In our lives, there are often countless choices and helplessness. Everyone’s life is like a continuous experiment, full of trial and error and attempts. Sometimes we are like those ignorant children, always like to use mistakes to pile up the trajectory of life, and finally find that the right path has been around for a long time, but has never been noticed.
I often think that if life can be like doing a math problem, as long as you follow the steps, you can get a satisfactory answer, maybe we won’t experience so much confusion and pain. But unfortunately, there are no rules or formulas in life. Many times, the choices we make may not be the best, but we can’t turn back and can only keep going.
At that time, I was like a wandering soul lost in the city, listening to others talking about the “wisdom” of life. I listened and watched, but never really understood. Until one day, I met her.
Her name is Anan, and there is a kind of cold beauty between her eyebrows that can’t be ignored. She doesn’t say much, but every word is as accurate as a thorn, piercing the heart. That kind of beauty is not the traditional beauty in everyone’s eyes, but a kind of cold beauty with a sense of distance, like the fairy that only exists in paintings. I still remember the first time I saw her was on an autumn afternoon. I was sitting in a cafe, flipping through a magazine, and she was sitting opposite me. The sun shone through the window on her hair, and at that moment, I was actually in a trance.
We didn’t have any thrilling encounters. Anan sat quietly opposite me, occasionally meeting each other’s eyes, and then quickly moving away. I didn’t break the silence until I couldn’t help but ask her: “What are you looking at?” She looked up at me and smiled slightly: “I’m looking at the world.”
I was stunned for a moment, thinking, what nonsense is this? Is she telling me in an obscure way that she is looking at me? Her eyes are like a piece of white paper, clean, calm, deep, without any impurities. I am not eager to know her past, but I find this sense of mystery extremely attractive. We talked about a lot of topics, perhaps because her silent temperament makes me feel more approachable, the way she speaks, not hurried or slow, always with some indifference, but not without politeness.
Our relationship has become subtle since then. Anan will not take the initiative to confide in me like other people, but she will occasionally appear beside me. Every time I see her, I always have an inexplicable urge to uncover the mystery in her heart. She always gives people a feeling that she does not completely belong to this world, like a person who is detached from reality.
The conversation between us is always full of meaningful silence. Those topics seem to have no end and do not need a purpose, just to break the silence in the air. Perhaps it is because we are both full of doubts and uneasiness about this world, so we find resonance in each other’s silence. Anan’s eyes never easily reveal her emotions. She seems to know her distance from this world, so she always chooses to maintain a certain distance, so that people cannot easily touch her.
Once I asked her: “Why are you always so indifferent?” She smiled gently and replied: “I am indifferent? I just see through this world.”
She said this without any emotional fluctuations, as if she was narrating a very ordinary thing. Her calmness gave me a deep sense of awe. Yes, she did see through the world, human nature, and even herself. She did not need the recognition and understanding of others, because she had already given up any expectations of the outside world. She knew that no matter how hard you tried, you could not change the face of the world, and the most important thing was to learn to adapt to the world and not resist it.
I used to think that her indifference was a defense, a resistance to the outside world. But later I found out that her indifference was not caused by fear or pain, but a rebellion against meaninglessness. She did not want to be defined by the world, but chose to stay out of it in a detached manner.
I gradually realized that she was not lonely, because she had already surpassed loneliness. She was not the girl seeking comfort, but a person who had long been accustomed to going alone. She found her own unique balance in the absurdity of life, and her indifference was her most real understanding of the world.
However, each of us will experience a kind of loneliness that cannot be avoided, whether you are aware of its existence or not. This kind of loneliness cannot be described in words. It permeates around us like air, reminding us all the time that we are independent individuals after all. Even if we have many friends and lovers, loneliness will still quietly exist in our hearts.
Sometimes I think that maybe each of us is looking for someone who can break our loneliness, and she is the one I have been looking for. But as she said: “We can only be ourselves in the end.” Everyone must learn to be alone with themselves, learn to bear the loneliness, and not rely on anyone.
In the end, I know that she will leave, like all passers-by, quietly. And I will also find my lost youth and those unspoken truths in her image.