Dora started elementary school on September 1st, officially becoming a first-grader; Nora is growing up healthy too, about to reach her 100th day. As a father, I’ve muddled through these years without ever thinking deeply or systematically learning how to better shoulder my responsibilities. As they grow up, what help can I offer, and what kind of guidance can I give them? I once tried to sort out my thoughts on raising children — I finished the outline of My Views on Parenting, but when I got to “whether it’s okay to spank children, whether violence can solve problems,” my logic fell apart, and I realized there was a big gap between what I want in life and what I actually do. That article is still in draft, stuck at the chapter “how to spank children reasonably and correctly.”
Many of the things I’m doing lately feel like seeds planted long ago, somehow. Digging through my old writing, I found a piece of rambling from November 1st, 2011 (12 years ago), posted on QQ, titled Missing My Dreams.
For a long time, I no longer knew what my dreams looked like.
Lately, so many thoughts have suddenly come to me, and I really miss my dreams.
I want to study Cisco hard, learn programming, learn English well, and learn Linux;
I want to learn website building and create my own personal website;
I want to see the sea, a vast, vast sea;
I want to climb mountains, very, very tall mountains;
I want to go abroad;
I want to build my own company;
I want to become a free man;
I want to become a scholar.
Missing my dreams and longing for the future doesn’t stop me from seeing reality clearly.
Having dreams feels really good. “ 12 years ago
- WeChat had just been born
- Zhang Yiming founded Beijing ByteDance (never imagined I’d be working here today)
- The iPhone 4S, Steve Jobs’ final work, was released, and the old man passed away
- I was using a Nokia 1200
Twelve years later, the internet industry has been turned upside down;
Twelve years is a full cycle — the dreams I had back then still seem worth holding on to;
As a parent, I hope to provide fertile soil as they grow up, to bury a few seeds of dreams, and quietly wait for them to sprout someday.