How To Find Someone
A 30+ yo female reader asked me about <my best friend’s story>’s Zhang character.
In the show, Zhang was Jiang’s ex-boyfriend. Jiang’s father lost too much money in the stock market, and left his family with tons of debt. It was way beyond Zhang’s ability to repay Jiang’s debt. So he broke up with Jiang. The reader was blaming Zhang for lacking determination and sense of responsibility.
This is exactly what the producer is trying to show: Talking about money with a person without money.
Then Jiang got into her second relationship. Money was no longer the focal point of the relationship. The focus was shifted to talking about love with people with money.
These are just the typical techniques used by producers. For example, if you are a buyer for a larger company, there are always going to be lots of sales people around you. Each one of them is so good at focusing on the “right thing.” If you ask him about parallelism in the system, he will talk about his product’s business model; if you ask about his profit structure, he then goes back talking about product roadmap.
That is why everyday I wake up I think about the following questions: What do I have, what do I want, what do I want to give up
If you forget about the answers for a second, you will immediately fall into the traps of the suppliers.
Setting the producer’s scheme aside, we will see Zhang and Jiang’s best friend are both suffering from different types of PTSD.
Zhang’s symptom was that he tended to run away from danger. Zhang had been poor his entire life. After years of hustling, he was finally able to get a downpayment in Shanghai. Then his future father-in-law lost a large house in Shanghai in the blink of an eye. He was so scared to return to the times where he was poor so he ran away from Jiang.
Jiang’s best friend Zhu’s symptom was pretending to be strong. She was raised by her foster care relatives. So she was growing up feeling very insecure. She wanted to be loved by families. Jiang can give that kind of feeling, that is why she regards Jiang as her own sister.
That was why she was willing to go very far helping Jiang, because she wanted to hold on to the family love.
That also explained why she liked rich older men more than the young rich second-gen. Because deep down she lacked the fatherly love and most young second-gen couldn’t give her that.
Two people, from a psychological point of view, are patents. One was extremely risk-vers; one was too extreme toward anyone who she sees as family.
Same person, in the doctor’s eye, it is just a matter of prescription; in a writer’s eye, different writers can make up different touching stories; in the sales eyes, they can make up many different sales proposals.
Back to the reader’s question, your real question is not about Zhang, but how you can find someone who you can rely on for the rest of your life.
The answer is simple, remember this: Winning and losing come from the same strategy.
If you want to find a perfect man, it will be hard; if you settle for an imperfect man, it will be risky.
The first half is easy to understand. If a man has no PTSD, has a good personality, is competent , then you have to also be very good to marry him. I have many classmates like that. When I was sick there was a double-A-grade guy sent me to the hospital: Good grades, hard working, clear goals, good background, handsome, healthy, positive. He graduated to a large company then has been an elite since.
He only started dating after college. But I think there were many girls who confessed to him before that. To marry him, you have to stand out among those girls.
The second half, if you settle for an imperfect man, it will be risky.
Most of the men are imperfect in some ways: personality-wise, background-wise, ability-wise…
You are betting when you choose him, betting he will have those issues sorted out eventually.
In the TV show, “A Lifelong Journey,” many high-rank gov official was taken down during the cultural revolution. If you married the child of one of them, you may also get into trouble. But then a few years later when those officials got their positions back, you could benefit a lot from this marriage.
I may have went too far, but most of the time when people got married during hard times, it was mostly out of love but not for logical reasons.
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As you meet more people, you will find out most people are imperfect in some ways.
When a person takes orders from others every day, he will especially look forward to a life without any sort of constraints.
When a person stays in the bottom of the society for too long, he will have so much accumulated anger and hate. That may make him think most of the rich and powerful people are bad people.
That is why you see lots of extreme voices on the internet. There aren’t that many people who have not had any sort of PTSD, or who are able to get out of it. Therefore there are also so many other people who are taking advantage of the mass’ weaknesses.
If you are imperfect yourself and look for someone more whole to get you out, you have to work very hard; if you want to find someone imperfect, wait for him to fix his issues, then get you out, you have to be lucky.
That is why I always say, people who can change themselves are gods, people who try to change others, wait for the other one to change themselves are insane.
If you can’t rely on yourself for the rest of your life, why would you expect you can rely on someone else?
Most people in this world will experience failure, trauma, or self-doubt… or any PTSD of sort.
The problem is, as an imperfect being, do you want to run away or become a hater.
A or B?
My answer is neither. I want to become a breaker of chains, a self-made achiever.
In the movie “Chinese Sniper”, the captain was dead, the new recruit had two options:
A: Surrender and beg for mercy B: Die in the battleground with rage and dignity
He chose neither. Instead he sent the two American snipers to God, picked up Captain’s scope, and became the next God of Sniper.
The captain was a good doctor, when the new recruit was crying that his teammates are dead, the captain yelled at him back: “what the f* you are crying for!”
The new recruit was a good student, his answer was: “Captain did you see? Captain, did you see!!!!”