There are two therapies for me these days. One is writing, specifically, my CBT exercises, the therapy homework I do in English, dropping thoughts and self-analysis onto my journal in the plainest words. The other is listening to Ocean Vuong.
I write therapy homework in English. Not because my English is better. My English is flawed and insufficient and often not quite to the point. But that is exactly why it works. When I write in Chinese, the language is too available to me. I reach for a phrase and it comes, decorated and complete, the kind of sentence that has already decided how it feels. There is a performance or story-telling built into my Chinese writing that I cannot remove. Even when I am trying to think, I am also composing.
In English I have no choice but to be plain. That plainness is not a limitation. It is the therapy. My irrational and unstructured thoughts, written in my imprecise English, become documentable. Not cured. Not fully seen. But laid out somewhere outside my body where I can look at it without it looking back at me with too much drama. The gap between what I mean and what I manage to say turns out to be about the right size for things I am not yet ready to name.
And then Ocean Vuong. First his writing, then his interviews. His English is the opposite of mine, precise, exact, every word chosen because no other word would do. But something about precision in another person’s mouth is not the same as precision aimed at you. He never uses language to prove how much he has suffered or survived. He just holds the thing up and says: look, this is a real thing, many people have touched this, it is not only yours.
What Ocean Vuong does, in the interviews, in the way he talks, is refuse to perform certainty. And this refusal from someone so clearly capable of precision feels like permission. If he, who can find the exact word, chooses instead to not resolve everything into a lesson, then maybe I do not have to resolve mine either. Maybe the not-resolving is not a failure of discipline but a form of honesty.
I listened to his interview with David Marchese on my drive to work. A forty-nine minute interview. He talked about the moment that could have ended very differently, a gun, a friend who said no. He called it a satori. A moment of illumination that belonged to someone else but changed him entirely. What stopped me was not the gun itself but what it meant, that he had been that close to becoming something irreversible, and what stood between him and that version of himself was one person’s quiet refusal.
He talked about kindness without hope. When people are kind knowing kindness won’t help anything, they are still kind. Where does it come from?
I set the car on cruise control and followed the car in front and cried through the first thirty minutes. I then had to pause the interview to clean up my face, reapply my makeup so that I don’t look shitty at work. I don’t fully know what I was crying about. That not-knowing feels important to leave alone.
The thing that undoes me, in a good way, is the phrase he used: kindness without hope. Kindness that does not believe it will matter. Kindness practiced anyway. Kindness without hope removes the transaction entirely. It is just an act that completes itself in the doing.
Kindness without hope does not fit in the equation. You cannot optimize it. You cannot put it in a forecast. At my work I use a lot of words like optimize, forecast, equate, precision. While in life there is nothing to optimize, to forecast, to equate.
I tell myself I am still in control. I set the cruise control and when I arrive at work in my reapplied makeup I am in control again. The two worlds exist at the same time. The world where Ocean Vuong’s voice is present, permission-giving, and the other world where certainty is expected and performed and I perform it with everyone else. I cross between the two worlds Monday to Thursday morning on the highway.
When I write it down in my imprecise English it becomes an object rather than a climate. When I listen to Ocean Vuong it becomes a shared condition rather than a private defect. They work the way Big Joe’s no worked, not by fixing anything, but by making space for something else to happen.
Everyone has their own complex life in their unique way of complexity. There are people who are kind even when they know it won’t matter. There is Ocean Vuong. There is the car in front of me on the highway, going somewhere I will never know. There is my plain, insufficient, perfectly adequate English, carrying me along.
I am still in control. Mostly. That is enough for now.
Ocean Vuong’s interview (NYT): Ocean Vuong Was Ready to Kill. Then a Moment of Grace Changed His Life.
