After listening to the Da Mowang podcast episode "After Watching Teacher Zhang Zanying's Speech, I Want to Complete What She Didn't Finish Saying", I had many thoughts. It articulated many social logics that I have found to be true in my brief life experience.
Life's setbacks and turning points are often not a matter of personal ability, but rather opaque, unfair "systems," and the subtle, indescribable psychology of the parties involved. Hearing more gossip is still just gossip; only the parties involved truly taste the bittersweetness. This is precisely why I increasingly dislike sharing my own experiences with others. And all such understanding is paved by the paths one has walked.
An individual's strength can hardly shake a vast system, but systems are composed of people. Understanding and skillfully utilizing the gaps in "human nature" is the only way for ordinary people to leverage the system. Many things may not seem entirely aboveboard, but the ways to achieve things are often gray.
The modern expression of patriarchy is "for your own good," persuading girls "not to work too hard," hoping girls don't go too far from home, thereby eliminating those more challenging but potentially higher-rewarding choices before they form an independent value system. But this is also a cognitive imprint of the times, not something an individual can easily realize; it only reveals itself unintentionally.
Marriage does not make a career-oriented woman who already has a sense of self lose herself; instead, she will develop more selves, and each self will occupy time and energy. Although I haven't personally dealt with the issue of marriage, even in university, I had multiple demands on my energy: internships, coursework, interests, and relationships. Choosing one thing inevitably means losing something else. Marriage is not scary, but the prerequisite is to be self-consistent, to marry when you want to marry, to have children when you want to have children. If you are prepared, remember to fasten your seatbelt; the journey ahead will be thrilling, arduous, and worthwhile.
Understand the division of labor in society; people are not omnipotent, and it's okay to outsource what can be outsourced. Just like today, I suddenly wanted to dress well but didn't have the energy to fuss over myself, so I thought, "Make an AI that helps me remember what clothes I have and where they are, build a website, set up intranet penetration for computer and phone, or make it accessible from the external network, call some existing APIs, take a photo each time I wear something to optimize and record where it is—that should work. If participating in a hackathon, I could even collaborate with hardware classmates to create hardware." It's all about thinking of outsourcing.
Now I am gradually trying to view the world through a gray lens. Recognizing that I am a very self-oriented person. I need to know who I am and what I need. Currently, in terms of relationships and marriage, what I seek is something that brings me cognitive progress, satisfies my need for security, and solves my needs. As I grow older, I increasingly feel that women are controlled by hormones—experiencing intense emotional swings to the point of sudden tears before menstruation, feeling a strong desire for a relationship at specific times. There's nothing inherently good or bad about this; it's just about gradually recognizing and accepting the fluctuations of one's own body and mind. Since there are such fluctuations, there are signals from the body; it's just that most of the time, the brain has ignored them. Respect your own body, respect your own soul.