1
Daughter's piano teacher invites her students and their families to her home twice a year for house concerts. Compared to formal performances at a music school, home concerts are more of a gathering, not a competition or judging, so they're relaxed and natural and lots of fun. At the concerts, you can see the fleshy little dolls pounding away on the piano; or the youthful teenage boys and girls playing quietly and shyly; and of course, there's the daughter, who already knows about shyness and stage fright, but hasn't yet become a ball of shyness yet, and she's feeling very pretty herself when she's playing staccato.
Parents will bring some sweet and salty snacks as they wish, and the teacher's husband will make tea and coffee. At the end of the performance, we ate and talked, praised each other's children, praised each other's snacks really to their liking, marveled at the children have grown much taller than half a year ago, and never tired of talking about the topic of a hundred good, talking about the hot air. Recitals are held once in early spring at dawn, and once on Christmas Eve, and the atmosphere is thus more refreshing and sweet, and this has been the case for six years now.
Last year, at the pre-Christmas performance, an elderly gentleman appeared, and at first I thought he was the grandfather of one of the children, but I didn't realize that he was the one who stood up after the teacher had finished playing. The old man did not bow or curtsy like the piano child to greet everyone, just sit down, adjust the piano stool, without lifting his eyes one by one pressing the keys. A short piece of music, press the end of the rise, eyes looked at everyone on the floor to sit down. The people's applause is very adult, enough strength and density, but less hot air.
I saw the old man again at last week's recital, and this time he was generous. When it came time for him to play, he stood there and introduced the piece he was going to play, a song from the early 1900s that had been translated from Swedish into Finnish, a lullaby for moms to sing to their dolls. After that, he sat down, adjusted the piano bench, set the lights, laid out the sheet music, and began. Pressing the keys one by one, the short tune takes about as long as it takes him to introduce the track.
I didn't get to talk to the old man because he didn't have any kids to brag about, and I didn't have the franticness of urging them or being urged to practice, so I had nowhere to go. But he was certainly the person I wanted to talk to the most in the room.
How old was he? I don't know, maybe seventy. What do Chinese people I know do in their sixties and seventies? Bringing grandchildren, watching TV, playing mahjong, busy with housework, all kinds of exercise "method", all kinds of health "tools"...... The first thing that you need to do is to get your hands on some of the most popular products and services in the world, and then you can get your hands on some of the most popular products and services in the world.
But can we do anything more? Retirement or the beginning of old age so that life opens up a new stage, the physical condition of irreversible slow decline, interpersonal range is also getting smaller and smaller, a lot of things are not able to do, not from the brain power, the children are also branching out and blossomed to start their own lives, then their own? Can we only passively wait for the instructions of life, and actively accept the "easy life"? The content of life can be adjusted, modified, broadened, enriched a little?
The race against time, perhaps they won?
Can life be more interesting? Can life be meaningful? Can you be born, live, and love more than just?
2
The second man is definitely the one who was born, lived, and loved.
He's a former coworker of mine who got into the theology department at the University of Helsinki in 2014 and started studying theology. He was very proud that his son entered the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Helsinki in the same year, and "in the fall we will go to school together." Yes, father and son were in the same grade, and he was 55 years old that year.
Theology at the University of Helsinki is famous and strict, and if one wants to be a pastor in the future, one has to get a master's degree or higher, which means a minimum of five years. If the studies do not go well, then the number of years of study is also unknown. He was proud, "I'll graduate at 60, and then I'll be a pastor and you'll be a deacon (an office in the church), and we'll definitely be good coworkers who work well together."
Then he started his life working full-time and going to school full-time. Finland has a particularly generous and positive and healthy attitude to employment, and tries to accommodate adjustments when employees go to school to help them continue their education. At his place it means that although the leadership transferred him to a relatively easy position and with his schedule to arrange his work, but full-time work coupled with full-time study is not a joke.
After a year of this, unfortunately he suddenly herniated a disc in his lower back. Surgery, failure, re-operation, nerve injury during surgery, there was a period of time so painful that even the undershirt can not wear. People thin out of shape, a lot older, so another year or so. I can't work, I can't study.
But now he has returned to the "battlefield", full-time work plus full-time study. The last time I saw him just home from school, holding a book in his hand in the bus to read, the book is labeled with a lot of small strips, drawing the road, written in pencil, is a student. Asked him if everything was all right. "It's all good, I'm okay with working full days now, and the fact that I'll probably graduate on time."
I asked him more than three years ago why he had a good job but still went to college and studied; he started studying at 55, graduated at 60 at the earliest, and could apply for retirement at 65 according to the law. He said because he loved theology, and although he had worked in many professions in his life, he still aspired to be a pastor the most, so he studied, and "I'll graduate the year I retire. What else can I do but stand in awe.
A lifetime is not short, and it's definitely not long. Is there anything that you loved or still love so much, but didn't have the time, money, or opportunity to learn? Photography, crafts, music, languages, dance, writing, cooking ..... What about just about anything? So what if you can't learn, or are slow to learn? When we enter middle age, or old age, when our life enters a plateau period and we don't need to learn and be educated to get a job and material life like teenagers, can we still keep learning? Can we learn for our own interests, not for our own "can learn" and not for its "usefulness" and learning?
I hope that when I am not retired, I can be like my ex-colleagues, and when I am retired, I can be like the old gentleman who has been learning for a year and still pressing the keys one after another.