The pleasant day

     It was a pleasant day. The sound of rain outside the window finally gave me an excuse not to go out on Sunday. My phone lay there silently, neither answering nor making calls. The tranquility of being alone, without the constraints of neighbors, felt exceptionally real and pleasant. The books

    on my table—*The Wisdom of Lao Tzu*, *The Red and the Black*, and *Zhou Guoping's Philosophical Reflections on Life*—hadn't been touched in a long time. I live on the fourth floor, and through the window I could see the thin curtain of rain swaying in the air before falling into a puddle on the ground, creating ripples. Further away was a main road, completely obscured by the buildings outside the window. Only the sound of speeding wheels rudely entered my ears, regardless of whether I agreed or not.

    I moved a chair to the window, letting the rain patter down, and opened Stendhal's *The Red and the Black*. I followed Julien, the protagonist often described as "more than human," into a foreign land, into that distant era…

    The sound of rain and the turning of pages mingled together. My mind was free of distractions; in that instant, I forgot myself and followed Julien, experiencing the indifference of his father and brothers, savoring the tenderness between him and Madame de Rênal, and walking with him through their theological studies, ultimately arriving at the Marquis de La Mole's house in Paris. This journey made me feel like Julien, not merely accompanying him through time, but truly experiencing it all firsthand. When Mademoiselle La Mole fell in love with him, when Julien's head lay in her arms, she showed no fear, but kissed it and buried him. What kind of era was that? In that era, human relationships were so cold that even the bond between father and son had vanished. Officials and nobles avoided politics, engaging only in empty talk and extravagance. You could hardly find anyone speaking the truth, yet these high-ranking officials still schemed and plotted for advancement. Ordinary young people, harboring dreams of joining high society, might not lack talent or manners, but their terrifying thoughts and fearless pursuits ultimately provided the inviolable ruler with an excuse to punish dissidents and uphold "justice."

    It was a hypocritical and corrupt era, where a person with a filthy soul could often present themselves as a social sage. It was an age where politics was avoided; people used extravagance to mask their unease in a senseless loneliness. It was also an era where family ties were severed; for the sake of profit and fame, wives and children were often abandoned. It was also an era of autocratic rule; if you acted independently based on the books of the previous dynasty or in the society of the time, using a particular doctrine or belief, you would be labeled a heretic and a dangerous individual. Those who once called you brothers have, without you even realizing it, become spies or informants. I was immersed in this endless world of words, following the plot of the novel. Those humorous yet witty words became remarkable under my pen.

    Perhaps this is the characteristic of masterpieces: in your reading, those words that once perplexed you but you couldn't put into words are perfectly interpreted in their straightforward narration and understated descriptions. And upon closer examination, you realize they are seamlessly integrated into the events and characters. If you forcibly extract them, it seems the flavor is lost! This is perhaps the brilliance of masters—finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Reading their works is a pleasure, not in your immersion, but in the extraordinary plots within ordinary stories, the complexities of human nature, and the unexpected endings. I love such works for their artistic techniques, their portrayal of the characters' inner world, and their incisive and vivid depiction of human nature. I know I'm not capable of that yet, I'm still miles away. But it's precisely because of this gap that I'm improving my insight while also practicing calligraphy. When I'm no longer enslaved by material things, when I'm no longer confined to managing a mere few thousand words, when I can draw on the strengths of many and develop my own style, perhaps then my writing will be readable and thought-provoking, perhaps then I can become a disciple of the masters.

    The rain outside the window is becoming increasingly uncontrollable. Today, I'm simply enjoying the tranquility of spiritual freedom, and the stories in the book have made me forget time and the noise outside. All my thoughts are churning deep within me—oh, what a rare and pleasant day…