The year is coming to an end, and all kinds of book lists pop up and haunt my circle of friends. There are two big blood-red characters engraved on their faces: Year.
There is a book list called “Ten Books You Can’t Miss This Year”. I clicked on it and saw that these books rushed in like a car accident, and we had to miss them all.
There is a book list called “Ten Books You Must Read in the Next Year”. I clicked on it and found that most of them are economic management inspirational and conspiracy theory books written by big speculators for small speculators.
There is also a book list called “Ten Books Recommended by Bill Gates Hematemesis”, “Obama’s Top Ten Books After Reading”, and what’s more, “Ten Great Books Voted by 30,000 Netizens, Do You Dare Not to Read It? ”
Of course, there are also annual book lists that publishers guard against and steal, bookstores take red envelopes and destock annual book lists, and media take care of related households that pretend to be literate annual book lists. With the scheming of Ponzi fraudsters, the contagious power of Internet financial pyramid schemes, and the tenacity of aunts who are still dancing square dances when their PM2.
In my opinion, most popular lists are poison to the soul, and it would be like a knight killing his own horse if a reader followed them.
To paraphrase the 19th century German philosopher Schopenhauer, when you are chasing various popular book lists, the book list maker is thinking for you, and you are just following his intentions. Your mind stops chasing the book list, so there is a sense of relief and the illusion that the best knowledge and ideas are on the way. But in reality, your mind is becoming a hunting ground for others to gallop. People who are superstitious about book lists will lose the ability to independently pursue knowledge and ideas, just as people who often wear colored contact lenses will lose their sincere eyes.
The more book lists you have in your collection and the more you believe in them, the stupider you are.
The truly valuable book list can only be opened to yourself. This is not to say that we cannot ask anyone for a bibliography, nor does it mean that we disdain any professional bibliography, but that if we do not have the ability to write a list of books for ourselves, we will always be just giant babies cognitively .
You have to eat your own meals, and you have to write your own book list. I once told my students that you always want me to recommend books, and I can recommend them, but I hope that you can find those shining books by yourself through diligent reading and hard exploration. I also want to tell you that there are no books that you must read in the world, only the books you have to read that you discover at a certain stage and in a certain field. Rely on others to help you find good books, just as a normal adult needs others to feed him.
Make a book list for yourself. Find a bunch of books from one book, just like getting to know a group of people through one person. Everyone has their own eyes, brain and hands, so use your own eyes to see, your own brain to think, and your own hands to write. Knowledge needs to be accumulated, thinking needs to be developed, and the book list also needs to be written by yourself in the process of accumulation and development.
Selzeks in ancient Greece shed tears when he looked at his vast and boundless army, because he thought that after a hundred years, these people would be gone. And the annual book list that we see piled up like a mountain will disappear in less than a hundred years, and it only takes us to spit it out.
As night fell, the hour hand slowly pointed to the number “10”. The lights were all turned off, and the WeChat that had been noisy all day also stopped, and the world was finally silent. I breathed a sigh of relief, washed up and went to bed, preparing for the “spiritual pilgrimage” I had been looking forward to for a day-staying up late.
From ten o’clock in the evening to one o’clock in the morning, it is my unshakable time to stay up late. In this freedom from being disturbed, I can please myself as much as I want. Cut up the fruit, arrange a plate delicately, light the newly purchased aromatherapy, put a tub of hot water, and take a comfortable bath; or turn on the projection, and watch a relaxing and funny comedy movie on the bed; or Do nothing, swipe your phone, meditate with your eyes closed, and let your thoughts wander aimlessly. If it happens to be on Friday, it will be even more enjoyable. Pour a glass of red wine and get drunk without any scruples. Anyway, you don’t have to get up early the next day.
All in all, all the things that I have no patience and energy to do during the day can be slowly figured out at night. The tense nerves were relaxed in the passing of minutes and seconds, and then filled with energy again. I stayed up almost until one o’clock in the morning, when the sleepiness hit me, and I put down my phone and fell asleep peacefully, with a comfortable sigh in my heart: “This is life!” Looking back, my habit of staying up late probably started when I entered the workplace
. into. I used to have a regular life at school, and I had plenty of time to spare, so naturally I wouldn’t miss the free time at night. During that time, my biological clock was ridiculously healthy. Later, when I started working, even if I could get off work on time at six o’clock in the evening, I felt that the time had dropped sharply and it was not enough. Over time, the time for me to fall asleep has been delayed again and again, and finally stabilized at around one o’clock in the morning.
