7.d 越早醒悟越好

Make Time Your Friend 7.d: The Sooner You Wake Up, the Better

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113093814/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/461.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

Starting from each person's own perception, time does not move at a constant speed, but accelerates forward. This is not some "theory of relativity." Einstein did once use such a metaphor to explain relativity: "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute; but let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." But what Einstein wanted to show was not merely that "for an observer's perception of the passage of time, the frame of reference is crucial," but the further point that "the observer's state of mind may be an additional factor in the perception of the passage of time." However, the fact that Einstein took for granted—the so-called "for an observer's perception of the passage of time, the frame of reference is crucial," that is, what we just said, "starting from each person's own perception, time does not move at a constant speed, but accelerates forward"—is something many ordinary people have never seriously considered.

As long as you are reading this passage, barring accidents, it can be inferred that your age should roughly [Translator's note: the original writes 岁数致应该, with 致 ("to cause, to send"), which makes no sense here; 大致 ("roughly") or 至 ("at least") appears to be meant; translated by the intended sense] be over 12. Because, generally speaking, around the age of 12 is the stage when the ability to understand abstract written language really starts to develop. So when you hear the lyrics of Lao Lang's (老狼) "You at the Same Desk" (《同桌的你》), you can't help but resonate—"Back then the sky was always so blue, and the days always passed too slowly." You must also have had the feeling Lo Ta-yu (罗大佑) had—"When will I have a mature, grown-up face like the older students?" The existence of experience greatly raises the ability to understand. But when we were small we felt time was so slow as to be almost unbearable—so how is it that now "time rushes by like flowing water"?

Psychologists can use a particularly simple, accurate and very ingenious method to explain clearly why, as they grow older, everyone feels time going faster and faster.

> For a five-year-old child, the coming year is equivalent to 20% of the whole life he has already lived; while for a fifty-year-old, the coming year is equivalent to only 1/50 of the whole life he has already lived, that is, 2%. So, in terms of feeling, as age increases, time seems to go faster and faster.

For any normal person, recognizing this fact early may be one of the most important things of all. Unfortunately, this is an experience that takes a very long time before one can really experience it personally; most people only truly feel it deeply when they reach their thirties or forties. But by that time, this "experience" no longer has any real chance of doing anything for them—because the best time has long since passed. So this special experience, however rich and accurate, is unlikely to bring the one who gained it any release; what it can bring is more likely an even heavier shackle—regret will accompany them every moment in everything they do afterward. Having no other choice, these people without exception want to pass this precious experience on to their children, and the result is that, almost without exception, just as their own parents once tried, it ends in utter failure—and on top of the regret, endless worry and resentment are added.

The ability to reflect is almost an ability unique to human beings. Because humans have the ability to reflect, they slowly came to have another ability, the ability to draw analogies. And the ability to draw analogies is the key to how high or low a person's ability to understand is. So when we understand new things, we often do so by reflecting on and drawing analogies with existing experience. The existence of similar existing experience is very likely to greatly raise our efficiency in understanding new things and new ideas.

"If you don't work hard while young, you'll grieve in vain when old"—this saying has been popular for thousands of years. It is very doubtful to what extent, over these thousands of years, this saying has actually increased the number of people who "work hard while young," or to what extent it has reduced the number of people who "grieve when old." Why does such a reasonable saying always fail to work? The reasonable explanation is that experience that takes too long to obtain is very hard to pass on, precisely because there is no existing experience to support it. And the reason it is so extremely difficult to make a child really understand a principle like "time will in the end go faster and faster" is that they not only lack "similar existing experience," but happen to have the opposite "existing experience."

In fact, my observation is that almost all failed education of young people is caused by crudely, simply and ignorantly disregarding the "existing experience" children have and "the effect of existing experience." If you are a victim of failed education, congratulations, and please thank me too—this really isn't just a joke—because that little bit of text just now has given you a rare and precious "chance to be reborn." If you are already a parent, please, you must go back and read that little bit of text again and again; with just a little more patience, you can begin to try using your mind, and both you and your child will gain liberation just from these few minutes of effort and struggle on your part.

The method of educating children is especially simple. On some day, do something that makes an extremely deep impression on him. It can be telling a story, it can be an outing, or it can be buying a present that delights him—anyway, it must make an extremely deep impression on him. Then record this event clearly in your own diary, including of course the time, the place and the event, and then be sure to keep it safe. About two or three years later, one day when he starts to feel and complain that time is too slow, dig out that record, show it to him, and let him feel it. The key to doing this is only one thing: patience. First, the starting point is best around the age of seven; second, the end point [Translator's note: the original writes 重点 ("key point"), which makes no sense paired with 起点 ("starting point"); 终点 ("end point") appears to be meant; translated by the intended sense] should be at least two or three years later. Then, another three to five years later, remind him once more. Such an experience will not only make the child never forget it as long as he lives, but will also influence his precise understanding of time for the rest of his life. Sooner or later, your child will be immensely grateful to you for this and full of reverence. Because he will in the end understand that this precious "relative advantage" simply cannot be measured in money—you need only roughly look at how many people around us are at a loss about this and know nothing of it, and you can easily imagine this result.

