You finished the college entrance exam and went to a very average university.

At university, you achieved very average grades.

In your spare time, you had a very average romance.

In your senior year, you failed to get into graduate school and found a very average job.

Like most people, you and your girlfriend broke up in an unremarkable way.

They said:

Class stratification has solidified, housing prices have risen, and social dividends have disappeared.

Although you didn't quite understand, everyone said so, and you still felt a bit panicked.

Your monthly salary is three thousand; after rent, it's just enough for your daily expenses.

The boss tells you that young people need to struggle.

So, like everyone else, you work 996 for the boss.

You went home to visit your parents during the Spring Festival, and they said you looked thin.

They persuaded you to return to the county town in your hometown, find a stable job, and get married.

Of course, you were still young, didn't believe in fate, and insisted on going to the big city to carve out your own future.

Later, you sadly discovered that with your income, you wouldn't be able to buy a house even if you worked a lifetime.

You will forever be a homeless wandering ghost beneath the glamour of this city.

Maybe there are many people like you in this city.

Just like moths, just for a little light... smashing themselves to pieces.

A few more years passed, and you felt that your university days seemed to be a long, long time ago.

A very distant past, like a dream.

Finally, one day, the company had new people, and the boss asked you to conduct their induction training.

Looking at their vibrant smiling faces, you remembered your former self.

You sighed in your heart: it's so good to be young.

That year your mother called you and said your dad fell while taking a walk.

You hurriedly returned to your hometown and looked at your father lying in the hospital bed, with one arm in a sling.

You looked at your father smiling apologetically at you, and suddenly realized that time had already dyed his temples white.

In your memory, your father always seemed to be that young guy who held you up to watch the lion dance in your childhood.

It seemed like just an instant, and he had aged a lot.

Your nose soured, and your vision became a bit blurry.

You finally decided to listen to your parents and go back to your hometown to find a steady job.

On the night you resigned, colleagues came to see you off. You raised your glasses, the glass cups clinking together—the sound of dreams shattering.

A group of people sang in KTV until late at night, and finally left one by one.

You climbed to the roof alone, carrying a bottle of beer.

That was the highest point of the city, where you could see very, very far.

It was pitch black all around, not a single light, but in the distance, the traffic flowed like a stream, and the lights filling the sky burned the sky into the color of flames.

The high-rise buildings were brightly lit, and countless neon lights flickered amidst the heavy traffic—a dreamlike color.

But you knew, this prosperity did not belong to you, or people of your kind.

Actually, sometimes you felt this city was more like a monster with a wide-open mouth, swallowing the dreams of countless people, beating them back to their original form, saying: You don't belong here.

Yes, no one can deny the prosperity of this city; it is always feasting and revelry, endless life, and paper luxury.

Like a feast that will never end.

And this feast, there are always people looking forward to joining, and people leaving in loneliness.

You are leaving; from now on, this city has one less homeless wandering traveler.

It's strange, clearly just a turn of the body, but you always felt something was left behind.

Your former dreams, the frivolity of youth, seem to have stayed here, unable to be taken away.

You finally resigned yourself to fate and returned to your long-lost hometown.

Next, like everyone else, you entered a work unit, went on blind dates.

You married a girl you had met less than ten times in total; after all, in these times, you were long past the age of waiting downstairs with milk tea for a girl.

You turned into a middle-aged uncle, a bit greasy.

The current you considers the daily necessities of life more.

You consider: how are the other party's family conditions? Have the parents retired?

That early summer when you were eighteen, the heartbeat was just a fleeting glance on the road; you excitedly patted your brother and said:

That girl with long hair is so pretty!

Days pass, like flowing water, plain and unbiased.

You also have a child, the child goes to elementary school.

One day the child came back and said: The teacher asked us what our dreams are?

You smiled and asked him: Then what is your dream?

He said: When I grow up, I want to go to the big city and be a very famous scientist!

Too similar, too similar.

This is exactly the same as you back then, or maybe people are all like this when they are young.

You remembered your youth, your former dreams.

If dreams could be touched, they probably have already been covered with a thick layer of dust, lying in a faraway place.

Many years later, ambitions have died, and we are no longer young.

Finally, we can only savor the hot blood of those years in dreams, eyes filling with tears again and again.

After waking up, we still have to continue rushing about for life.

Actually, you were once a youth too.

Postscript:

The story is of course fictional, and this story itself has too much idealization and is somewhat not real enough.

That year when I was seventeen, I was in the third year of high school. My favorite thing was to lie on the window sill and watch the sunset.

The Little Prince could watch the sunset several hundred times a day; I hoped to slowly spend one quiet dusk after another.

Looking from the window, I could see very far, to the end of the sky, and the continuous mountain peaks in the distance.

The bustling crowd at the crossroads, students running to grab food, lovers quietly holding hands.

Under the dusk, everything turned golden, the world immersed in tenderness and harmony, like an Impressionist classical painting.

Birds foraging returning to their nests, white-collar workers getting off work going home, vendors setting up stalls finally packing up.

The light of the setting sun slowly passed through the curtains, slipped into the classroom, half of the classroom gradually turned fiery red, gold filling the huge classroom.

After all, being seventeen, in the brain, there were many surging thoughts, like heavenly horses, like flood dragons.

I thought that one day I could appear shining in front of the girl I liked, bright as a star.

I thought that one day I would travel around the world, to see the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayas, the archipelagos of Hawaii, or the volcanoes of Fuji.

I would fantasize about what kind of person I would become in the future, and what kind of people I would meet on the journey of life.

What interesting things would happen, what kind of distant places would I go to?

Of course, I also often heard people talk about things like high housing prices, disappearing social dividends, financial bubbles.

I seemed to understand but didn't really, just sometimes I would have a feeling.

It seems that at the age when we should be dreaming, some things were already surging towards us.

Society is always filled with a sense of anxiety, disturbing everyone.

Everyone wants to be a hero when they are young. Fantasizing that one day they will descend from the sky shining to save the world.

But we slowly grow up, and one day, we will discover:

Actually, the world is not as imagined; sometimes, it is even very cruel.

For many people, just living has used up all their strength.

It turns out that one is just an ordinary person, having to live an ordinary person's life, accepting a mediocre life.

Some people are unwilling to obey; they choose to rise up and resist, and a small number succeed.

More people fail, either accepting mediocrity or sinking from then on.

Most people obey the arrangements of life, just like in that story, toddling along behind the wheels of fate.

Slowly getting married, having children, caring for parents in their old age, raising one's own children, and then repeating.

So what are the post-00s worrying about?

The so-called inability to afford a house, inability to afford medical treatment, or that their children won't have a good educational environment in the future.

I think these are all just appearances.

What we are truly worried about... is actually becoming an ordinary self.

After all, the post-00s are all young people now, still have hot blood, still have passion, believing they want to change the world.

But accepting an ordinary self.

Is a question carved into our bones that we eventually have to answer.