I hear time shattering silently, the greatest sorrow of life, all busywork is meaningless.
Life is frighteningly wasted on meaningless idleness, but often we waste our lives by disguising it as a great task, making time silently shatter.
I spent the whole morning writing a report for the General Manager about our department's work situation. From conception to writing, to the final draft, it took me a whole morning. After handing it over to the Deputy Manager for review, he raised several modifications. The Deputy Manager was satisfied and submitted it to the Manager, who spent a full two hours modifying it – I waited for two hours. The Manager was satisfied because it involved another department's affairs, so it had to be submitted to the other department's manager for review. Finally, at 5 pm, I handed in the draft to the General Manager. Then, there was more revisions, reviews, and more revisions, and finally, the final draft. I looked at it – from the first draft to the final draft, there were a total of 11 drafts, which is more effort than I typically invest in writing an article. This is secondary, but the most important thing is that my whole day was spent on this report. I didn't feel like I had any meaning to my day, and I even felt meaningless. This time was cut into small pieces – a piece for brainstorming, a piece for drafting, a piece for waiting for the Manager's review, a piece for modification, and small pieces of time in between, which left you with no time to do anything else, but in this waiting, you felt the time was dull and boring.
This morning, I received a blank report from a department requesting it be reported before the end of the day. The report was still incomplete and another was sent, urgently requesting it be reported by noon. You just handle the one that's most urgent! After filling in half of the report, they announced an emergency meeting. If you think it's over like that, no, the phone kept ringing, so I had to answer it in the conference room. The other party said, ‘Your department needs someone to attend the meeting.’ You wish you could split yourself into two, wish you could stretch out the time. The same day, in the afternoon, I rushed to prepare a plan and then received a notification that headquarters would send people to audit us tomorrow. – If these busy times can bring a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and accomplishment, then what about being more tired?
Life is busy, and when you look back, you find they have no meaning, but they relentlessly shatter your whole day’s time. The scariest thing about life is to be busy your whole life, and then, looking back, it’s a tragedy.
I once had an old leader who was the head of the department when I first joined. He got liver cancer and needed a liver transplant. To secure funding from headquarters for his treatment, he was asked to write an example of his achievements. Everyone sat down together and discovered that he hadn’t done anything remarkable in his life. You can’t say he’s been busy every day. Finally, several Vice Managers let them do things that could be showcased, and they cobbled together two pages of his achievements for the General Manager. At that moment, I suddenly realized the General Manager’s sadness – his busy and hectic time cut off all his time, and there was no truly impressive achievement in all his time!
If you've worked in the overall affairs of a department, you'll understand what 'busy and meaningless' means. The busy times of a business department eventually lead to a few data, while the people coordinating overall affairs don’t necessarily say they’ve swept the conference room several times, turned over the water several times, taken several calls, or run several legs.
Day after day, I heard time shatter in its busy moments, shattering into a mess of meaningless fragments. But we still hold on, because that's survival and life. But we can't simply hold on to that, I hope to find another me in this fragmented, silent time.
