Recently reread "Jin Ping Mei," Pan Jinlian, and studied Ximen Qing. I found that his final fate—reckless promiscuity, indulgence, and ultimately dying from exhaustion—seems on the surface to be due to lust and greed, but the deeper reason is actually that his spiritual strength was too weak. You could say he was completely unable to control the huge changes in destiny that were forcibly imposed on him in just a few years.

Ximen Qing was not born into great wealth and nobility; his rise was very sudden. In just a year or two of marrying Meng Yulou and Li Ping’er, his wealth and status experienced explosive growth, quickly completing a social leap.

However, from a psychological perspective, such a massive positive change is fundamentally also a source of extremely high stress. Confronted with this sudden high position and great wealth, Ximen Qing’s inner self was hollow; he simply lacked the mental core to digest this sudden gift of fate.

Ordinary people often suffer severe psychological trauma when faced with such drastic environmental changes. This trauma usually manifests in two directions: one is inward attack, showing as depression and anxiety, self-destructive silence; the other is like Ximen Qing’s, a form of what psychology calls manic defense.

He doesn’t let himself stop, because once he stops, the panic of unworthiness and the emptiness of the spirit will come crashing in. To avoid pain and to fight this subconscious anxiety, he can only choose the most extreme means: through intense sensory pleasure and high-stimulation sex, forcibly covering the psychological void with physiological pleasure.

This is also why many people with severe depression tend to exhibit strong sexual addiction or indulgence. It’s not because they are truly happy, but because their brain’s reward mechanism has broken down, and they can only temporarily feel alive through the most primitive and intense dopamine release, pushing down their anxiety. Ximen Qing’s madness is essentially an ordinary person’s mental collapse, trying to self-treat with a wrong method.

That’s why it’s important to emphasize pursuing beliefs and accumulating beautiful memories when young.

There is a psychological argument based on a neuroscience experiment from MIT.

Researchers first let mice experience joyful social and sexual encounters, and marked the neurons responsible for storing these beautiful memories in the brain. Then, they kept these mice in long-term confinement, applying stress, and forcing them into severe depression, exhibiting learned helplessness.

The key step came when the researchers did not give drugs, but instead used optogenetics to directly activate the group of neurons marked for happiness memories with blue light.

Miraculously, the mice’s depression symptoms rapidly disappeared, and the damaged neural circuits in their brains were physically repaired, allowing them to regain the motivation to survive.

This experiment reveals a truth: those beautiful memories are not just emotional comfort; they are real life-saving medicine in the brain.

When we are young, we tinker, fight for what seems like a silly belief, love others, and experience life—not to suffer, nor to move anyone. We are doing the first step in the mouse experiment: storing as many glowing neural circuits deep in the brain as possible.

So within your capacity, try not to rush into meaningless suffering; suffering itself is not worth praising.

What is worth praising are the shining moments you create when facing challenges.

In the second half of life, when those inevitable losses, aging, or sudden upheavals like Ximen Qing’s strike, when our spiritual world falls into darkness, what can truly save you is not how many sins you have committed, but how much light you have stored in your mind.

Those beautiful memories and pride accumulated in youth are the most important things you have to fight nihilism.

At the same time, this thing has strict prerequisites: if you are not prepared, there will be no opportunity for rescue.