I got Zhang Dingding's new book, Never-ending Dating. After dinner, I turned over a few pages casually and was inexplicably poked by this sentence.

Maybe the world is full of teenagers who don't even know it.

The other day, I have been listening to an old song of S.H.E-A single spark. There is a lyric that left a deep impression on me:

Why can adults take time out to have a drink for lovelorn, but have no time to look at the starry sky?

It is also related to having dinner with friends at noon one day. She inadvertently talked about the scene of watching the stars alone the other day, and remembered the classic lyrics-how long has it been since you saw the stars all over the sky, and the false light of the city night covered your eyes.

I once walked through the International Trade Center at eleven o'clock in the evening, and the neon lights in full bloom made the night bright. Looking up at the sky, I really can't find a few stars. I don't know if this is caused by smog or if the stars are lost in the neon lights flashing at midnight. There are not so many artificial lights in the suburbs of Beijing at night, and there are no traces of big cities, so the stars will bloom their brilliance more wantonly.

The last time I heard the word "look at the sky", I was talking with a classmate about the experience of looking at the starry sky. After thinking for a long time, it seems that when I grow up, I seldom look up at the stars.

I still remember when I was a child, I lived in a tube-shaped apartment with my parents. After dinner, several children of similar age always meet and play in the basketball court downstairs, or make a fire to bake some potatoes to share. Life at that time was carefree, and every day seemed to have endless time and energy. I still remember one time, several of us were lying in the middle of the basketball court, looking at the stars and the moon in the sky, looking for the handle of the Big Dipper, or wondering if those black spots on the moon were Chang 'e and Yutu. Occasionally, a meteor suddenly flashed by, and the girls immediately shouted and made a wish. We all close our eyes and make a wish silently. I don't remember the wishes I made at that time, and I don't know how many have come true after so many years, or disappeared with the falling of meteors.

Later, I slowly lost touch with that group of friends. Now even if I do, it's just a polite greeting. I have thought about the meaning of growth countless times and wrote that growth is the process of becoming good at parting. But Jiao Ye reminded me countless times that growing up means not thinking about the meaning of growing up.

I got a call from my friend in Lanzhou early this morning. She has just entered the workplace and is very busy every day. Overtime is common. She once complained to me that she didn't want to grow up because her life and herself became more and more boring when she grew up. A friend who hasn't met yet also said that years have brought him to face and accept the reality calmly, and now there won't be so many grand goals.

It seems that growing up is a cruel thing for many people.

We grew up before we learned to grow up. When I was a child, I longed for the world of adults, but when I grew up, I wanted to go back countless times.

Countless songs and literary works kindly remind us that we were once a teenager, and we were fearless, but that was only once. Sometimes these kind reminders are like a sharp knife, inserted into our hearts, making this hard world more bloody. Now, we still play the role of adults, wandering alone in this crowded world. To borrow a word from Mr. Qin, it is said that people are gregarious animals, so a big city like Beijing will not be lonely ... But where can it not be lonely in the world of adults?

In fact, many people are still children at heart, but they are forced to act like mature adults in front of the world. Many times, we are pushed by time innocently. With the power of motionless eyes, time has turned us into adults who must have careers and mature conversations.

I am lucky to have a group of childlike partners around us. We will be moved by a little thing, imagine the clouds in the sky endlessly, talk freely about the East and the West, make up immediately after a short anger, haggle over every little thing, sulk with friends, and be happy to eat delicious food. All this seems so immature, but this is the way of life of children, a life of "just pretending". I like the song Sketch Paper written by Lao Wei and Jiao Ye, but I use it to write poems. We are all moved by the light in children's eyes, and we are glad that we have not become adults.

I don't know how long this state of life can last, and I have tried various methods to make myself mature, but who says there is only one standard for maturity? If maturity is just learning how to use masks better and hide your feelings quietly, I'd rather not be mature. We have had such friends around us, but such friends are only passers-by after all, because this friendship makes us feel that we are both very hard.

Maybe living like a child is also a kind of maturity.