Ideal

Hello everyone, my name is Du Sujuan, and I teach literature at East China University of Political Science and Law.

To be honest, my identity is quite awkward. Every time I introduce myself, someone will come up and say:

“You’re a teacher at a university of political science and law—can you give me legal advice?”

I’ve been teaching literature there for twenty-five years, and in that time I’ve successfully turned myself into the school’s most famous “legal illiterate.”

At our university, every major is divided into two kinds: law and non-law.

Teachers like me, who come from Chinese language and literature, usually joke that we are the “non-law” teachers—literally, “illegal.”

And precisely because I’m an “illegal” teacher, I have unexpectedly gained a certain freedom and looseness at the margins of a law university.

I can study and teach literature in my own way.

Within literature lies a vast reservoir of life experience, and I very much want my students to see it.

Now I have a bit of ambition: I want even more young people to see it.

To “talk about life through literature, and talk about literature close to life”—

this idea has guided me for twenty-five years, and I intend to keep it that way.

So today, I stand here to talk about a topic that is not particularly new, but always important—the idea of an ideal.

As a teacher, my students often ask me:

“Teacher, you keep talking about ideals. But in today’s world—with so much pressure, so much competition, and such intense social ‘involution’—isn’t talking about ideals out of date?”

Many young people also pose a soul-searching question:

“Can ideals feed me? If I’m just a screw in a machine, a rag with a sense of belonging in Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou—what’s the use of having ideals?”

There’s a song called People Without Ideals Don’t Get Sad.

When I first heard it, it hit me hard.

In my own youth, the words “ideal” and “young” were always bound together.

So what kind of social dilemma has made today’s young people decide to break up with their ideals?

That is the main reason I chose this topic today.

We often think that the most painful situation in life is desperation—a complete dead end.

But in fact, there’s a condition even more painful than that.

In the seventeenth century, the English writer John Milton wrote a work called Paradise Lost.

My students often misunderstand me. Whenever I say I’m going to lecture on Paradise Lost, they get excited, thinking it’s the Japanese writer Watanabe Junichi’s Lost Paradise.

But what I mean is the English Paradise Lost of the seventeenth century.

It tells a story we all know from the Bible:

A group of rebellious angels fought against God and the Son of God. They lost and were cast into Hell.

After these rebels left, Heaven was empty.

So God created a new place—the Garden of Eden, and there He created humankind.

He placed humans there, making the Garden of Eden a kind of “talent reserve” for Heaven.

Heaven represents the state of human glory.

Eden represents happiness and contentment.

Hell represents hopeless despair.

But the most interesting thing about Paradise Lost is that Milton says there exists yet a fourth realm.

What is that fourth realm?

In Milton’s book, it lies between Eden and Hell.

It is not as hopeless as Hell, but has none of Eden’s joy and fulfillment.

It is neither land nor sea; one cannot find a solid place to stand, nor move freely.

It is a sticky mire, a void, a black hole.

If you’re trapped there, what happens?

You can find no path beneath your feet, and see nothing before your eyes.

Milton called this place Chaos.

Whenever I lecture on this part, my students fall silent—because they start to recognize themselves in it.

What does “chaos” in life mean?

It means you’re not doing that badly—you’re not destitute—but you don’t have much either.

You have a life, but not the one you want.

You want to break through, but see no hope.

You want to change, but can’t find a way.

Some people say, “Forget it—let’s just lie flat, give up.”

But I ask the young people here: when you lie flat or slack off, when you say “I have no ideals and I don’t feel sad,”—are you really not sad?

Deep down, you still feel uncomfortable.

You feel tired.

You feel empty.

A life that feels tasteless, a job that feels meaningless—these bring us the experience of “chaos.”

Once you fall into this realm, you reach a state where—you can’t truly lie flat, but you can’t move forward either.

Your life feels stuck.

The emotional manifestation of this condition is what we now call “internal friction.”

Who suffers the most from internal friction?

Young people.

Lu Xun wrote about this long ago.

In Autumn Night, he described young insects who, even without any light to chase, keep bumping against the glass lampshade, making a clinking sound.

He wrote about a small pink flower trembling in the cold wind, unwilling to give up its dream of spring.

That is youth’s nature.

This nature ensures that the younger you are, the more you hurt.

It’s youth’s destiny.

Many from the “older generation” don’t understand this.

They say, “Today’s young people are weak—they just like to whine.”

I dislike that view.

I, too, am from the older generation, and when I was young, I also cried out in pain.

I’ve simply forgotten.

It’s only because life’s reality has worn down our edges that we no longer feel pain.

But often, what’s sadder than pain itself is losing the ability to feel it.

