The provincial exam results are out, and I ranked 16th—utterly ridiculous. It feels like the era of Kong Yiji has returned. Due to the poor employment environment, a large number of young people are flocking to civil service exams, creating a vicious cycle.

Today is my mother’s birthday. At noon, I bought her two small cakes.

In the evening, I took my mother for a walk around the neighborhood. She still seems a bit confused about directions and roads—perhaps she needs to walk the route a few more times. My parents and I don’t have deep conversations; we rarely talk about anything beyond daily life.

Today, I said to my mother, “You’re 57 now, huh?”
“Just turned 56,” she replied.
“Is there anything you’d like to do? Or any place you’d like to go?”
“What kind of place would I want to go to…?” After a few seconds of thought, she continued, “There isn’t.”

My mother has devoted her entire life to our family—you could say she’s spent her life battling this difficult world. She’s timid, afraid of many things, afraid of dealing with people, even afraid of arguing with us. Yet, she constantly wrestles with herself internally. I often lose patience with her over these things, urging her to pay attention to her own feelings. I don’t know if it helps.

Let me talk about something else.

I really dislike conversations that revolve around money, houses, and the like—who has money, how much a house costs, how big it is, where it’s bought. Of course, it’s not because I don’t have these things myself at the moment, but rather because the attitude people have toward them disgusts me.

I don’t deny the importance of wealth in our lives—it helps us realize our personal value. What I despise are these twisted values, where many treat money as a label. Expensive items are automatically considered good, healthy, and high-quality; wealthy people are seen as hardworking, capable, and ambitious—exactly what they aspire to be. I’ve never heard them discuss who doesn’t have money or the underlying essence of these phenomena when they talk about who does.

If the only things left to discuss in life are these, I’d rather not participate in the conversation at all.

There is never anything wrong with making money, and I will always dislike those who treat money as an end in itself and use it to measure the value of life.