Chapter 8 Section 7: The Inescapable Ring

Two days ago, I received a text message saying, "Mom has worked hard all her life, forward this text message to 10 people, and my mother will be healthy and happy forever" or something.I was secretly surprised, this trick is ruthless!I used to receive 9 lucky pigs and 10 happy stars, you will be lucky and happy, and then quickly forward it to others. I always sneered and ignored it. There is no way, I don’t believe it.But this new trick is a bit too cruel to talk about the mother. It seems that if you ignore it, you are a very unfilial person.I thought about it seriously for a while, sneered, and still ignored it.

For the rest of the day, my mobile phone received blessings from n friends from all over the country to my mother. That standard text message popped up sometimes, and it almost became the screen saver of my mobile phone. up. "So many people have been tricked?!" Later, I angrily discussed the matter with a friend of mine: "There are only so many people, those who know each other go around, like a strange ring. I want my mother to be healthy. If you are happy, you have to take good care of your mother, so what's the use of sending a few text messages?" My friend looked at me with a strange, really strange expression: "No one said it was useful? It's just a way to express your wishes, and also to join in the fun. Why are you so serious?"

I was very disapproving: "I don't want to join in this boring fun." My friend patted me sympathetically, and said with infinite pity: "You are so serious, don't you feel tired? No one will joke with you in the future. When the time comes, see how lonely you are..." hit the nail on the head. I seem to have always been such a person who is unwilling to be trapped in the ring.I remember that when I was in the third year of junior high school, I published an inspirational essay in the "Junior High School Student News", and then I received a reader letter from Beijing.I opened it excitedly, but it turned out to be a "serial friendship letter" that was quite popular at that time. A girl in the sixth grade saw my address in the newspaper and invited me to join the serial.That method is very similar to the text messages sent back and forth today: copy the content of the letter ten times, and send it to ten people you know or don’t know, and you will make many, many friends in a short time, otherwise, the chain will be here with you If you break it, you will get what kind of retribution. (This kind of letter really hurt a lot of people back then. In the era when photocopiers were not yet popular, how many people worked hard to copy without telling their parents because they were afraid of retribution. Can't bear to look back.)

The way I handled it was to write a long book and send it back to the girl.The content is roughly to thank her for listing me as one of the ten people, and then talk about what the true meaning of friends is, and we are in the critical period of life like the sixth grade of elementary school and the third grade of junior high school, how precious time is , must not be wasted on such things. In the end, I solemnly pointed out that I will never participate in such activities. If I don’t want this chain to be broken with me, I’d better find someone else to make up for it. (I did this because I was afraid that someone would harm me because I broke the chain here. I really tried my best at that time when I was young.)

Later, I received a reply letter from that little girl, and the handwriting was completely different.She said that she was very moved after reading my letter, and felt that I was so eloquent, which proved that I was a very serious person.Unlike her, who immediately asked her father to copy ten letters after being involved in the serial, she should learn from me. I was praised, but I had a vague bad feeling that I was doing something stupid with stupid effort. Thinking about it afterwards, I realized that I was actually still in that ring, but I just used another special but more troublesome way to become a strange part of the ring, and I couldn't escape at all.And I gradually discovered that there are really many escapes around me, and I can't escape.For example, among the two groups of friends you met one after another or in different cities, there must be mutual acquaintances. When you go to a new environment and want to start all over again, someone will link your past, and you will always see the same in a store. And they definitely don't stay there every day.Even the fashion is repeated year after year in the same circle. The long ones are outdated and the short ones are popular, and the short ones are boring and then the long ones are changed. Do you know that jet black hair color is popular again now? (Of course I dyed it back to black the first time, and my mom thought I was secretly happy that I had finally adopted her aesthetic.)

Maybe I should start to learn to stay calmly in these circles one after another, because whether you like it or not, you can't escape.Even if you want to stay away from the scene, on some unintentional occasion, it will turn back to you again. Of course, there will also be surprises and accidents that will make you marvel at the magic of karma, and often feel that the world is really small. I remember when I was in the fourth year of university, as a senior veteran of the school’s radio station, I went to help select an announcer among the freshmen of Beijing Foreign Studies University. When I got a girl in the exam, she came to me and said: "My name is Wu Xia, remember? I am in the sixth grade of elementary school. I wrote to you when I went to Changsha!"

For some reason, my face turned red.