英文笔记转成的机翻中文：
我现在有两种疗愈方式。一是写作——具体来说，是我的CBT练习，是我用英文完成的心理治疗作业，把思绪和自我分析，用最朴素的语言落到日记本上。另一种，是听王鸥行说话。
我用英文写治疗作业。不是因为我的英文更好。我的英文有缺陷，不够用，常常说不到点子上。但这恰恰是它有效的原因。用中文写的时候，语言对我来说太顺手了。我伸手去够一个词，它就来了——装饰好的，完整的，那种已经替自己决定好该有什么情绪的句子。我的中文写作里有一种表演性、一种叙事腔，我无法去除。即便我只是想思考，我也同时在创作。
用英文，我别无选择，只能朴素。这种朴素不是一种局限。它本身就是疗愈。我那些混乱、非理性的思绪，写成我不够精准的英文，就变得可以被记录了。没有被治好。没有被完整看见。但被放到了身体之外某个地方，让我可以看着它，而它不会带着太多戏剧性地回视我。我想说的和我说出来的之间的那道缝隙，刚好是容纳那些我还没准备好完整命名之事的合适尺寸。
然后是王鸥行。先是他的文字，然后是他的访谈。他的英文和我的相反——精准，确切，每一个词的选择都是因为没有其他词可以替代。但精准出现在另一个人口中，和精准对准你自己，不是同一回事。他从不用语言来证明自己经历过多少苦难。他只是把那件事托起来说：看，这是真实存在的东西，很多人都触碰过它，它不只属于你。
王鸥行在访谈里、在他说话的方式里，拒绝表演确定性。而这种拒绝，来自一个明明有能力做到精准的人，让我感到一种被允许的感觉。如果他——那个能找到确切词语的人——选择不把一切都解析成某个教训，那也许我也不必把我的解析清楚。也许那种悬而未决，不是自律的失败，而是一种诚实。
我在上班路上听了他接受David Marchese采访的那期节目。四十九分钟。他谈到了那个可能走向截然不同结局的时刻——一把枪，一个说了不的朋友。他称之为”顿悟”。一个属于别人的开悟时刻，却彻底改变了他。让我动容的不是那把枪本身，而是它所意味的——他曾那么接近于成为一个无法挽回的自己，而站在他和那个版本的自己之间的，是一个人轻声的拒绝。
他谈到了”没有希望的善意”。当人们知道善意不会有任何帮助，却依然选择善意。这从何而来？
我把车调到巡航模式，跟着前面的车走，哭了整整前三十分钟。然后我不得不暂停播客，整理脸，重新补妆，不能让自己到公司去像个狼狈相。我不完全知道自己在哭什么。这种不知道，我觉得重要，值得留着，不去追究。
让我动摇的，以一种好的方式，是他用的那个短语：没有希望的善意。不相信自己会有所影响的善意。依然去做的善意。没有希望的善意彻底取消了交易性。它只是一个在完成自身的行为中完成了自己的举动。
没有希望的善意放不进任何方程式。你无法优化它。你无法预测它。在我的工作里，我用很多这样的词——优化、预测、量化、精准。而在生活里，没有什么是可以优化、可以预测、可以量化的。
我告诉自己我仍然在掌控之中。我设好巡航，到公司时妆已补好，我又在掌控之中了。两个世界同时存在。一个是王鸥行的声音在场的世界，给予许可的；另一个是确定性被期待、被表演，而我也和所有人一起表演的世界。我每周一到周四早晨在高速公路上穿行于两者之间。
当我用不够精准的英文把它写下来，它就从一种气候变成了一件物件。当我听王鸥行说话，它就从一种私人的缺陷变成了一种共同的处境。它们的作用方式和Big Joe那个”不”一样——不是通过修复任何东西，而是为别的什么腾出了空间。
每个人都有自己的复杂，有自己独特的复杂方式。有些人即使知道善意没有用，依然选择善意。有王鸥行在。有高速公路上我前面的那辆车，去往一个我永远不会知道的地方。有我那朴素的、不够用的、却恰好够用的英文，带着我往前走。
我仍然在掌控之中。大体上是。这就够了。
Stranger in a Strange Land 