For quite a while, I tell everyone, including myself, that my life after thirty really disappoints me. Though I manage to find several reasons, only today do I suddenly realize where this antipathy lies in.

In my teenage life, everything was so clear-cut, either good or bad, right or wrong. I did only good and right things and refused to even give a single thought to anything bad or wrong. I was filled with anticipation to everything better, and, of course, was confident that I could make it.

Over twenty, with the realization of one and another dream, I enjoyed to my heart’s content the sense of accomplishment. At the same time, my mind was getting mature and directing me to see deeper and wider into the world with more understandable eyes, since between any two polars, there are a lot more subtle scales. Something wrong with good reasons? something right but not acceptable? something neither right nor wrong? something that cannot be evaluated with right or wrong.

When my feet stepped into thirty, I found the more I knew about people and the world, the more my sense of value got blurred. Now I felt lack of confidence in my reasoning and judgment, and more and more question marks arose. What’s worse, I realized that more and more things were beyond my control and my capability. I had to admit that I couldn’t do this, or that. I am too small, and too plain.

I am unwilling to imagine life after 40, since the days after 30 have already let me down. I don’t think I am getting pessimistic, but getting old is really painful, not because of deteriorating health or fading beauty, but because of brighter eyes and keener mind. I come to understand the philosophical meaning of “more is less”. You know more, and actually you know less. Everything becomes uncertain, unclear, unsatisfying, lousy and imperfect.

I used to think that any misconduct was unforgivable, and deserved any punishment, fair and square. Therefore, it was impossible to understand, for instance, a wife could forgive a womanizer husband and welcome him home after his repetitive adultery.

Now I am getting aware that the world is as ugly as beautiful, if not more, and every person is also as ugly as beautiful, if not more. And I have to live with more and more this ugliness. This really freaks me out.

Maybe some people will tease at me, saying that I am making a big fuss over nothing, since this is just life. If life after 30 means realizing and producing more and more ugliness, I’d rather stop here, unless someone , or myself, can teach me how to copy and paste my first 30 years to my second half.