The same is true for my family and friends. Compared with the bland nightlife many years ago, everyone now has a variety of things to do, even if it is boring to brush the phone, they are unwilling to go to bed and go to bed early.
It is true that staying up late is harmful to health. After several years of chaotic work and rest, my body took the lead in raising the white flag. Needless to say, the dark circles under my eyes, I began to lose hair, get acne, endocrine disorders, and many small nodules on the breast and thyroid.
Considering health factors, I began to try various ways to quit the bad habit of staying up late. But people who form a fixed biological clock want to fall asleep earlier, and it is not so simple. Before ten o’clock in the evening, even if I was lying on the bed, I couldn’t sleep because of tossing and turning, and my hand always wanted to reach for the mobile phone beside me. In order to seek psychological comfort, I also joined a “early bed check-in group”. Group friends must clock in and go to sleep in the group before twelve o’clock every night, and they must not get up to play with their mobile phones. At the beginning, the group was very lively, and more than 90% of the people could achieve their goals. But gradually, fewer and fewer people clocked in Solitaire, and few people spoke. In the end, the group of more than 100 people disbanded, and my plan to go to bed early also ran aground.
Later, I was not reconciled and tried various sleep aids, but the side effects of headaches did not make me persist for too long. After repeated self-rescue failures, I completely gave up the early bed plan and returned to the embrace of the night.
Why do I like “staying up late” so much? Probably because this is a rare relaxation and healing. Most of the time during the day has been taken up by others and work. In the fast-paced era, the unstoppable rush and toil seem to have deprived me of my “daytime freedom”. Only at night is the romantic moment that really belongs to you. Two or three hours of short-term relaxation is enough to relieve the congestion and busyness of the day, allowing the soul to breathe.
Today, the phenomenon of “staying up late” is no longer an exception. If you don’t believe me, if you post on Moments at 12 o’clock in the middle of the night, there will probably be more people commenting than at 8 o’clock in the morning. According to the “2022 White Paper on Sleep Health in China”, 44% of young people aged 19 to 25 stay up until after midnight. There is even a new term on the Internet-“revenge staying up late”.
Adler, the founder of Individual Psychology, once said: “When people feel frustrated by physical or psychological problems, they will unconsciously use other methods to make up for this shortcoming, relieve anxiety, and relieve inner uneasiness.” In order to compensate for dissatisfaction during the day, We squeezed the entertainment time into the night, and with the mentality of “night time belongs to us”, we stayed up late crazily.
This kind of thinking is even more serious among the student party and migrant workers. They regard staying up late as the sprint moment of the day, intending to delay sleep to achieve what they want to do that they cannot accomplish during the day, to gamble with their health and life, and regain a sense of control over their lives. This is a kind of psychological compensation mechanism.
Unlike insomnia, “staying up late” is not a kind of physical coercion. People who go to bed late often choose not to sleep voluntarily, which is an active psychological choice. In the media environment where information is omnipresent and ubiquitous, many people are addicted to the information cocoons created by mobile phones. Endless short videos, endless gossip… There will always be an endless stream of fresh content that catches people’s attention. If someone feels that the day is meaningless, they will fill up the emptiness in their hearts by swiping their phones, playing games, and watching dramas at night.
Just like office workers like us, after a day of exhausting work in the unit during the day, we don’t want to wash up and go to bed immediately at night, but lie flat in a pile of junk food and soap operas, spending a period of nothingness. Do we really want to play with our phones and watch videos all the time? No, it’s just that mobile phones and watching dramas are the cheapest pastime props, and these “little fortunes” at your fingertips can wash away the unwillingness of the day. This is also the reason why the public knows the truth of “staying up late hurts the body”, but they still have a bad life.
Now, I have re-established a stable biological clock, going to bed at 12 o’clock in the evening and waking up at 8 o’clock in the morning, which can basically guarantee a full day of energy. Compared with today’s young people, it is still within a reasonable range. In fact, I have always felt that staying up late is not terrible. What is terrible is that we don’t know why we stay up late. Is it the emptiness of life, or the anxiety of work, or is it simply for distraction? Only by understanding the reasons why you stay up late can you really stop compulsive staying up late.
If you feel unwell because of staying up late, it is best to change your schedule. But if you are more self-disciplined and can moderately “stay up late” on the basis of ensuring your health, it may also become a way of life that is quiet, solitary, and deep thinking. This night was not in vain.
