Years later, if my child asks me:

Dad, in that era when gold and silver went crazy and skyrocketed, so many people made money off it—why didn’t you buy anything
What should I tell him?
In this moment, I suddenly understood the helplessness my father felt back then.
He stood in the tide of reform and opening up, watching firsthand as the country’s GDP turned 100 times over.
In our little third-tier city, even housing prices rose threefold. I once blamed him in my heart: back then, houses were so cheap—why didn’t he think to buy more than one
Now I’m standing in the tide of the times too.
E-commerce, short videos, and AI—one wave after another sweeps past in front of me. I can see them, feel them, but when I reach out, I can’t grasp a thing.
Only in this moment did I truly understand: it’s not that I didn’t want to—it’s that for ordinary people, in the end, we can only live an ordinary life.
Only today do I know that I am who I am.