Every generation of youth cries out not to whine, but because they are truly in pain.

So why are young people suffering, yet unable to find a way out?

Because all of us are living in an era flooded with false individuality, false freedom, and false ideals.

What is a false life?

The French writer Albert Camus, in The Stranger, begins with a sentence:

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don’t know.”

That’s the entire attitude of the young man Meursault toward life.

When his mother was buried, he didn’t cry.

He drank coffee and smoked beside her coffin.

He had a girlfriend who, like every girlfriend in the world, kept asking the eternal question:

“Do you love me?”

Meursault thought for a moment and said he wasn’t sure—maybe yes, maybe no.

Then she asked, “Shall we get married?”

He said, “We can, or we don’t have to. Whatever you like.”

His boss offered him a good job—an opportunity to transfer to Paris, a big city far more glamorous than Algiers.

Everyone thought he was lucky, but Meursault replied:

“We’re all wage slaves. What’s the difference between being one in a small city or a big one?”

He wasn’t interested.

How would you describe such a young man?

Indifferent, passive, pessimistic, unmotivated.

In our society, such a person would likely be criticized.

But what did Camus say?

He said, “I wrote about a hero.”

How could Meursault be a hero?

Because he saw through the falseness of life.

What is falseness?

There are many ways to express grief—why should crying alone be the “sincere” one?

Work is work—why is a job in Paris nobler than one in Algiers?

Love is uncertain—so why must we make eternal vows of forever?

Meursault saw the absurdity of existence.

When we arrive in this world, the world already has a full set of value systems, behavioral norms, and life templates waiting for us.

They’re transmitted through school, society, and family, shaping us—and labeling us.

They tell us what books to read to have a future, what universities count as elite, what jobs are “dignified,” what kind of person is “successful,” and what life is a “failure.”

All these answers are prewritten.

When we live according to them, we are disciplined by society.

And when we fail to match them, we feel pain, guilt, inferiority, and self-denial.

We think we’ve failed.

That’s what Meursault saw: the absurdity of life.

He asked us, “Are we really alive?”

We think we are, but most of the time, we live out a definition already given to us.

We think we choose freely, but in answering pre-made questions, how can there be true freedom?

That’s the absurdity Meursault discovered—the false life.

The English writer James Joyce, in Ulysses, captured this perfectly:

“Every second of every second simply means every second.”

Every time I read that, I feel a deep sting.

Time ticks by, but nothing of meaning remains.

Because if we live a false life, there is no creation in it.

And a life without creation has no genuine meaning.

The busier we are, the emptier we become.

Kafka’s Metamorphosis tells a similar story.

Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, hates his exhausting job but fears losing it.

He despises his work, yet still performs with diligence to please his boss.

That is a false self—living a life torn apart inside.

And after too long, Kafka says, one morning Gregor wakes up transformed into a giant insect.

That’s the final result of false life and false self.

We exist—and yet it’s as if we never did.

That’s what Camus called the absurd and the void;

what Wang Xiaobo called a life slowly hammered;

what Kafka called metamorphosis into a bug.

So, how do we escape this painful state?

That brings us to our key word today: “ideal.”

Perhaps an ideal is one possible answer.

Some might say, “But ideals make life heavy.”

Before we object, we must first ask:

Has your ideal been kidnapped to the peak of the pyramid of comparison?

For example: the desire for knowledge.

You want to learn, to be educated, to be a person of intellect—wonderful.

But if you think knowledge only has value when you’re admitted to Peking or Tsinghua University, your ideal has been kidnapped to the top of the pyramid.

At our school, I often teach first-year students.

Many are excellent—students who once dreamed of Peking or Tsinghua but “fell” into our university after the college entrance exam.

They lose faith in life—no energy, no interest in study, in life, even in food.

They sleep in class, sleep after class.

I often tell them, “Others call it lying flat—you’re paralyzed.”

That’s unwise.

Every school has its own strengths.

Our university, too, has produced many excellent lawyers, prosecutors, and judges.

Or take making money.

We all want to earn more, to give ourselves and our families a better life.

That’s a warm, beautiful ideal.

But if “I want to earn more” becomes “I want to be richer than others,”

then your ideal has climbed the pyramid of comparison again.

In a city like Shanghai, where living costs are high, you may rent a small but clean room—and it’s fine.

But when a friend your age buys a three-bedroom apartment, you lose sleep.

You work hard, buy your own three-bedroom place, feel proud—

until another friend tells you he just bought a villa in Sheshan.

You lose sleep again.

You grow anxious again.

Money is a variable. You can never catch it; it always rises higher.

