When people reach middle age, they are most afraid of asking questions.

Liang Yusheng said:

when people reach middle age, everyone lives into two faces:

one is carrying a family, young and old, strong enough to seem omnipotent, and

one is tired and fragile as if he were broken with a single blow.

I always think that I have been fighting the world for many years.

but sometimes a few simple questions from others can make you routed in an instant.

01

how much is the salary?

"as soon as I open my eyes every morning, a string of figures come to mind:

" every morning, as soon as I open my eyes, a string of figures come to mind:

"as soon as I open my eyes every morning, a string of figures come to mind:

when you watched "snail House" more than a decade ago, you were too young to think of your life today, which had already been thoroughly revealed by Guo Haiping.

at that time, you always felt that by the age of 40, you could not say that you were successful, but at least you had to have enough food and clothing.

who would have thought that now that age has reached the middle and upper levels of the pyramid, income and status are still struggling at the bottom?

Children's education expenses, family food and clothing expenses, house loans, car loans, and human relations are like an invisible mountain on my mind.

look at yourself again. Your salary hasn't risen for years, and your promotion is a long way off.

you sigh and suddenly feel that the old saying is true:

"you don't know how expensive you are until you get married, and you don't know how poor you really are until middle age."

the bill is too thick, the wallet is too thin, and the embarrassment of not spending enough money is chasing you. You can't stop, you can't stop.

the leader assigned unreasonable tasks and secretly "rebelled against the uprising" several times in his mind, but finally took it honestly.

every morning I have to worry about being late for traffic jams, not getting full attendance, and not forgetting to pick up a few rides on the way from work to earn some gas money.

learned to compare goods, began to pay attention to supermarket sales, and forgot whether the last trip was last year or the year before last.

you begin to feel that the quality of life, poetry and distance are not worth a handful of spring onions and a piece of ginger given by the vegetable market lady.

when you are waiting for the elevator to commute, you occasionally turn on your phone to scan the news.

the takeout guy who suddenly died in the rental house, the man who cried bitterly because the tea was soaked,

and the woman who had to chase the bus after several falls for 300 yuan, braving a high fever.

A lot of times, you see yourself in them.

after a tired day, when you get home at night, you lie in bed and brush a short video and see the sentence "the world is in a panic, only for a few taels of broken silver."

as soon as I had a sore nose, I heard the child knock at the door and ask for the autumn tour next weekend.

well, now there is no time for tears.

when people reach middle age, there is no extra time for you to be hypocritical.

02

are the parents in good health?

in ancient times there was a man named Han Boyu. whenever he made a mistake, his mother always beat him with a walking stick as a warning.

until he grew up, his mother remained the same.

because he knew in his heart that his mother was for his own good, he never said a word and let his mother fight.

once Han Boyu did another small thing wrong. after his mother beat him, he suddenly burst into tears.

Mother asked puzzled: "in the past few decades, you haven't cried every time you've been beaten. What's wrong with you today?"

he replied:

"Mother always beats me, and when I feel pain, I know that you are healthy and strong."

but I can't feel the pain today. I think it's because your body is getting weaker and weaker.

I can't help crying when I think that my time with you is getting shorter and shorter. "

over the past few years, you seem to have become more and more able to understand Han Boyu's feelings at that time, and you have become more and more afraid to hear the question "how are your uncles and aunts these days?"

you can't remember when parents are getting older.

my father, who used to be able to carry two bags of cement, now has to take a break to catch his breath even climbing a few steps.

my mother, who is a good cook, made a table for dinner that day, but several dishes forgot to put salt in them.

not long ago, the old lady accidentally fell in the kitchen and broke her left leg. She has not fully recovered after lying in the hospital for nearly three months.

at this age, you begin to be afraid of little things like parents getting sick and wrestling.

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at this age, you will inevitably see the elders leaving one by one.

every time I come out of the funeral home, there is a sudden surge of sadness and fear in my heart.

the feeling is even stronger when you see the bottles and cans of medicine at home that you can't name.

"parents are a wall between us and death. When our parents are gone, we face death."

when you reach middle age, you finally understand in the flow of time that time is the most cruel thief.

you begin to regret that you have only bowed your head and rushed forward these years, but missed the rest of your life with them.

also began to be afraid. One day I looked back and found that there was no way out in this life.

