When the dear words of others are projected like a beam of light into my heart, where certain passions have been dormant for a long time, certain seeds of thoughts not even realized by myself are awakened by this light to make their first buds sprout and the flowers bloom. The pleasure of being touched in the soul and ignited in the spirit is breathtaking.

We travel every year through spring, summer, autumn and winter, just as our life has been slowly sliding along the slope of nature since its birth, passing through the four seasons of “childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age”, and it is the same with others; we enter life as a miracle, and our path to death is inevitable, which is also like everyone else. Between the equal starting and ending point of life, although we seem to be following completely different paths, appearing brilliant or gloomy, successful or mediocre, no one is truly free from sadness.

Everyone will fall into various troubles in various times of life, without exception. The difference lies only in the fact that their troubles have respective sources and contents—some people are embarrassed by difficulty to make a living and scarcity of the material, while some are trapped in the dark night of the soul, and the desolation of spirit—seemingly different troubles, but the same helplessness.

A helpless person often feels particularly lonely—he is controlled by his sadness, while the people around him are still content with their own joy. The sunshine is not less bright because of his sorrow, the spring is not delayed for a moment, and the earth revolves smoothly without his smile... Grievous people feel all the more lonely, and loneliness makes them rather distressed.

The lonely grievers gather the confusion and examination of life, mortality, selfhood and the world. You are not alone in your struggle with these confusions; many others are also sharing your grief, and as lonely as you are. This “common suffering” may somewhat dissolve your loneliness, and thus your sadness is diluted.

Loneliness may not be unbearable, and perhaps only by it we learn how to get along well with ourselves; death may not be as gloomy and dreadful as we imagine, and perhaps it is just a gentle dreamless sleep after a lifetime of hard work; the sufferings of life may not be so repulsive, and perhaps they are rich in some extraordinary nutrition, which makes us live stronger after the experience.

The passages in this book may not point out a specific way of extrication for our current life predicament, but perhaps when you are searching confusedly far and near they can open a small window into a different picture, one in which there are people who encounter situations similar to ours, but without our anxiety or uncertainty. They sing and dance with cheer in prosperity, and remain calm in adversity; they welcome the sun and settle for the night; they live with deep affection and die with good faith; they enjoy all the pleasures of life and take up all the irresistible sufferings...