Time is like a lawn mower, smoothing the weeds that rise and fall in our hearts until the years grow calm and uneventful. Yet that stretch of time called “youth” seems to have absorbed those grass clippings as nourishment. All it takes is a ray of sunshine, and it springs back to life. Those scenes slowly unfold, lingering in our hearts and gently warming our cooling souls, rising into memories we will never forget.
If we never grew up, the Buddha would never have caught Sun Wukong; if we never grew up, the Leifeng Pagoda would never have trapped the White Snake. Then those lovely green years would still be by our side, not merely a cherished thought to revisit beneath the moon now and then.
Back then, we were seventeen or eighteen. We didn’t judge people around us by some standard we’d grown accustomed to. Good was simply good, bad was simply bad, though which was which depended entirely on our mood.
Our story is frozen in that moment, at that time.
Do you still remember the bow in your hair, and your graceful handwriting: “At dawn in spring, the leaves have turned green.”
