A friend of my husband rang to say there was some family tragedy happened lately. He is a mate of my husband from the previous work in Sydney. They ring very often just to catch up each other. After that phone call, my husband told me that he will have to go back to Sydney one day because he at least will have some friends up there to spend his time with when one day he gets old. He also mentioned about other friends in Chengdu, Chongqing and Nanjing, and the possibility to buy a house in Chengdu to live out a retirement, linger between different tea houses, eating something he is familiar with from his childhood time and speaking his own mother tongue. He said it’s something called “ have to save a couple friends from now on”. I think that is a very good idea. I might need to do the same – starting to save some friends from now on

People usually talk about saving money for the future use, like one day we get old, we would be able to have something spare in the pocket to live a decent life instead of only living upon very limited aged pension. We all do that, to some degrees. It looks like we work everyday, enjoy the life and challenges from the surface, but if you push it to the edge, what would really worry you is not that you don’t have a good career at this moment, it’s that you will not have enough money saved for your not-so-distance future of being an elderly.

However, it seems that even saving money is not enough now, although it’s important. Imagine one day, when you get old on your sticker, struggling so hard to walk a very short distance, your partner dies, you live in a small house and all the children left for their own lives, what would you do? Spending money you saved? No, how many things would you need when you are 80s? Travelling the world? No, you can not even walk. Chasing up and flerting with pretty girls? No, which young girl would look at you, an old man? All the things had interesed you so much have all become impossible. What you will need is only a couple of good friends around to chat and to kill the time before you die.

This is called the life. Maybe a meaningfull life for an individual but actually a meaningless life for the whole universe and the whole human history. Nobody is going to remember you, no matter how successful you were and how brilliant you were. The time washes up everything. Even with those who lived with glory or had done something extrodinary for this world, the history will only remember them for a period of time, not forever. The universe is forever, the human history is not. We don’t even know this is the first human history that we live or there had been several times before this one. So we need to live in the moment that we can see and reach. For the rest of them, it remains a mystery.

But a couple of friends? Would be always a good idea if you have them. They will be there when you need somebody to listen to your complains about this whole life, and they will be there when you need someone to look over your shoulder:-)