Shi Tiesheng
Once Born, No Longer Open to Debate
The Temple of Earth and I
Shi Tiesheng, The Temple of Earth and I, 1991
Whether to keep asking why this happened to you. Which questions Shi Tiesheng closed during fifteen years in a park.
What actually happened?
His legs stopped working at twenty-one. For fifteen years after that he wheeled himself almost daily into the old Temple of Earth park near his home and sat there. He says he was working on three things: whether to die, why to live, and why write. The first one he settled took years: once a person has been born, that is no longer a question open to debate. Nobody chooses to arrive, so it is not yours to rule on. With that off the list, the other two finally had somewhere to sit.
Some questions are closed, not answered
Why me has no answer and needs none, because it is only a fact. It took him years to concede that: this one is not solved, it is crossed off the list. Once it is crossed off, the strength goes to questions that have answers.
Stop asking why me and ask what now, given that it is me.
Sit down first, rally later
He did not go looking for a way forward. He sat in one place for years. The sitting is not passivity; it is time given to letting the worst layer of feeling finish. People who rally early have not finished, and they collapse a second time later on.
Just after it happens, having one place you go to matters more than planning the next step.
The park was not scenery, it was somewhere he went back to
What he stresses is the daily part: the same place, fifteen years of it. A person who has come apart needs one coordinate that does not move. It solves nothing at all. It is there every day, and that turns out to be enough.
One place you go every day, or one person you see every day, holds people better than any argument.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: something happened that cannot be undone, illness or disability or loss, and your head is full of why me.
Ask first: how long have I been asking it, and is it a question to cross off rather than solve? Do I have one place I go back to every day?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as accept your fate. He did not accept anything and fought his body for decades. Only this one question is not worth fighting; the strength belongs to the others.
Lines to keep
Why me is not solved. It is crossed off the list.
Rally too early and the feeling comes back for a second collapse.
It solves nothing and it is there every day. That is enough.
Same situation, other people are asking
Nothing to do all day, so I argue with people in my head.I don't want to do anything right now.I lost. Is there anything here worth keeping?I don't want to see anyone, and being alone hurts too.I'm at the bottom · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.