In Feng Haipeng's writing, time has no scraps
Time has no scraps
2018/5/5 4:04:26 Source media: Fangchenggang News Network - Fangchenggang Daily Font size: [Large Medium Small]
● Feng Haipeng
I have a friend with wide-ranging hobbies: wood carving, bonsai, photography, travel, he enjoys them all tirelessly. Moreover, he does all these things in his spare time after work, and has achieved quite a lot. His wood carvings and bonsai have won awards, his photographs have appeared in newspapers, his travel writing has been featured in columns, and at work, he is also among the best in his field.
Sometimes, I even envy his versatility, and wonder where he finds the time and energy. A while ago, I went to hang out with him. The sunshine was warm and bright. After we had some tea, he decided to carve a lump of wood. The wood was gnarled and twisted, with no rhyme or reason. But he was completely focused, ignoring my presence, examined it for a long time, and picked up the saw. After a few cuts, I was delighted to discover that a dragon was taking shape. For a whole afternoon, I witnessed the magical transformation of the dead wood in his hands, and a dragon, remarkably true to form, appeared before my eyes. But that was not the main thing that amazed me. I watched the scraps he had sawed off and was about to pick them up to help clear some space for him, but he stopped me. He gathered up those scraps, took out a shallow basin, and fiddled and pieced them together back and forth, and actually cobbled together a landscape bonsai of dead wood. My eyes went wide. His pair of skillful hands really could turn something rotten into something magical in an instant. While I was admiring him, he was already collecting the sawdust from the saw. I asked, are these useful too? He looked up and smiled, saying: "Of course, they can be put into flower pots to grow flowers, and can be composted to grow moss. You know, I recently discovered that mixing sawdust with glue can make some cute little things, as accessories for my bonsai!" "So that means, with your wood here, there are basically almost no scraps at all?" I asked. He chuckled: "What do you think!"
How much time is like that piece of wood in my friend's hands. But in the eyes of many people, too many scraps are left over, leaving them confused, dazed, and at a loss. Those moments then slip away quietly by their fingertips. But my friend, with his pair of skillful hands, makes it so that time never has scraps. He carves time, nurtures the years, and makes every moment beautiful because it is vivid and alive.
In fact, time is the same for everyone. Everything done within time is a part of that span of time. There have never been scraps of time; it is just that we do not know how to collect them, do not know how to give those small moments of time a more comfortable form. If there are scraps, they are only the scraps you believe them to be. You think some things are meaningful, and some things can be cut away, but this may all be a misunderstanding of life, because big things may make you happy, but small things make you vivid.
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