The economy is bad. There is no money to be made. Breaking even would be enough.
Over the past couple of years, I seem to hear these words more and more. Around the dinner table, relatives and friends ask how things are going. People used to smile and brush the question aside. Now they often sigh, say “breaking even would be enough,” and lower their heads to pick up another mouthful of food. The conversation stops there.
It is a little strange when you think about it. For decades, Chinese conversation has followed an unspoken rule of moderation. Whatever someone asks, you give a vague answer: “Not bad, not bad.” “Getting by.” It sounds evasive, but it is an old kind of survival wisdom. Do not get carried away by good fortune or overwhelmed by misfortune. When life is going well, do not make a show of it. When it is hard, keep that quiet too. Keep your concerns on your own side of the table, and leave others with an outline they cannot quite make out.
So I keep wondering what it takes to break through that reserve, to make so many people willing to say outright that there is no money to be made. Perhaps it has not broken through completely. Perhaps people are only beginning to feel the impact, like seawater just reaching the tops of your feet, and you have already taken an instinctive step back.
You can blame the circumstances. You can blame those in power. You can point to the less flattering parts of human nature. There is probably some truth in all of these explanations. But I would rather see it as a fluctuation in the long current of time. The people riding the AI wave, eating steak and holding equity and stock options, do not seem to talk much about how bad the economy is. You did not hear many people in property complaining that way ten years ago, either. Where there is a rising tide, there will be a falling one. Water does not keep flowing in the same direction forever. So “the economy is bad” may be less an objective assessment than an honest expression of how the people being hit by the tide feel at this moment. The feeling is real. It just may not describe the whole sea.
Surfers probably know this: you cannot catch every wave. People who know how to surf spend much of their time lying on their boards, watching the water in the distance, waiting for the right one. If they miss it, they wait for another. No rush, no regret.
Most of us, though, are not surfers. We simply live in this sea. The waves come and go around us. Sometimes they lift us up; sometimes they knock us down. In a sea like this, there is one thing that rarely seems wrong: living your life well. Getting up on time. Eating a proper breakfast. Looking at the sky on the way home from work. Taking a walk with your family at the weekend. These things do not lose their meaning because an industry rises or falls.
But if you begin chasing every wave, hearing today that the money is here and tomorrow that the bigger opportunity is somewhere else, life gradually stops being life itself. It becomes a chase. Chase long enough and you grow tired. Your eyes stay fixed on the distance. When the wave that is actually yours arrives, you may no longer be able to feel it.
I think of a line from “The Difficult Scripture,” the theme song of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils: unwilling to let go of this dazzling world, unable to escape the comfort of attachment.
Perhaps we are all like that: unwilling to let go, unable to escape. Then let us stay in this ordinary world, and be people who live our lives well.