I’m going back to China for the Chinese new year tomorrow and it feels very surreal. I don’t really know if I am happy to be in Switzerland, because I oftentimes find myself having opposite opinions on it within the time span of a few days. This is a completely new perspective to me because I usually have a firm opinion on my living environment as soon as I stay there for more than a week. But Switzerland is different.
I guess it has something to do with two directly different parts of my personality. I am a complete nerd when it comes to hobbies. I dig deep. Switzerland is a heaven for that. The subjects I am studying are all my personal hobbies, which creates a little world for me, and it doesn’t even require me to set foot out of my little room of like 25 square meters. Yes, speaking of that, I am living very cheap, which I don’t care, on the contrary, I enjoy it, because when I immerse into my hobbies, space stops to make sense to me. My mental space expands infinitely, and my physical space stops to exist. I often feel like a brain functioning transcendentally when I study my beloved subjects. It is very organismatic, and yes, I just created that word.
But I love people, that I can not change either. I don’t like myself when I spent time with myself for too long that I don’t even make efforts to interact with people in real life. I believe in connection, and that is something I think is more important than intelligence. To be fair, I don’t even study for intelligence, I know I am smart enough to learn what I like as much as possible, and that’s enough. I don’t need knowledge to improve my intelligence. I study for fun, and I don’t think there is any meaningful outcome in the pursuit of intellegence either. We are creatures who don’t even know what made us what we are, so there is no point in proving oneself. If I prove myself to be better, I am just proving some contingence to be better, and that is not my merit. Love however, is a whole different topic. I believe that human relation and love is always a nobler pursuit. But when I get too deep in study and research, I sometimes forget about it, because research is just too much fun. Sometimes when I raise my head in the library after 10 hours of reading and enjoying myself, I realize I have detached myself from a world that is genuinely worth being in. I’ve reduced the importance of physical space to nothing. I don’t like myself being like that.
So there’s this dilemma. I like Switzerland for that it provides me an envoronment that I can really have fun with my hobbies without interruption. But I don’t like if for creating for me an ultra comfortable and self-sufficient environment that I don’t have a lot of motivation to meet people anymore when I am already having great fun.
And I don’t like myself being contradictory either. This is probably my own problem, because making sense of one’s life is just another futile human endeavor. But I feel good when I am consistent. And when I feel good, I bring more love to others. When I feel like an absurd random person without a narrative, I feel very pathetic, and I try not to interact too much with others because my confusion might be an inconvenience.
Yeh, I am totally ranting. Today I am finishing off some of the administrative tasks and buying gifts and planning for tomorrow’s flight, suddenly I don’t wanna go. I wanna just stay in my woman’s cave and continue doing what I have been doing. It’s just so aluring. At around 4 pm I really hoped my flight gets postponed or even cancelled. But before today I had been really excited about the trip, because I didn’t want to be a solitary person living off of her hobbies only. And now, at night, I am not even sure which one I want more anymore.
Life in China is really different. It is very secular and practical. People don’t get caught up too deeply in thoughts, except those who decide to be hermits. The Chinese wisdom is action. Knowledge is only considered noble when the person acts accordingly, otherwise people would laught at them for either being hypocrites or cowards. So I am always forced by myself to act back home. I want to be a brave woman. I want to do. I want to practice what I’ve learned. I want to act. I want to do whatever small to contribute to something that I believe is good to some extent.
But the Swiss philosophy is different. Thoughts only can be considered worth pursuing. This is so seductive to me. God knows how comfortable I am when I sit in my armchair and start reading and thinking. My body even feels like a burden at this circumstance.
I still don’t know which I like better, or if I even need to find a better path to decide on. What I do know is that this contradiction is valuable. If I haven’t had any big contradictions in my life, then I am one of those lucky brats who deserves to be put in front of a difficult situation.
In two hours, I will finish packing my stuff, and start sleeping. Tomorrow, I will take on a plane, and a month later, I will come back. I have enough time to think about this contradiction, and I have enough time to live my life and dismiss this problem. After all, not all problems are worth solving, and this might be one of them.