If you engage in a job solely for a livelihood and do not enjoy it, that job is merely your profession. If you pursue a job simply because you love it, regardless of its financial benefits, that job is your vocation. The ideal scenario is where vocation and profession align, allowing you to earn a living by doing what you love. The second-best situation is when the two are separate, with your passion pursued as a hobby. The worst situation is having no activity that you truly enjoy.
When young, people are usually full of ideals. As they age, they tend to become increasingly pragmatic. Driven by the pressure of the struggle for survival and the temptation of material benefits, everyone directs their attention and energy toward the external world, ceasing to focus on their inner world. The result is a soul that shrinks and becomes empty, leaving only a body that busies itself ceaselessly in the world. For a person, there is nothing more tragic than this!
Loneliness can only be resolved by those who love and understand you deeply; others merely disrupt your solitude, making you feel even more isolated. It is like a sense that becomes more aware of its own existence because it is stimulated.
Passionate lovers love intensely but are not exclusive; dignified gentlemen love exclusively but are not intense. It has always been difficult to have both. However, occasionally there may be a passionate lover who is exclusive, yet there is destined to be no dignified gentleman who loves intensely.
The wise laugh at their own mistakes.
In the face of eternal death, all finite lifespans are equal in value. Philosophy constantly tempts the forward movement of human thought in various mysterious forms, and the 'indicator' behind philosophy is the world. However, once the temptation succeeds, it immediately mocks the ignorance and helplessness of human wisdom. It creates contradictions within us, fostering pessimism in contradiction, yet also giving rise to transcendence; the pessimistic become pitiful, futile victims, while the transcendent become restless sprites in its hand.
