"Magic Thread"

A little boy accidentally got a magic ball with a golden thread. As long as he pulled the golden thread, time would leap forward. Whenever you encountered a moment you hated or didn't want to face, you could choose to skip it.
At first, the little boy only used this magic to skip class, avoid housework, and evade his parents' scolding. He quietly pulled the golden thread and jumped directly to the happy time after school.
As an adult, he skipped the ordinary quarrels and struggles in marriage, skipped the exhaustion and friction of comforting a newborn in the middle of the night, and skipped the boredom and bottlenecks of workdays. He found himself pulling the golden thread more and more frequently, even starting to use it to avoid the smallest inconveniences in life.
Until one day, when he woke up from a deep sleep and saw a very old man staring at him in the mirror, a huge regret instantly engulfed him. At that moment, he finally realized: when he repeatedly chose to skip boredom, struggle, pain, and friction, he also completely missed the feeling of truly being alive.
This story is called "Peter and the Magic Thread," said to be a French folk tale, later included in "The Book of Virtues" compiled by former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett.
In the original fairy tale, after Peter became a lonely old man with white hair, he returned to the forest in regret to find the old woman who gave him the magic ball, crying out that he "has never suffered, but has also never truly lived," and begged for another chance.
Then, he suddenly woke up and realized it was just a big dream he had while sleeping on the forest grass. Hearing his mother's voice calling him to get up for school, the young Peter was overjoyed, and from then on he never complained about the troubles of the present, learning to embrace every moment of life.
Doesn't it resemble that folk song "Big Dream"? Ages 6, 12, 18, 24... counting all the way to old age, one after another "what to do" that are almost unsolvable at that age group: losing toys in childhood, inferiority in youth, heavy pressure in middle age, illness in old age... no solution, no recourse, like a big dream, and after the dream, you won't wake up like in a fairy tale.
Intertwining the fairy tale and the folk song reveals a certain predicament of modern people: it seems we are born to solve problems and endure hardships, and there is no end.
Therefore, the little boy in the fairy tale, out of fear of time, afraid to endure long, friction-filled, and even painful periods, kept pulling the golden thread. Aren't we the same? Facing difficult years, we always develop a delusion, longing to fast-forward, longing to directly reach that happy and safe shore.
But even if we assume that the act of "skipping the hateful moments" itself also solves that hateful problem, our lives would most likely not become better. Because what we want is not a contemptible escape, but a true "existence."
So, what reason do we have to fear the next second? All the hurdles in the human world are but slight scratches in the eyes of time.
Time itself is the magic ball, pulling us through this life with a golden thread. Whether we fear or bravely face it, it is all that irreversible, devastatingly powerful ticking second.
This life, fleeting like a white horse passing through a crevice, is already as fast as lightning. Since that is the case, why still think about fast-forwarding?