I used to hear such a saying: "We should have the freedom to be ourselves and the courage to be ourselves."
I read a top-ranked book in new york bestseller list these two days, and you flew to your mountain like a bird. This book is a memoir of the author's own reading, more like writing his own biography. This is a true story of the United States that happened on the other side of the ocean in 2 1 century. The author experienced it, and so did her nephews and nieces. ....
This book suits you. ........
This book is also suitable for me to read. .......
Originally thought that civilization and wealth can enrich people's spirit, the "American Empire" is a holy place for countless favorite students to study abroad, and it is also a powerful country with the first economy. It is hard to imagine that in a remote and remote poverty-stricken area, the people there are biased and stubborn, so-called belief life. They are like flickering candlelight in a strong wind, which may go out at any time, and they are particularly helpless in every cold winter ... The only thing that can save them is education, and more. .....
What attracted me to this book was not the shiny label or the flowery rhetoric, but the ordinary and gripping truth. The author has been describing her true story and tragic childhood with her simple brushwork. On the way of growing up, she kept fleeing, looking for and abandoning, only to find that the real ferryman was herself. Maybe you can see your own shadow in this book. ....
1. The family that comes from has some shackles, but it can't affect our lives.
The author Tara and her family live in a remote mountain area. Her father is a paranoid Mormon who runs a garbage dump. Her mother is an herbalist and used to be a midwife. She has five brothers and one sister. Her father controls and determines the tone and course of family life. Her mother chose obedience and forbearance and never dared to disobey her husband.
My father never trusted the government, hospitals and schools, thinking that they were pagans and people bewitched by Satan. He wants to keep the children away from God's plot. Her parents believe that the end of the world will come and are preparing for survival every day. So Tara was instilled with this idea from an early age, helping her parents to work, turning a blind eye to things outside the window, and living an isolated life.
Kindergartens, primary schools, junior high schools, senior high schools and universities. This is the growth process that each of us has to go through. But Tara had no playmates, no reading sounds, no shiny toys, only some rags in her childhood. I didn't go to school before 17. When I was working in a waste factory, my father didn't allow me to wear gloves because it would slow down my work, and I didn't allow me to wear a helmet. Because after wearing it, in order to keep my balance, your movements will be very slow. When I first cooperated with my father, my father hit Tara in the stomach with a steel tube, because I was in a hurry and forgot to take care of my daughter's safety.
Even when her family got sick and had a car accident, her life was in danger. My brother was burned by fire and fell from a height and hurt his head. She fell from the trailer and almost broke into pieces. When all kinds of flesh and blood were flying, she never went to the hospital and only relied on her mother's herbs and essential oils for treatment. You can't eat food made of milk, so hoarding a lot of honey and not wearing naked clothes will be considered no different from prostitutes. ...
As Tara grew up, she had more and more ideas of her own. She witnessed her father's madness again and again and pushed her under the roaring steel roller scissors that almost bit her head off. Tara's nightmare, the Sean brothers, are sometimes gentle and sometimes tortured, and have obvious violent tendencies. He put her head in the toilet and strangled her, forcing her to beg for mercy again and again. What saddens Tara most is her mother. Faced with this situation, she chose to ignore and remain silent. ...
Even later, when Tara confronted her parents about it, she was kicked out of the house. The image of her family has changed. It is no longer that kind of harmony, but a besieged cage that she tried to get rid of.
When I saw this, I thought of Anabel in My Genius Girlfriend. She is strong, mysterious, indifferent and gifted. Because of her excellent grades, she wanted to study and see a wider and bigger world, but she was rejected by her family and thrown out of the window by her father. The scene where Anabel said that I couldn't feel the pain made me feel very distressed and shuddered. But in the whole play, I didn't see Anabel complaining about anything bad. What I saw was that she held her breath and took control of her own destiny little by little. Playing a bad hand is so good that some things can still be done by manpower.
Although family background brings many limitations, it takes a long time to make up and digest. Although you can't change it, you can win back your future through your own efforts the day after tomorrow.
