For people who love fishing, a step-through scooter with a flat floor really does make sense. Places worth fishing usually come with water, distant mountains, and scenery so good it can make you stop and stare. There is a quiet kind of joy in sitting there, looking at the landscape, and letting yourself understand something through it.
I’ve only done two real long rides so far: one through the southern Taihang area, and one on the Sichuan–Tibet 318 route. Altogether, about 1000+7500 kilometers. Compared with riders who are always out doing long-distance motorcycle trips, that’s nothing. It’s not that I have some grand spirit of adventure. I just don’t like being fixed in one environment forever. If I had money, I’d probably be driving a camper all over China instead.
The truth is, if I think about it carefully, I’m not even sure I genuinely love travel itself. What I really can’t stand is staying in one place for too long.
A lot of people in China today, from the elite to those at the bottom, often live with a kind of rootlessness in their thinking. America once had what people called the Lost Generation. China has plenty of people now who feel similarly unanchored.
When someone has no real place to rest spiritually, they find different ways to release that feeling through how they live. If a person stays too long in one fixed environment, they can start to grow psychologically dependent on it. That dependence slowly hardens them into a type. Over time, they may become numb in spirit and in thought.
And there is another problem. If you live in one place for too long, other people’s views of you also become fixed. That, in turn, affects how you judge yourself. So people who are at least somewhat spiritually awake start wanting change. If they cannot change their surroundings, then they try to change themselves. Usually these are people with a richer inner life, people who ask more from the life of the mind.
For me, motorcycle travel is one way of actively breaking that fixed environment. Call it escaping reality if you want. Call it rebuilding the self if you want. Either way, being on the road is just a way of repeatedly coming face to face with who I am.
And yet riding is not the only way. I could stand there looking at far-off mountains and still arrive at the same kind of insight into myself and into the world. The method is different, but the essence is no different at all. Fishing works the same way. Everyone has their own way of sensing the world, understanding it, and finding some inner peace.
Another thing I’ve come to believe: in other people’s eyes, everyone is strange.
And when we identify with someone else, we are often also trying to identify with ourselves. There’s a reason people say that others are, in a sense, a reflection of ourselves in this world.
If your daughter tells you that she cannot accept who you are, the first thing to do is acknowledge her courage and her confidence in saying it. But after that, you should not rush to change yourself just to satisfy her. What matters more is guiding her to analyze you and learn to accept you.
Your behavior may be hard for her to understand, but that does not mean it has no reason behind it. If a daughter cannot even accept her own father, then how is she supposed to accept the world at large?
If my own daughter said that to me, my first reaction would be that something might be wrong in her inner world. A mentally healthy person should learn how to live with the world, not demand that everything become immediately understandable or agreeable.
Everyone has their own way of living. We are never able to understand another person completely. The one thing we can do is try our best to live in a way that allows us to get along peacefully with our own hearts.
As for children, I’d rather let them grow freely, without too many restrictions. As long as it does not cross a moral line, I generally do not interfere over small flaws or everyday habits.
And when it comes to being a person, kindness has to come first. Even if it leaves wounds inside you, you still have to hold on to it. By kindness, I don’t only mean toward society. I also mean toward yourself. A smart person learns how to remain kind to the world while also being kind to themselves, without letting themselves be harmed.
As for whether kindness to yourself or kindness to society should come first, that is not something that can be settled in one stroke. It is not a multiple-choice question with only one correct answer. Smart people usually find better ways: they make life easier for themselves without making it harder for others. But putting yourself first in the name of kindness, above everything else, is not a sound way to live.