03

how are the children's grades?

as a college student once said to Liang Xiaosheng:

when you were young, like many people of your age, you had the desire to get ahead.

later, you finally accept that you are just an ordinary person, but you want to give your child an extraordinary life.

has aYou are deeply impressed by what the writer said:

"the world is like a theater, and when the current audience stands up, the audience in the back row has to do the same.

so it's hard to find a parent without anxiety in the world. "

so you spend a lot of money to sign up for various interest classes in the hope that your child can develop in a certain field.

paid high tuition fees and took turns with his parents to pick him up every week, hoping that he could make rapid progress in the next exam.

I regained my long-shelved English, endured drowsiness after work every night, and memorized words with him over and over again.

in the end, I found that I had been in the interest class all over, but Leng was a specialty that had not been cultivated.

A lot of tuition fees have been paid, but the children's grades are still hovering in the middle and upper reaches of the class.

I remember a lot of English words, but when it comes to the English corner, I stumble on even a few simple oral communication.

what breaks you even more is that although his study is not as good as that of other people's children, he has never been inferior to anyone in rebellion.

you say east, he deliberately goes west, you say this is good, but he likes that.

when I touch my mobile phone and computer, I play endlessly. As soon as I ask him to study, I immediately become reluctant.

"those who can knock down the life of middle-aged people, everything else is floating clouds, and the education of their children is Wang Fang."

you finally understand that your parents hated iron at that time, but now they have become the same parents.

when you hear a colleague say that your child won the first place in the exam in the office, you will cast an envious look.

when you see the video posted by relatives in moments, the child plays the piano fluently and the child is good at Latin dancing. You will still silently click a favor.

but in the end, you slowly accept that

you are just an ordinary person, and so are your children.

04

how long has it been since I heard from an old friend?

in the past, when you listened to the Best Bad Friends, you could not understand the meaning of the lyrics, let alone the sadness in Eason Chan's songs.

Why can't an old bosom friend become an old friend in the end?

I don't know that you are my friend or foe, so I can't see through.

is pushed to follow the flow of life.

the stranger in the coming year is the dearest so-and-so yesterday.

now when I hear it again, I will suddenly think of some familiar and unfamiliar faces.

when he was young, everyone had two or three bosom friends.

you talk about youth, love, dreams and the future, witnessing each other's most youthful years along the way.

you once hit it off, talked about wine, talked for a long time all night, and agreed to be best friends for life.

later, you went to different cities and chose different directions of life, and your lives became less and less intertwined.

work, fall in love, get married, have children, everyone is busy with their own lives, and friendships are drifting away.

when you look back at a certain age, you are surprised to realize that once your best friend has little contact with each other.

you remember a question you saw on Zhihu:

there is a piercing answer: "when you reach middle age, you have no friends."

as Zhang ailing said, there is always one word for life after middle age: loneliness.

it's not that you don't want to call friends and drink to drown your sorrows, but those old friends who used to talk about everything have become the most familiar strangers.

cars, tickets, houses, children, everyone is busy in their own difficulties, who has the energy to maintain friendship.

the two, who once talked about everything, have long been split by the years into an insurmountable gap.

this gap is full of differences in your identity, status, knowledge, connections, as well as the bitterness and sweetness of your lives.

when you live to this age, you have long understood and accepted that

it is normal for you to have scattered friends. You have no choice but to chew by yourself.

but in the dead of night, I occasionally think of the intimacy we had when we talked about wine many years ago.

think of Eason Chan's remark, "in the past, it was not enough to push drinks with you all night. Have you ever had a good time?"

05

Liu Zhenyun wrote in "one sentence to ten thousand sentences":

this is especially true for middle-aged people.

at this age, the road ahead is foggy, and there are reckless pursuers.

money, parents, children, friends, all the problems are lingering fear, pile every piece of people are inadequate.

when you ask again and again, you recall a lot, and your eyes are hazy with tears several times, but you finally swallow them all.

after a hasty mending in the middle of the night, I dried my tears the next morning, held my head high, and went on my way.

because you already know that this is the life of middle-aged people.

and you, can and must fight it for a few more rounds.