People love to posture with depth, saying things like “there are some rules in life…” as if life were their own creation and they knew everything about it.

People love to posture with depth, saying things like “there are some rules in life…” as if life were their own creation and they knew everything about it. I remember, as an adolescent, when I expressed myself, a teacher said to me, “you don’t understand,” and when I persisted in my view, he raised his finger, lifted his eyebrows, and stared straight into my eyes with that same condescending air. Everyone around me—even the whole world—carried the same mind as his. So I felt utterly alone that day. Misunderstanding by others was not “unpleasant” but simply the default for me. I had to force myself into maturity quickly; otherwise, in the early years of adolescence, I would have collapsed under such countless hints and slights, or, more correctly, under my own sensitivity to them. The result, much like the USSR’s desperate drive for survival that led to irreversible, rapid industrialization despite its destructive side effects, was that my intelligence became not “hired as genius” but “hired as blacksmith;” it forged armor. And over time, my skin fused with it. Now, whether people cry, laugh, rage, insult, or even directly attack me, there remains before them a silence more stubborn than Sisyphus and prouder than Gilgamesh, giving nothing away.