What we must understand next is another, more important principle, which is the title of this section—"The earlier you wake up, the better." Earlier on, we already discussed what differences in life, what differences in the quality of time, the differences in mental power between people will bring—only these words are accurate to describe it: "impossible to estimate."

In fact, scientists long ago gave us a very reasonable and clear explanation. The French physicist and mathematician Henri Poincaré [[1](#footnote_0_461 "Henri Poincaré，1854 – 1912")] tells us with his chaos theory that a tiny difference in the initial conditions will lead to a huge difference in the final result. A tiny error in the former, and the error in the latter will be enormous. In fact, in a certain sense, even linear relationships end up behaving the same way: two rays set out from the same point, and even if their directions differ by just a little, after the two lines extend infinitely there will be an infinite distance between the ends of the two rays. The ancients' saying "miss by a hair, err by a thousand li" is a plain observation of this kind of phenomenon.

And in the early 1960s, Edward Lorenz [[2](#footnote_1_461 "Edward Lorenz (born May 23, 1917")]), a meteorologist at MIT, went further and used the "Butterfly Effect" (Butterfly Effect) to illustrate vividly the core content of chaos theory—"sensitive dependence on initial conditions"—"Whether a butterfly in one place on Earth flaps its wings can even affect whether a hurricane occurs in another place." Others have used the trajectory of a hockey puck to illustrate "sensitive dependence on initial conditions." If the angle at which the puck is first placed changes even by the most minute amount, then as the number of collisions increases, the difference in its final position grows exponentially.

So, in the minds of those who can truly understand chaos theory, so-called fate has another explanation. Differences in initial conditions produce final results as far apart as heaven and earth. Most people lack a complete understanding of this, and, because of the limits of their own perception, can only put those regrets down to "man proposes, heaven disposes," or [Translator's note: the original writes only 者, which makes no sense here; 或者 ("or") is meant; translated by the intended sense] "what fate grants you will surely have; what fate denies, don't force," or something like "fate makes fools of us," and so on. But people with such feelings or thoughts don't know that **they once had a chance to change the ending**; it's just that the property of time, that it cannot flow backward, has turned everything into an unalterable, established fact.

When I was small, I read these words in Su Dongpo's (苏东坡) "On the Marquis of Liu" (《留侯论》): "Those whom the ancients called heroes surely had a degree of self-control beyond others, able to bear what human feeling cannot bear. When an ordinary man is insulted, he draws his sword and rises, stepping forward to fight; this is not enough to count as courage. Those under heaven with great ambition are not alarmed when something suddenly befalls them, and not angered when something is imposed on them without cause; this is because what they hold is great, and their aims are far-reaching." After reading it, I only envied those heroes for actually being able to reach such a supreme level, and couldn't imagine how on earth they did it. But looking at it now, the explanation is actually simple: those heroes were all people who had woken up long, long ago. So they could use the power of the mind to ignore the turmoil in front of them and focus on the splendor many years later that others couldn't see.

The past has already passed and cannot be changed. The future, however, can be changed—by changing our starting conditions today. When we truly use the power of the mind to reflect seriously and correctly on all the awkward situations we meet in our lives, in the end we will find that most of them are surely because we did something wrong in the past, whether intentionally or not. Then, for the sake of being right in the future, today we must do our best not to make mistakes. Any small mistake today may be infinitely magnified in the future. Such a realization will change almost everything about us. Life is choice, and so-called choice is just the result of weighing things against the ideas a person holds. The ideas a person holds, to put it plainly, are the ultimate expression of the power of the mind.

Opening up your own mind is the same as being reborn. But rebirth does not directly equal happiness.

Knowing is easy; doing is hard. To realize that "thinking" actually has to be learned through "thinking" about it many times—how hard that is! Before you realize it, what fun is there in "thinking"? Yet once you realize it, you immediately have to face pain in the most direct way—accepting reality takes courage, because reality is not what we first thought it was, nor what we ever longed for. While reality is hard to accept, even harder to accept is our own self, who has soaked in reality unawares for many years and become changed beyond recognition.

So many people are afraid of thinking and often say, "Why think so much? Isn't that exhausting?" And then they live in the most exhausting way in the world without knowing it. The great philosopher Russell once observed this phenomenon, found it strange, and sighed, "Many people would rather die than think ." [[3](#footnote_2_461 "Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. — Bertrand Russell")]

If you are reborn, you can use your mind properly to make friends with time, and together with it build a new life with patience. No one can stop you from opening up your own mind. The most amazing thing is that opening up a person's mind takes only a single struggling thought. But this single thought is in turn one of the most difficult things in the world. Still, struggle a bit, because no matter what, sooner or later we have to pay the bill for our own past; there's no escaping it.

Einstein said, "Using the same line of thinking we used back when we created them, we simply cannot solve any trouble ." [[4](#footnote_3_461 "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. — Albert Einstein")]

**The earlier you wake up, the better.**

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Footnotes:

1. Henri Poincaré，1854 – 1912 [[↩](#identifier_0_461)]
2. Edward Lorenz (born May 23, 1917 [[↩](#identifier_1_461)]
3. Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. — Bertrand Russell [[↩](#identifier_2_461)]
4. We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. — Albert Einstein [[↩](#identifier_3_461)]

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