Reflections at 25: Music, Games, Reading, and Growth

I reflexively typed “23” as the title. Stared at it for a long time before it clicked: I’m already 25, not 23.

Birthdays have never meant much to me — maybe because I rarely celebrated them growing up, and never really did as an adult either. A few years ago, adding another year was just another year; I barely noticed. But this birthday suddenly felt real. I felt, concretely, that none of it had been easy — like stepping into a new stage.

New Realizations

The Big Band (乐夏) & Rock & Music

If anything defines being 24, it may be that I started listening to music. Before college I had no idea what music was; in college I mostly listened to Xu Song. Then I watched The Big Band (乐夏) — a Chinese rock variety show past its peak — and realized there was a whole world there.

Music may be the most expressive medium there is. Watching that show, I cried more times than I can count. I still prefer sitting alone with headphones on, doing nothing.

Rock may be the best form of music. Whatever the situation, it gives you strength.

To quote Li Hongqi:

“I think two things about rock drew me in back then: its common sense, and its courage. Common sense is knowing the king has no clothes — and as someone with common sense, no matter what anyone else says, he is naked. Courage is saying that out loud, no matter how many soldiers stand beside the king, or how hard it gets.”

Playing Games

I finally demystified games. Before this, aside from League of Legends, I had mostly never played anything else. I stayed curious about every other genre, wanting to try some good ones.

Never played them, had no hardware, just curious
Could never get immersed; never felt what made a game “good”

I got relatively immersed in two: Total War: Three Kingdoms and Amazing Leisure Simulator. Both are clearly good games, but they’re a bit grind-heavy — not great for someone with a day job.

After stepping away, a few things stuck:

Getting into a game isn’t just playing. You have to pick theme and mechanics, then sink a lot of time in — just to finish onboarding.
So the barrier is high: clear it and you’re a heavy player; don’t, and you quit.

So there was nothing wrong with me. Demystified. Whether I play or not, the mindset is much more normal.

Family & Friends

This year I felt more empathy with my family. I’m not alone.

Less Conflicted

Pulled back and forth between conflicting sides, you end up feeling wrong-footed. Something I wrote a while ago may be the biggest change:

It feels like I suddenly worked a few things out and stopped being so conflicted. I can do a lot of things I used to call “pointless.” Maybe that’s why I like Xu Song: he lives with clarity.

See through some things without being rigid. The world isn’t black and white; grey is normal.

Accepting or refusing doesn’t need strong emotion. Either is fine.

Still start from your own preferences: want to do it, do it; don’t want to, don’t. Either is fine.

“Surrender.”

Notes: Love

Book: 源泉

The Fountainhead lays out ideas that can sound like clichés when you summarize them, but an entire book — and several people’s lives — giving them weight makes them land with force.

Creation is the only way to push against emptiness. Creation is strong, and at the same time powerless. Maybe Roark is only a reminder:

Even if you can’t be an independent creator, try not to become a repulsive second-hander.

Creators are not selfless. The whole secret of their power is that it is self-sufficient, self-driven, self-ignited. That is the first cause, the fountainhead of vitality, the life force, the original drive. The creator serves no one and nothing. He lives for himself.

Book: 赫尔佐格谈赫尔佐格

Herzog on Herzog

Useful for almost any field: stay physically strong, stay practical, you don’t need that many films and novels (I finally got that limited energy is better spent on politics, economics, history, philosophy…), develop your own ideas, work with others, less posing more doing. Underestimating difficulty is dreaming; overestimating it is chickening out…

He tells you not to listen for some “song of life” — feel the ground under your feet and the raw grain of living. The most poetic truth in film has to come through fabrication, imagination, and style. He ignores rumors and slander. Budgets, DV, director’s cuts — he treats them as noise. He never minds what people invent about him and Kinski. He keeps a hot drive going. Not academic, but a genius who knows the arts. Strong will and control, and humor everywhere. Madman Herzog of cinema. Everybody loves Herzog.

Book: 沈从文的后半生

Shen Congwen’s Later Years

I read Shen Congwen’s Early Years, Shen Congwen’s Later Years, Congwen’s Autobiography, Border Town, and more. He is strangely naive, tragic, and somehow strengthening.

“Still, do something.” In an extreme political climate, with his health also bad, he still wanted to write fiction, still wanted to do research on Chinese clothing — to leave something of real value.

People who talk about “changing the world” — shouldn’t they settle down and actually make a few things of value, large or small?

I turn out to be a tragic character by nature: tender to a fault when affectionate, naive to the bottom when innocent, hopelessly muddled when confused, and oddly pessimistic when down. The things I think, the ideas I hold, sometimes make no sense at all. Looking into it, there are probably a few reasons: one, maybe a mad streak in the inheritance; two, living too much in fantasy as a child; three, reading too widely and life changing too hard; four, nosebleeds, too much blood lost, thinking too hard. Put together, it becomes a kind of cyclical depression. When it hits I cannot pull myself up; nothing seems to work. Your leaving me is inevitable; your getting close to someone else is natural. In the end I am still myself — able to do nothing, gaining nothing, far from society, far from you. Awful. The only cure is being with you: then every color, smell, sound feels right, and I feel planted again. When you stay away, I get what I deserve — torment, and inferiority piled on inferiority. (18;264) — Shen Congwen’s Early Years, letter to Zhang Zhaohe

I really didn’t read that much last year; luckily these still taught me a few new things. Maybe as we age, fewer things reach the soul — but reading them earlier rather than later is still good.

Hope for 25: bring the daydreams down to earth, step by step. So:

Don’t only daydream; do something
Practice surrender
Quantity of knowledge can turn into quality — pile up volume first; the key to making that leap faster is thinking, deliberate practice, and doing hard things