As Dante wrote in The Divine Comedy:

“Money under the moon keeps humankind forever restless.”

These ideals perched atop the pyramid are traps of comparison and utilitarianism.

They tell us: you must stand out, you must surpass others—only then are you “successful.”

But this notion of success is beyond reach for most ordinary people.

Yet it drags many of us into its whirlpool.

So the masses gaze up at the pyramid’s tip, feeling bitter.

They think ideals are the source of suffering—and so they cut them off, saying, “No ideals, no pain.”

But ideals don’t deserve that blame—because those were never true ideals.

What, then, is a true ideal?

It is self-imagination—imagining the life you want, the person you want to become.

Let me take an example from literature again: Goethe’s Faust.

It tells the story of an old scholar, Faust.

He spent his whole life in his study, respected by others for his learning.

But when he grew old, he suddenly realized his life had been wasted.

Why? Because he found that all he had learned was copy and paste.

After writing so many papers, no one even read them.

He felt he hadn’t lived a meaningful life.

So he prayed for another chance.

The devil gave him a potion to regain youth—

and Faust returned to his twenties to live a second life.

In his second life, he loved and failed; he sought office and failed;

he pursued art and failed; he even tried to build a utopia and failed.

My students always laugh and say, “Teacher, that’s me—that’s my life of accomplishing nothing!”

But Faust was satisfied, and so was God.

God said Faust represented the true meaning of human life.

How so?

What is the value of a life that “accomplished nothing”?

Faust did one thing right:

He never stopped imagining himself, never stopped exploring the possibilities of life.

This road doesn’t work? Try another.

Still doesn’t work? Try again.

Wrong direction? Adjust it.

That tireless self-imagination, that courage to explore life’s possibilities, means no wall can trap him, no narrow reality can imprison him.

Self-imagination is a spring of the soul.

With that spring, life cannot be flattened.

Even when the boulder of reality threatens to crush us,

those with ideals retain resilience—the imagination that says,

“I still have other possibilities.”

That’s the power of self-imagination:

Even at a dead end, one can restart life.

But how can we gain self-imagination?

We must ask ourselves two questions.

First: What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to live?

Have you really thought about it?

True self-imagination is built on knowing yourself.

Second: What are your interests, your strengths, your traits?

Only by understanding these can we tailor a self-imagination uniquely our own—

and only then can it become our ideal.

We all know the novel The Moon and Sixpence.

It tells the story of a London stockbroker, wealthy and comfortable,

who, at forty, suddenly decides to change his life:

“I want to be a painter.”

For this ideal, he leaves his family, abandons his career,

falls into poverty, and ends up dying of leprosy on a remote island.

Many say, “See? That’s what happens when you chase ideals—they ruin your life.”

But the protagonist, Strickland, says:

“I have never felt so happy.”

Why?

Because before his pursuit, he lived a life he did not want.

He earned much but hated his work, endured socializing he despised,

and had long become strangers with his wife.

Did the ideal ruin his life?

No—it destroyed the life he no longer wanted,

the self that caused him pain.

He said, “We are all products of life,

but I want life itself.”

That’s why he destroyed his own paintings without regret.

Because what he valued wasn’t the paintings,

but the fact that he had created his own life.

He had pressed the reset button, and been born again.

That’s why Maugham wrote of him:

“He died without regret. He created a world,

and saw how beautiful his creation was.”

This is the power and meaning of ideals.

With an ideal—with an authentic self-imagination—

we can find the life we truly want,

and become the self we truly wish to be.

Finally, a painful question some students ask me:

“Teacher, you’ve brainwashed me into chasing my ideal—but what if I fail?”

Failure has become our greatest fear.

Remember Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea?

It’s the story of a failure.

An old fisherman hasn’t caught a fish in eighty-four days.

People mock him.

Many would despair in his place.

But what does he say?

“You only need to do one thing right—

put your hook in the right place every day.”

Failure is like a coin: one side is defeat,

the other is opportunity.

When Faust begged for a second life,

he made a strange wish:

“If I can live again,

let me bear the blessings and calamities of mankind,

fight with the storms,

and welcome the shattering of wrecked ships.”

Would you make that wish?

He wished not for hardship itself,

but for the chance to grow through it.

Our strength is often born only under pressure—

in the strike of wind and rain.

That’s why Hemingway said,

“The bones grow stronger where they have been broken.”

We must experience storms to awaken a stronger self.

That is the value of failure.

So I’d like to leave you with this:

“Go and bear the blessings and sorrows of this world. Fight with the storms. Even amid the sound of a wrecked ship breaking apart, do not despair.”

Thank you, everyone.