Daydream Coronation

I often daydream that one day I will rise above the ordinary and fulfill my ambitions. But if that really happened, would what we are doing now still be worth looking back on?

I first had this thought when I saw a donation plaque in a classroom at Tsinghua University that read, "Can I tell you that I was just as frustrated back then?" It struck me deeply, because I am at the age of frustration right now—and resonance across time is often what moves us most.

Sometimes I daydream like this: if one day I truly achieved what I hoped for, how would I see my present self?

Would I be anxious—thinking that if I worked a little harder now I could seize some crucial opportunity? Would I regret—not having been bolder so I could have avoided so many detours? Would I feel relieved—relieved that I held to my own ideas and kept searching? Or would I have long forgotten this moment, or simply watch with calm? What I do now also shapes who I become. Everything seems like a painstaking arrangement. I step outside my emotions and examine myself.

When I look at my younger self from years ago, many things that once felt life-or-death—being called to meet parents, disappointing exam scores—now seem trivial. But they did not then. So now I feel sorry for who I was, wishing I had understood sooner. Yet I was always bound by my limitations.

All of this is still a hypothesis—that I could do well, that my thoughts would hold, that I would live to see that future day. Such limitations are inevitable. No one is exempt.

There is a well-known story: a commoner imagines the life of a king and says the king must be happy because he can eat three bowls of porridge at one meal. I call this piece "Daydream Coronation" because I want to describe crowning myself in a daydream—looking at my present, common self from a king's perspective. Perhaps many things need not be anxious; many answers were written long ago, and we only need to wait.

Perhaps the future was already decided the moment I crowned myself—because I hold both the present and what is yet to come.