①

I always feel that our generation is often without an exit strategy.

Feeling like a failure and lost for direction, we don't have an external 'safe harbor' to turn to.

We don't feel like 'just going home' to

the familiar comfort of our parents' house,

to simply finish our lives there,

or to start over and try again.

Including myself and many others, we don't see home as a fallback.

Even family members can add more pressure when we're down,

I have no guiding light behind me, and a thick fog ahead.

②

This world is not as we imagined it as children.

Not as books write it,

Not as teachers teach it.

Doing everything diligently may not be an advantage,

While clever talking and shrewdness might not be bad.

Success doesn't seem to be as I thought it would be,

The world is full of gray, not black and white.

The grand plans we once had as children are only achievable by a few.

③

Everyone's ideals are different,

but they are so similar.

I once asked my father,

'What is your ideal?'

He handed me a cigarette and replied,

'Raising you to see you grow up is my greatest ideal'

I often ask myself,

Is living or ideals more important?

Perhaps I'll still choose to live even if I'm ten years older,

I often think,

What is the purpose of a human life?

Money? Power? Or simply survival?

④
I once saw a sentence on Zhihu:

'People live to do things they like in the process of dying'

Some people spend their lives on trivial matters,

but I don't want to become that kind of person.

As in *Human Despair*, 'If there is no way to avoid it,

it is better to first enjoy that stubborn joy'

So I don't dwell on how many days I have left,

But I want to find ways to get closer to my ideal,

Closer and closer.

When I'm old, I won't have regrets.

Finally, I'd like to end with a poem by Su Shi:

'Let's try new tea with a new fire, and enjoy youth with poetry and wine'