At midnight yesterday, heavy snow fell steadily from the sky. I drove to the roadside near Sihui Bridge East to pick up a passenger. Just as the car came to a steady stop and the passenger was about to board, there came a loud “clang.” A delivery rider’s electric scooter crashed straight into the rear of my car. With a sincere expression, he admitted that snowflakes had blurred his vision, obstructing his sight and causing the accident. We stood in the biting cold wind, waiting bitterly for the traffic police to arrive. To my great surprise, their verdict held me fully responsible. The car wasn’t mine, and at that moment, all I wanted was to resolve the matter quickly—after all, in this blizzard, my thin clothing left me shivering as the cold pierced like needles into my bones. I suggested settling the compensation privately, but the delivery rider demanded an exorbitant two thousand yuan. In an instant, a chill surged within me, and the sympathy I’d felt for him vanished without a trace.
The next morning, at dawn, I picked up a couple. The wife was blackout drunk, throwing a fit and even engaging in dangerous self-harming behavior, while her husband anxiously tried to calm her down beside her. I could only grip the steering wheel with one hand while pressing the door lock button tightly with the other, constantly on guard against any sudden mishap. In that moment, my mind couldn’t help but recall recent stories I’d heard—heart-wrenching incidents of self-harm and terror both on and off school campuses—filling my heart with a profound sense of desolation.
Through these repeated experiences, I found myself sinking into deep contemplation: What is wrong with this world? Am I too naive to understand it, or has the world always been this mad and chaotic?
Will This World Get Better?, Liang Shuming’s oral reflections in his later years, encapsulates profound insights and deep concerns about the world, distilled from a lifetime of weathered experiences. Yet, in this noisy, chaotic, and disorderly era, it fails to serve as a clear guiding light for my path forward. Its title, at this moment, feels more like a weighty question, echoing ceaselessly in my mind.
On the Soul by Ibn Sina delves deeply into the mysteries of human nature and spirit, sparking widespread attention and profound discourse in the intellectual circles of its time. But now, faced with such real-world dilemmas, those ancient and penetrating wisdoms seem somewhat powerless amidst today’s complexities, struggling to provide a clear and definitive answer.
In Aitmatov’s The Place of the Skull, chilling and shocking tales are depicted with sharp, incisive strokes, portraying the dark underbelly of society and the struggles of humanity. It feels like an unflinching metaphor for certain cruel and absurd corners of this world, prompting readers to reflect deeply on the state of the world and the complexity of human nature.
Chekhov’s Ward No. 6, with its stark perspective, portrays the repression, distortion, and longing for freedom of human nature within a confined space, reflecting the immense impact of societal environments on individuals. It reveals the world’s malaise and the helplessness of people grappling with adversity.
To escape the violence inflicted by her husband, family, society, and the crowd, she decided to turn into a tree. In The Vegetarian, Han Kang employs a unique narrative and meticulous detail to portray a character’s inner collapse under familial and societal pressures, as well as her rebellion against traditional ways of life. It indirectly unveils the undercurrents surging beneath the world’s seemingly calm surface and the fragility of human nature.
We trudge arduously along the roads of life, where frequent traffic accidents, human loss of control, and chaos intertwine to paint a disordered and heart-wrenching picture. My wife and I once discussed how to avoid traffic accidents, but some events are like wild horses breaking free—utterly unpredictable. This world, once brimming with countless beautiful aspirations and dreams, now leaves us lost and disoriented under the relentless blows of reality. Yet, no matter what, the wheels of life continue to roll forward. Even with hearts weathered by the scars of time, we must strive in this chaotic and bewildering world to seek that faint glimmer of hope, searching for an answer to whether this world will truly get better.
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