离题集 2026 Oracle Digressions 2026 第 10 篇 Section 10
七月 学着哭泣的年纪 July: The Age of Learning to Weep
返回 离题集 2026 Back to Oracle Digressions 20267月，生活的断点，人生的断点。大学前2.5年和后1.5年，高中前1年和后2年，初中前1年和后2年，小学前3年和后3年——每一个人生阶段，都可以被一刀切成两半。
July: a breakpoint in life, a rupture in existence. The first 2.5 years and the latter 1.5 years of university; the first year and the latter two years of senior high; the first year and the latter two years of junior high; the first three years and the latter three years of primary school—every stage of life can be cleanly sliced in half by a single blade.
大学之前的那几刀都落在明处：换了老师，分了班，某门学科忽然变了难度。而大学的这一刀割得很轻，几乎听不见声音：老师还在，同学还在，课也照常上，可我们已经不再站在同一条战线上了。从此，生活的控制感要自己给自己了。
Before university, those cuts fell out in the open: teachers were swapped, classes reshuffled, or the difficulty of a particular subject suddenly spiked. But the cut delivered by university was extraordinarily light, almost inaudible: the teachers remained, classmates remained, classes met as usual, yet we were no longer fighting on the same frontline. From that moment forward, the sense of control over one’s life had to be generated entirely by oneself.
而所谓断点，说到底不过是离别的另一个名字。是时候坐下来聊聊哭泣了。
And what we call a breakpoint, at the end of the day, is merely an alias for parting. It is time to sit down and talk about weeping.
我这些年每年都有几个情感爆发点，摊开排一排，竟然很整齐：初三拿到高中的提前录取会哭，高考模考没达到自己的期待会哭；喜欢的爱豆退团会哭，亦师亦友的同学即将出国会哭，B学姐毕业会哭，我本科毕业也哭；看《魔法坏女巫2》会哭，看《局外人》会哭；恋爱被发现之后，和初恋抱在一起哭。朋友都说我多愁善感。可这份清单看下来，其实全是同一件事：要么是没能得到，要么是即将失去。我不是爱哭，我只是讨厌离别。
Over the years, I have had several emotional explosion points every single year, and when laid out side by side, they form a strikingly neat pattern: in ninth grade, crying upon receiving early admission to senior high; crying when my mock Gaokao scores failed to match my expectations; crying when an idol I loved left the group; crying when a classmate who was both mentor and friend was about to go abroad; crying when Senior Sister B graduated; crying when I graduated with my own bachelor’s degree; crying while watching Wicked: For Good; crying while reading The Stranger; and holding my first love and crying together after our secret relationship was discovered. Friends all say I am overly sentimental. But looking down this catalog, it is essentially all the exact same thing: either something I failed to attain, or something I was on the verge of losing. It is not that I love crying; I simply detest goodbyes.
初中读《局外人》，读到默尔索面对母亲去世时那段冷峻到近乎无情的描写，我怎么也没忍住——那时我想的是我去世的太奶奶。一个人可以那样平静地写下”今天，妈妈死了”，而我连在书上读到都受不了。
In junior high, when I read The Stranger and reached that austere, almost callous passage depicting Meursault confronting his mother’s passing, I couldn’t hold back my tears—I was thinking of my late great-grandmother. That someone could pen “Maman died today” with such deadpan composure, while I couldn’t even bear to read it on the page.
前阵子让 GPT 替我做了一次画像，说得实在太准：表象是一个努力考研、绩点中游、有点高冷的工科男；中间一层防御，是用各种理论、书单、鄙视链砌起来的铜墙铁壁；但最底层的核心，是一个依然停留在14岁那年雨季的小男孩，等着某个人来听他讲两个小时物理题，并且不会嫌他烦。看到这段的时候我没有难堪，反倒松了一口气。我现在真的不会再因为情感流露而羞耻了。我恨死了那套对男性的传统规训——它教你把每一次想哭的冲动都翻译成别的东西：疲惫、上火、没睡好、想太多。翻译得久了，人就真的听不懂自己了。
A while ago, I asked GPT to profile me, and its reading was frighteningly spot-on: the facade of a hardworking postgraduate entrance exam aspirant, an engineering student with a middle-of-the-pack GPA and a slightly aloof exterior; a middle defensive rampart built of high theories, eclectic reading lists, and cultural hierarchies; yet at the deepest core, a little boy still stranded in the rainy season of his fourteenth year, waiting for someone to sit and listen to him explain physics problems for two straight hours without ever finding him tedious. Reading that description, I felt no mortification; instead, I exhaled a long breath of relief. Nowadays, I genuinely feel no shame in letting emotions show. I utterly despise the traditional gendered conditioning drilled into men—the doctrine that teaches you to translate every urge to weep into something else: exhaustion, excessive internal heat, a poor night’s sleep, overthinking. If you translate it long enough, you become genuinely incapable of understanding yourself.
