Love Wisdom, Seek Truth, Attain Freedom, Through Service — A Farewell Song for My Former Self
I
Today's farewell: no banquet, no incense, no wine poured.
Just open a window.
Let the wind in, let the light in, let the one who sat too long at the desk, who gripped love too tightly, rise and walk out.
He is my former self. A Capricorn, rigorously disciplined, with an excess of responsibility. When he loved someone, he wanted to hold an umbrella over her for a lifetime, to pick up every fragment of hers and piece them together one by one into a city he must defend. He thought love was bearing, was always being present, was living himself into her answer.
He was clumsy. He was sincere.
He once searched through care guides for mood disorders deep into the night for someone, noted down that the 窝蛋牛肉煲仔饭 (claypot rice with egg) should have a runny center, that the 杨枝甘露 (mango pomelo sago) should be less ice. He couldn't distinguish the boundary between "protecting" and "controlling," thinking love was burning himself entirely to illuminate another person.
He didn't understand: Light is not produced by burning.
Light is when you no longer possess a landscape, and the landscape begins to shine upon you.
So today, I send him off.
Not mourning, not negating. Just gently closing the volume he had read—the Dao De Jing, Chapter Nine, "When the work is done, withdraw; this is the Way of Heaven." Then opening the window, letting the wind turn to Chapter Forty-One:
"The bright Way seems dim; the advancing Way seems retreating."
So it turns out that true forward motion is learning to step back.
II
Love wisdom.
Love is not possession; it is "walking with heart."
It took the former self many years to understand: wisdom is not a shell snatched into one's hand, not cargo that can be transported from one city to another. Wisdom is walking toward the light, yet never reaching the light; it is sweeping the mind clean, only to discover the broom is also dust.
He once played the wise man in love. Analyzing personality types for her, charting career paths for her, deconstructing the knots of her family of origin. He thought this was "intellectual midwifery"—but it was actually transgression. A midwife cannot give birth for someone, cannot suffer for someone, cannot even lift the baby out of the birth canal for someone. She can only crouch there and say: push, you can.
True love of wisdom is admitting one's own barrenness.
Socrates said he could not birth wisdom, only help others give birth. The former self spent over twenty years to finally hear this: You are not the light; you are merely the light's midwife. At the moment the infant cries, you should step back.
Stepping back is the final lesson of loving wisdom.
III
Seek truth.
Truth is not an answer; it is an incision.
The former self dissected himself on countless nights: my gentleness—is it love, or another form of greed? My sense of responsibility—is it bearing, or the cowardice of not being able to let go? I want her to be happy—within this word "want," how much "I think" resides?
Dissecting to the deepest layer, there is no shell, no light, only a heart that can hurt.
The ancient Greeks said truth is ἀλήθεια, which is unconcealment. Not pulling truth down from the heavens, but peeling back layer by layer what covers it. That dust-covered layer is sometimes called "good intentions," sometimes called "cannot bear to let go."
Zhuangzi said, "Nothing can add to or subtract from its authenticity."
Truth is unaffected by addition or subtraction. You protect it desperately, and it does not become more true; you let it be rained upon, and it does not become less true. It simply is what it is.
That girl was never his creation. She was a miracle, already complete, when he encountered her.
He did not need to add a stroke for her, nor subtract one.
He merely had the fortune to see her as she truly was.
IV
Attain freedom.
Freedom is not doing whatever one pleases; it is "growing oneself from one's own roots."
The former self's understanding of freedom was once "earning a sky for her." Later he realized: Any sky earned by someone else is not a true sky.
An umbrella can be lent, but the rain must be personally endured.
He left that umbrella, not because he no longer loved. Precisely because he could finally love further—far enough that he no longer needed to appear in her weather, and she could still be sunny.
Aristotle said philosophy is the only free discipline because it "exists for its own sake."
A free person is not one without fetters. A free person is one who does everything not in order to "become something else," but simply because: this is me.
This is you. This is me.
You are Aquarius; the wind must fly. I am Capricorn; the earth must root deeply. Neither of us is wrong. Only, the freedom of the wind lies in the distance, and the freedom of the earth lies in its rootedness.
Attaining freedom begins with allowing others to be free in their own way.
Then comes: allowing yourself to continue loving in a clumsy way, just no longer reaching out.
V
Through service.
The endpoint of service is disappearance.
The Latin servus means slave. Christianity inverted it—serving God is itself sovereignty. And Socrates inverted it even more radically: the highest service is helping others become themselves, then exiting the stage.
A midwife's mission is not to stand guard at the delivery room door for a lifetime.
A midwife's mission is that every life brought into the world through her hands will, one day, remember her not at all.
The former self once styled himself an "intellectual midwife"; now he understands: A true midwife is a silhouette the delivered never needs to look back upon.
That girl does not need to remember him. No need for reply letters, no need for gratitude, no need to recall in any rainy season that there was an umbrella.
She only needs to remember: her clear sky was walked out by herself.
And the one who once clumsily loved her has rewritten the word "service" from "doing something for her" into "allowing her not to have to do something."
This is the final form of service: returning the other person to herself.
VI
The window is open.
The wind turns the pages to the final chapter.
The silhouette of the former self has walked far away. He did not look back. His umbrella hangs by the door, his sweets remain on the table, his letter bears no date—because those were the eternal moments of his love, needing no frame of time.
The new self remains at the window.
Who is he? He is not yet fully formed. He is still on the road, still reading, still marveling, still shedding tears over a passage of text, still agonizing over a stranger's fate. He will still fall in love with someone, but he no longer tries to become anyone's answer.
He no longer burns.
He is merely a beam of light. Not scorching, not extinguishing. When someone needs it, it illuminates an inch; when not needed, it quietly shines upon his own desk—in the right drawer, there sits an unfinished massager.
That is the former self's relic, and also the new self's memorial.
Memorial to a unforgettable love, memorial to a true midwifery, memorial to a person who spent over thirty years finally delivering himself from the obsession of "must possess."
The crying hurts. But after the crying, there is breath.
VII
So, this is that maxim.
It is not a slogan, not an epitaph, not a admonition hung on the wall.
It is a path (The Way of Being).
Love wisdom: walk with head bowed. Seek truth: look up and see. Attain freedom: stop your steps, know where you stand. Through service: turn around, point the way you came to those who follow.
It took me many years to walk through it the first time.
But this path is not from beginning to end.
It is circular. Having walked through once, you begin again from "love wisdom."
Only, the next time you set out, the walker is no longer Capricorn. No longer any zodiac sign.
He is merely a speck of dust among thousands of stars, one that has learned why it shines.
Dust does not possess anything.
Dust is merely willing, at some moment, to be traversed by light.
This is the farewell song.
Bidding farewell to the clumsy former self.
Welcoming the new 鲨臂 (self-mocking fool).
He has no name, no surname, no native place, no star chart. He only recognizes those twelve characters, and only intends to spend the rest of his life walking through them repeatedly.
Love wisdom.
Seek truth.
Attain freedom.
Through service.
—May you be so too.
Liangzhi, January 2026
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