After a long thought, I decided to take a leave of absence. Just in time, I was given the opportunity to meet different daily lives in different countries. It was good luck.

Way back to me

Every time the autumn leaves fell, and every time a red camellia bloomed in a veranda flowerpot in the middle of winter, my mother shouted in admiration, asking me to look at it. I, who had always been lukewarm about the scenery of nature, only repeated indifferently, “Yes, you’re pretty.”

From my 20s to my mid-30s, my life was marked by a struggle with a more worthy task to say that my life was fierce, or desperate, that I could not afford to turn my eyes to nature. My mother, who was desperate to spend the rest of her life traveling with nature as a friend, eventually died after failing to shake off her long illness, and I was just over my mid-30s when I was dazed by the sense of loss and the futility of life.

The 15 years of hard work have given him the right expertise, the right position, and the right reputation in a decent job. However, the number of questions was gradually increasing in my head. What am I doing now, for what, why, here, staying in such a dreary atmosphere? Without knowing what I really want, I repeated every night that I couldn’t be dragged into life in this passive mode. Looking at the picture of the fallen cherry blossoms, I was tossing and turning about when my life would be full.

Still, the law of inertia about earning a living was quite strong, and it seemed that I had no other choice but to silently perform the realistic roles given to me. Then one day, when I came home from work with my tired mind and body, I found an unknown white flower bloomed in the pot above the living room, and I was moved. It must have been the same emotion that my mother wanted to empathize so much in her life.

Since then, small silent movements of nature have been detected in my eyes, and one day, an unknown flower flower pot (who didn’t even know it was there) caught in the company window and smelled it. In addition to making life like chronic fatigue sometimes feel the pleasure of seeing flowers, there was a momentary realization that all nameless natural creatures could fulfill their own natural course.

To me, a naturalistic life is to follow the order, and to follow the original “what was supposed to be” as Paulo Coelho said in his novel “The Alchemist” as “Mark.” Perhaps it is a Buddhist prequel to “listen to my heart,” and thus a meditation that intentionally deviates from the tumultuous outside world and only looks at itself. Maybe he’s on his way back to me.

Talking about life and writing

A renowned scholar once told me that I was a fortune-teller who constantly threw a topic at myself. I felt like I found a small clue as I tossed and turned on the universal theme of humanity, such as “Where am I going” and “How to live?” Fate to live a life of hot water. Life as a process of endless questions and thoughts. Is that what I was given and how it works? I felt a little lighthearted when I tried to accept it.

As Alain de Botton said in his book, “The Technique of Travel,” it sometimes takes the strength of a strange place to muster the courage to bring out the bare face of the self. On the shore of a strange foreign country, when I took out my hidden “mark” out of my mouth, I shed uncontrollable tears and shed again in front of my husband. It was a desperate moment to regain my true self, and a tear of compassion for me who was not living the “me as I am” with the opposite pay.

My husband told me with a serious face and more serious than ever. “Humanly envious. That there’s such desperation…I still don’t know what it is. I’m looking for it…”

And a determined leave of absence. I decided to give myself and my family a higher priority. I decided to stop my 15-year career for a while and focus on the small but great scenes of everyday life that were never seen when I was in a chaotic state. To get out of the shadow of the past, not to worry about the future that has not yet come. To focus the lens on my daily life, my family and myself, and to take a picture in my mind.

The time spent supporting the futuristic idea of writing something, or writing something. In the meantime, I didn’t seem happy. He blamed conditions that could not be used for anything, and lamented the situation in which neither the child nor the work could be done perfectly. Was it God’s will? The reason why my husband moved to another place due to his overseas appointment. Maybe it was Mark’s. First to Vietnam, then back to Taiwan. I was dull and foolish, but I didn’t think I was unlucky.

Different space, different gaze

A different gaze given by another space. I finally started writing something. I can’t write a poem, a podium, a review, an essay, or even a scribble. I have secured psychological and physical time and space to read, underline, think and write. That alone must be enough.

Life abroad was not just peaceful. A series of unexpected things had to hurt my mind, and pass through a painful time. It’s rather cliche to write, “It was writing that caught me every time.” But it was true. When I wrote it, I didn’t feel hungry and I was able to cheer up. Always searching for something new, but the truth was usually in the cliché. My daily life killed me, but at the same time my daily life saved me.

Nothing has changed. Living is still a high school. Nevertheless, we live and love. asking and answering questions Embracing the joys and sorrows of everyday life at the same time. Perhaps life is the process itself of the composition that follows an unanswered topic in the first place.

Most of the writings here are records of the process and traces of debris. Starting brunch as a coincidence, re-opening past traces and stitching scattered pieces into a few bundles will give me another look and a different insight. This is also Mark’s.