At last, the world has quieted down. 2018 is no longer the favorite topic in everyone’s social feed, and I feel it is finally time to sit with myself and write a proper year-end reflection. We always hope to smile and leave the past behind. For now, I will borrow that wish and call this piece a book for forgetting with a smile.
It was not an ordinary year. For someone like me, who has always longed for a quiet life, it felt almost cruel. And yet I still believe in the power of time: in the end, everything will turn out to be all right. If it is not all right yet, then it is not the end. While the memories are still clear, I want to leave them here in words, if only to comfort the part of myself that once lost its way.
I did not go back to my hometown for the Spring Festival that year. My parents respected my choice, and I respected theirs. After my time chasing a dream at Houjian Cloud Computing came to an end, I returned to be with them. We were far from home, but I have always believed that wherever family is, that is home.
It was the first time in all these years that I had gone to the place where my parents worked. The emotions were hard to untangle. My father’s hair had grown thinner. My mother had more gray hair and more lines on her face. They greeted me with warmth, as they always did, but no smile can truly conceal aging. In the blink of an eye, their son was about to graduate from college. Of course they had grown older.
We had planned to spend the holiday traveling together, but that plan was shattered by something like a nightmare. My father suddenly became seriously ill and remained in the hospital until the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve. I imagine he blamed himself many times. What should have been a happy family reunion turned bleak because of him. Otherwise, why would he insist on leaving the hospital on New Year’s Eve when he should have stayed for treatment?
It was the first time I had seen my father collapse like that, and it filled me with a fear I had never known before. That old sorrowful truth struck me harder than ever: by the time a child wants to care for his parents, they may no longer be there to be cared for. That may have been the deepest lesson of the year. On New Year’s Eve, we video-called our relatives back in our hometown. Meeting through a screen was still, in its own way, a kind of reunion.
Before I returned to school, I talked with my parents about work and the future. The internet industry is what I love, and design is where my interest lies. Being a front-end designer at an internet company felt like the ideal path. During my internship at Houjian Cloud, I had even worked on a product that made a splash across the company, and it gave full room to my imagination.
But my university major was not related to the internet at all. I studied law. My father probably understood, in his own way, that every field has its own discipline and expertise. When I told him I wanted to work in the internet industry, he responded with concern and a sense of reluctance. And as a son, I could not ignore what my parents thought. A decision that shapes the course of one’s life deserves caution. So I went back to university carrying confusion and uncertainty with me.
That spring, with a few close friends, I flew to Xiamen. It was our graduation trip, and also the last carnival of youth. Baicheng Beach, Zengcuo’an, Nanputuo Temple, Yanwu Field, Gulangyu—every stop felt like a farewell. We climbed high rocks and stood in the sunlight. We faced the sea wind and spoke at length about our dreams. It seemed everyone already had some mission to follow, some place to belong. Better to remember it, perhaps. Better still to let it fade: those brief lights we cast on one another when our paths crossed.
After struggling with myself again and again, I finally learned how to let something go.
Dingdang was a product I had loved for three years. Wenzikong was a project I had devoted myself to for three years. Against reality, dreams proved far more fragile than I had ever wanted to admit. That year, I let down Dingdang. I let down the 500,000 interesting souls gathered around Wenzikong. I let down the three years of effort I had poured into it all. In the end, I realized that the hardest thing is not persistence. It is giving up.
After countless rounds of questioning myself, I finally found some peace. Not long after, I was fortunate to be recognized by President Yang and received an offer for a legal affairs position at a centrally administered state-owned enterprise. I never dared to say with certainty that it was the right choice. There were too many regrets standing behind it. But at that time, one sentence gave me the only comfort I needed: once you choose a distant destination, you simply keep moving forward through wind and rain.
When the dust settled, everything seemed to begin growing again. Before long, we had become the central figures of graduation season. I do not know why, but the cicadas seemed especially loud that summer. Gu Cheng once wrote that the world is beautiful only when your life is beautiful. Looking back now, that feels true. The cicadas sing only for a few days. Youth lasts only for a few years. That was the year I walked out of the ivory tower. My student days came to an end, and what we call youth drifted away with those like-minded people I had once spent everything with.
In early July, I boarded a southbound train and headed toward a city full of unknowns. On the road of life, we are always saying goodbye as we are meeting someone new. That year, I joined GSI and began my first full-time job. Work made my life fuller from then on.
At the welcome event for new employees, I spoke on behalf of the new hires. At the youngest age of my life, I said something that sounded much older than I was: there are no truly correct choices in this world; there is only the effort to make the choice you made become the right one. Entering the workplace for the first time, I carried too many doubts and too many worries. I moved carefully, as if walking on thin ice. Fortunately, this was a team full of warmth and kindness.
At our department welcome gathering, I got completely drunk. It was the first time in my life I had been that intoxicated. Looking back, it may have been the most direct way I knew to show my sincerity. After all, wherever there are people, there is always a world of human ties and complexities.
In December, I officially passed probation and also became a full member of the Communist Party of China. More than an honor, I took it as a responsibility. Thinking of that, I cannot help mentioning the person who introduced me to the Party. She had also been the Party branch secretary during my university years, and to this day I remain deeply grateful to her. In terms of character and conviction, she gave me the best example I could have had. The world has never lacked people who appear perfect. What it lacks are those who offer, from the bottom of their hearts, sincerity, justice, fearlessness, and compassion.
For four years in college, she embodied those qualities through her actions.
This was a year of sorrow and joy, of partings and reunions. It was the year I crossed from campus into the workplace, the year I faced one unknown after another, the year I was remade. Standing by the window on the other shore, I saw that forest at last. Those who are lost will remain lost for a time. Those who are meant to meet will meet again.