Living in a busy city, the loneliness of being in a dense crowd is more textured. Loneliness is like a severe cold with no one to deliver porridge. The pain is given by the outside world, and the cure is given by love. I often ask people, what do you do when you are alone, is it boring?
Without exception, those who have hobbies gave this answer: I am not alone, I am very happy and enjoy doing what I like, and it is good to be able to do it for a lifetime without being disturbed. Without these things, I don’t know what else I could do. Perhaps, what makes us happy is not that our desires are strengthened, but that what we like in our hearts is made up and satisfied.
The difference between people is not that big, and even many places are similar, so there is so much empathy and so much emotional resonance.
What you really love and stick to is what finally makes you who you are, who you are: a writer, a painter, or a singer. In impetuous times, we always see people who pick up sesame seeds and lose watermelon: today I want to learn piano, tomorrow I want to learn calligraphy, three days of fishing and two days of netting, all day long wandering and hesitating among various choices, without direction.
Perhaps, each of us should insist on loving something, not so easy to change, and not so easy to give up. These long-term persistence can give this young, buoyant heart a little strength. Most importantly, let this person be who he is