Chapter 6 Written speech when the third part of "A Matter of Writing" won the "Zhuang Zhongwen Literature Award"

There is a line in a certain TV series: "I really have no other choice, so I will become a writer." The playwright may have meant to tease the writer a little bit.But the reason why I never forget this sentence is not because it is ridiculed, but because it is correct. Sufficient food and clothing, moving mountains and reclamation, aerospace, in short, everything that belongs to economics and science, proves that human beings "do have a way."However, such as the unending pain, the continuous war, and the impermanence of fate, it proves that human beings are often in a position of "really helpless".At this time, we must ask: Where did we originally want to go?Why should we live at all? ——This kind of question is the question of the poor and the rich, and the question of the ancients and the present. This kind of question is longer than science and longer than economy. I think this kind of questioning is the origin and direction of literature.

But such a question is still "really impossible" to get a final answer.Otherwise, this questioning will stop one day. Once the question of where to go and why to live disappears, literature or human studies will be eliminated, or reduced to a little gag. There are ultimate questions, but no ultimate answers, what is this?This may be regarded as a paradox: the answer is not the end of the question, but in the process of asking the question, the answer is the question.Because, the process of asking questions can enable us to obtain a relationship with the world and an attitude towards life that are different from the past.

But don't expect writers to be engineers or insurance companies, they may just be a group of explorers when there is no other way.I think that's why writers should have a living, and sometimes accept a little reward.