我在别处写过，我人生的低谷是14岁和22岁。今年我22岁。十四岁那年我没有学会哭，那么这一年，大概就是补课的年纪。在家看综艺，又一次陷进情绪的泥沼：先是为节目里的事义愤填膺，接着觉得这份愤怒不过是在回避我自己的问题，最后又觉得连回避都是被流量牵着走，毫无意义。三层情绪叠在一起，谁也不肯先散。其实也没啥，我怒了一下也就是怒了一下。雪豹是叼着尾巴过河的。
I have written elsewhere that the two lowest troughs of my life were at fourteen and twenty-two. I am twenty-two this year. At fourteen, I never learned how to cry, so this year is perhaps the time for remedial lessons. Watching variety shows at home, I fell once again into an emotional quagmire: first feeling righteous fury at something on screen, then realizing that my rage was merely an evasion of my own real issues, and finally feeling that even this evasion was being puppeted by internet traffic and entirely devoid of meaning. Three layers of emotion stacked atop one another, none willing to disperse first. In truth, it was nothing momentous; I raged for a moment, and that was that. The snow leopard crosses the river holding its own tail in its mouth.
问题大概出在，我现在还是太体面了。大三以来认识我的人，对我印象都很好——可我为什么要抗拒这两年自己的改变呢？说到底，99% 的人既看不到也不在意我的情绪。那我这些自怨自艾，究竟是做给谁看的。我越来越觉得，”能够交换情绪”这件事对人际关系的要求实在太高了，高到我不该这样去要求别人。如果每个人都能理解他人、并且照着理解去行动，那这里就是黑客帝国。话总是可以说得很好听的，行动却是另一回事——归根到底还是唯结果论。
The root of the issue probably lies in the fact that I remain far too concerned with keeping up appearances. People who have met me since my junior year hold a very favorable impression of me—so why should I resist the transformation I underwent over the past two years? Ultimately, 99% of people neither notice nor care about my inner feelings. So for whom am I staging all this self-pity? I feel increasingly that the notion of “mutual emotional exchange” sets the bar far too high for human relationships—so high that I have no right to demand it of others. If every person could understand everyone else and act accordingly in complete empathy, we would already be living in The Matrix. Words can always be spun elegantly, but actions are another matter—in the end, the world remains strictly consequentialist.
所以我宁可要一段关系轰轰烈烈地破裂，也不要它悄无声息地死亡。但这又和上面相悖了：一边说不该要求别人交换情绪，一边又不肯接受关系无声地熄灭。我暂时理不清。可能有些矛盾就是要带着走的。不要和我讲什么降低预期的事情。为什么我用心准备一件事情，就要要求我无欲无求，我是和尚吗？
That is why I would rather watch a relationship shatter with dramatic finality than witness it die in noiseless asphyxiation. Yet this directly contradicts my earlier thought: on the one hand, claiming one shouldn’t expect others to exchange emotional energy, yet on the other hand, refusing to accept relationships silently flickering out. For now, I cannot reconcile this. Perhaps some contradictions are meant to be carried along. And do not lecture me about “lowering expectations.” Why should dedicating my heart and soul to preparing for something require me to cultivate Buddhist detachment? Am I a monk?
我真正想减掉的是别的东西：我的生活里理论占比太多了。一边建构，一边解构，把自己的脑子搞得一团糟。是时候让我的世界清净一下了。我不会再那么在意别人了；自然，也不会再追星了。这两件事本来就是一件——都是把某个人放到自己够不着的高处，然后等他来救我。永远不会再把别人当成自己的救世主了。其实基督根本听不到我的祷告。
What I truly want to trim away is something else: theory occupies far too large a proportion of my life. Building up on one side, deconstructing on the other, churning my own mind into absolute chaos. It is high time my world became quiet. I will no longer care so obsessively about others; and naturally, I will never idolize celebrities again. These two matters are fundamentally one and the same—both involve placing someone on an unreachable pedestal, waiting for them to descend and save me. Never again will I treat another person as my savior. In truth, Christ cannot hear my prayers at all.
最后：多吃糖，多喝水，多晒太阳。
Lastly: eat more sweets, drink more water, and soak up more sunshine.