To the 22-year-old and useless you.

16
/March 2023

Akira Kurosawa

Hey, everybody, long time no see.

I've been tweeting less recently because we've been invited to different schools to talk about chaos for two weeks in a row. There is less time to calm down and write well, but more fragment time.

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and just yesterday, I finally finished reading Akira Kurosawa's autobiography "Toad's Oil". Shamefully, before reading this book, I had actually only seen two films by Akira Kurosawa, namely, the Seven Samurai and Luo Sheng Men. But they are like two Japanese ronins who suddenly appeared in my film-brushing career, hurriedly disappeared after two cuts to my understanding of film aesthetics, leaving nothing but surprise and shock.

since then, I have recognized Akira Kurosawa as a master. I think he must be a genius. Otherwise, how could he have made such an energetic movie at that time?

until I saw Toad's Oil.

it turns out that Akira Kurosawa did not have a happy childhood because he said that he was mentally retarded and could not understand the teacher's lessons a few years ago. At that time, Akira Kurosawa was not only discriminated against and teased by his classmates, but even the teacher did not sympathize with him at all, and felt that his stupidity was all his own fault. It was not until he was scolded by his brother every day that he felt a little "enlightened". Akira Kurosawa is still the youngest child in the family, because he grew up skipping rope and lattice with his sisters, so much so that he was described by his good friends as a "fair-skinned, girly" boy.

he said he had no idea who he was in other people's memories, but put them in his autobiography because his friends' words were still "partially true".

you know, later, Akira Kurosawa grew to 1.81 meters, and because of his strong personality, he was also called "Emperor Kurosawa".

but even the title of his autobiography, Toad's Oil, expresses his view of himself: he thinks of himself as a "uglier toad" and hopes that readers can take advantage of their past troubles. To bring some "good" changes to themselves.

the ugly toad is mentally retarded and girly.

these are diametrically opposed to the image of "talented director" as we understand it. Because in our hearts, geniuses should be the kind of people who have gone smoothly since childhood, and of course we know that geniuses are people who are not only smarter than you, handsome than you, but also harder than you. However, we always believe that their great achievements cannot be achieved by "efforts" alone.

because if efforts were useful, there would not be so few successful people in the world.

but at PCL (the company where Kurosawa started), Akira Kurosawa's biggest wish as an assistant was to "sleep well." Because the duties of assistant directors are different from other types of work, they need to be responsible for the overall planning of the film. So when the rest of the staff is resting, the assistant can't rest at all.

if it were us, we would have left categorically with the sentence "who wants your job?" Instead of complaining, Akira Kurosawa felt that thanks to the training of PCL, he was able to master all the skills needed for the job of directing.

"We still wipe our eyes with saliva and focus on making better works."

this autobiography has a famous saying about "mountaineering":

"the wind at the top of the mountain finally blew on my face. When I talk about the wind at the top of the mountain, I mean that people who walk the mountain path hard for a long time can feel the cool wind blowing head on when they get to the top of the mountain. As soon as the wind blew on his face, the climber knew that he was approaching the top of the mountain. He will stand on the top of the mountains with a panoramic view of everything. "

this passage reveals two messages, namely:

"people who are close to the top of the mountain can realize that they are getting closer and closer to the top of the mountain, and those who do not know where they are going are because they are still far from the top of the mountain."

"if you want to climb to the top of the mountain, you must walk the mountain path hard for a long time." the first half is about hard work, and the second half is about methods, both of which are indispensable. "

but those of us at the bottom of the mountain, because all we saw were the hips of the climbers, began to praise the shape of the hips of the climbers. At this time, I happened to meet a climber who gave up halfway. just about to gather around to learn from others, he heard the climber say, "Don't think about it. Those who climb halfway up the slope are all carrying maps. Do you have a map?"

finally, people at the bottom of the mountain took out their mobile phones to take selfies, using photos to prove that they had seen the hikers' buttocks, and then left a circle of friends: "if I had a map, I would be the one going to the top of the mountain."

I've heard the same thing ten thousand times. When we meet high achiever, we will say, "if I were taken care of by the teacher like him, I could be the first in the exam." When we meet an ordinary boy with a beautiful girl, we will say, "his family must be well off. Otherwise, how can we catch up with a girl like that?" When we meet a classmate with good development, we will say, "he, there is a relationship at home. Do you think you can mix it up like that just by working hard?"

We onlookers seem to be best at analyzing the "success" of others from God's point of view.

do not know that the climbers simply cannot hear the comments of the tourists below, because they are still busy struggling with the steep mountain road in order to meet the wind that Akira Kurosawa is talking about.

only later did I know that being criticized is the highest praise for climbers.

finally, let's talk about why I wrote this article.

I don't know if you have been scrubbed by a Taiwanese public service advertisement called "Be A Giver" like me. Actually, I transferred to my friend a long time ago.In the circle, but it did not cause others to retweet at that time, because the post I transferred was called "Taiwan Super warm Heart Advertising, Be A Giver". Later, although the push of brushing the screen is the same ad content, it is no longer the previous name, but has a more moving title, called "to you who are still useless at the age of 25."

then it covered my circle of friends in an overwhelming manner. And everyone didn't forget to add a word of encouragement when retweeting, so as to encourage the person who is still useless.

but I always feel a little sad, because obviously everyone is only 22 years old, why start to comfort themselves with 25-year-old ads? When I made a mess of my four years of college, how could I let it go because of a five-minute short film?

can we still blame this society or our family for achieving nothing?

so I think we, who are useless, should feel remorse at this moment, and then extremely sad. Because only in this way, those messy past can not be counted as perfunctory by us.

never shake hands with the past, you have to defeat it, otherwise, the past will only become your future again.

"always with tears in your eyes, never useless."

good night