What If I Live an Honest Enough Life?

Hello friend, this is Ting, 凉亭. I am from China, and I have been living in Amsterdam for six years.

More than a year ago, I started writing this Substack, hoping to post once a week. It did not happen; however, I did manage to post 15 times.

It’s the end of the year, and the weather in Amsterdam is becoming more and more unbearable. It’s 4 p.m. now, and it’s getting so dark. As the weather becomes harder to tolerate each day, my life situation (or maybe my perception of it) doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

At times, I feel lost and discouraged, but please believe me—there are also many times when I feel I am so close to the answers or truths of life in many senses, and it’s exactly because of the chaos. I have this urge to write, to share, and to unveil the chaos.

I also read many books that my friends would describe as “not my type.” I decided to become humble, and being humble made me curious and thirsty. With all I’ve learned, there’s so much running through my mind and so many sensations running through my body. A lot of the time, I feel free and light. But when my life situation hits me, I am pushed to a corner—a corner where I feel I am not fully myself, a corner where I am not honest enough. Honesty requires courage; this is what I am aware of.

Just now, as I was staring at my work laptop and wondering when certainty and calm would come, a thought caught me: What if I live an honest enough life? What if I try every single time to live as honestly as possible? Where would life lead me? What would I become, and where would I go?

Then I decided (yes, one more time in life) that I will write more here. I will write whenever I want to write, and whatever I write will be part of me. Writing and sharing, in itself, is capturing honesty.

So here we are, if you were to ask:

I write to capture beautiful moments, to seek raw honesty, and to cultivate the courage and wisdom to be guided by truths.