The confrontation between positive and negative effects flies over mountains in the struggle.
Of course, Tara's life is not completely dark. Compared with his father's indifference and ignorance, Sean's tyranny and madness, Taylor is warm and peaceful and has his own dreams. He is the first bird in this family to break through the cage and fly back to lead the chicks to sail. Tara's change came from education and Taylor's encouragement.
Sixteen-year-old Tara began to teach herself secretly, working around to earn tuition and prepare for the college entrance examination. Through her own efforts, she got the admission notice of Brigham Young University. At the age of seventeen, she left Barker Peak and walked into the classroom for the first time. This is a completely strange world. She doesn't know that books are for reading, that she should wash her hands after going to the toilet, and that spoiled food can't be put in the refrigerator. She thought that taking antibiotics could overcome the disease, that the government would attack their homes because they didn't go to public schools, and even thought that the "massacre" was just a conflict between five or six people. ....
When she left home for college, she learned the truth of the world from different ways and angles. She saw a completely different world. The government won't arrest her because she didn't go to a public school. Her roommate wears shorts and suspenders, but she is still very virtuous. The "Holocaust" means the death of more than 6 million people, and Tara's cognitive view in the past 20 years has been subverted again.
But with perseverance and belief, from failing to getting straight A's, she got the opportunity to go to Cambridge University for exchange, then went there to study for a master's degree, became a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and finally got a doctorate from Cambridge University.
In the interview, I wrote such a sentence: Education is an individual's pursuit of knowledge, and it is a personal change, because the history of pursuing knowledge has changed.
Life is never smooth sailing, everyone will be in deep trouble, and when helpless and difficult, I always hope someone can help me out of the quagmire. But no one can really stay with him all the time.
San Mao once wrote in "Send You a Horse": "What is the heart? Like a thousand miles away, there is no boat to cross people. Others can't help except crossing by themselves. "
Yes, no one can save us from the mire. The real ferryman is always ourselves.
03. Learning makes people reconcile with everything.
In this book, Rita has achieved very good results through self-study, but it is only an understatement in the book. She doesn't want to be the embodiment of inspiration. Although education has changed herself, it has also drawn a deep rift between her and her family.
When she was at Harvard, her parents went across America to see her. Although it was to save her rebellion, Tara knew that her father had always loved her. On the edge of long-term internal friction, the rare love and warmth made Tara feel precious.
However, an education system may make it impossible for her to return to that ignorant and extreme family and get rid of the shackles of thoughts and concepts created by her family and relatives during her own growth.
At one time, she was unable to work and study, and lived by watching TV plays for ten or twenty hours every day. He suffers from sleepwalking, and he goes to the street to make a hullabaloo about every night. She wants to forget what she has learned and thought, accept her father's theory completely and really return to her family, but her body and soul instinctively say no; She also wants to break up with her family and live completely in the real world she created. However, ethics and love for family members are also instinct. The collision of different ideas and concepts almost split her.
It was not until she fell that she chose to face the truth, not to overcome, not to forgive, not to accept. She realized the fear caused by her father's shortcomings and got rid of the guilt caused by escape, resistance and growth. After all, she has accepted herself now and found a mountain that makes her peaceful, stable, safe and dependent.
Maybe family values are different, but love is always there, just as the book says: "You can love someone, but you still choose to say goodbye to him;" You can miss someone, but still be glad that he is not in your life. "
Perhaps in everyone's cognition, there will be extreme, wrong or chaotic parts. In the process of expanding and improving our knowledge, we will all face the confrontation between old and new ideas, thus falling into the abyss of self-denial, inferiority and negativity.
The change of Tara's fate comes from education, from the endless exploration of inner doubts and from the most authentic thinking about the world. She is grateful for everything that education has brought him, and seems to be looking for her way home.
Like Tara, we should learn to take a long-term view, learn to let go of the past, accept the family we came from, stop being persistent and passive, and bravely be a brand-new self. Live every day now and cherish every minute now.
If you have experienced the same thing at this moment, please follow your heart and learn to face it bravely.