One day, I went to a restaurant called "You Tian Xia Lou" and met two neighbors in the elevator. They were walking a big golden retriever, and I was happy to pat its head. The neighbors asked me if I liked dogs, and I nodded with a smile. After getting off the elevator, the neighbors asked me to take two photos of them with the dog. Everyone was happy, but as for the dog, I don't know.
People who have raised cats or dogs often take photos and share them on social media, showing the happiness of their pets and themselves. From a human perspective, we often think that the lives of cats and dogs are happier than ours. They have food provided, and they have their owners to cuddle and play with. I used to think the same way and even said that I would be willing to be a cat or a dog in my next life. But now, I don't think so, hence the use of the term "said".
In fact, if we think deeper, the situation starts to reverse. The lives of cats and dogs are actually quite unfortunate. Whether a life is happy or not depends on how many options you can refuse, which is the level of freedom. The lives of cats and dogs may seem free, but they are actually dependent on the freedom of their owners. As pets, their entire value is based on pleasing humans or being used by them. The only option they have to refuse is to starve themselves. The freedom of cats and dogs is completely restricted by the freedom of their owners. In other words, this kind of life is essentially a life that is played with and controlled. "掌" means hand, "股" means thigh. When you pat your thigh, the dog will lie on it, and when you touch it with your hand, it is the original intention of playing with it. What's more important is that humans have the choice to give up their freedom, while cats and dogs do not have this option. If they are happy, they can be picked up and played with for a while. If they can escape, it's only because the owner didn't force them. Once forced, they have no choice but to comply.
If we delve deeper, we can see that modern humans need cats and dogs for companionship, while ancient humans needed them for guarding and tracking. And the very thing that affects freedom is precisely this "guarding and tracking".
The ability to guard and track is innate in cats and dogs. Cats are born to catch mice, and they can choose what to catch, but they cannot choose not to catch at all. This is programmed into their genes. Cats and dogs also find it difficult to learn new guarding and tracking skills. Of course, there are trained guide dogs, but as long as humans need them to be guide dogs, they cannot choose to refuse. Humans are not born with the ability to guard and track. Even walking and talking have to be learned gradually. The reason why human life is freer than that of cats and dogs is because humans can choose what skills to learn. Besides cats, there are professionals responsible for catching mice. Painters are not born with the ability to paint, and programmers are not born with the ability to code, but painters can choose to code and programmers can choose to paint. Humans have many different ways to use their lives, and the greater the possibilities, the higher the level of freedom. A farmer in the mountains may learn to fly a plane and become a director. He has almost no possibility of learning to fly a plane, but his child has a greater possibility of learning to fly a plane than his father.
If we delve deeper, another factor that affects freedom after choosing a skill is how well you master that skill. Truly mastering a skill requires a lot of effort, and it is not something that can be achieved solely through personal efforts. It also depends on the environment and opportunities. The environment will not deprive you of possibilities, only if you meet the conditions. The freedom of humans is reflected in having the opportunity to make efforts and the power to choose a direction. The ultimate achievement of a person is the result of their actions, and the more their destiny is influenced by their actions, the more freedom they have.
However, having a skill does not necessarily bring income. For example, someone who is good at raising dogs may not rely on opening a pet store to make a living. He cannot survive by just raising dogs, and the dogs may even eat his food. Because raising his own dog is different from learning to raise other people's dogs, which is already another skill. In other words, your skill may not necessarily have a social demand. But regardless of whether there is demand or not, there will always be a side effect, which is that once a person has a skill, they will never feel useless.
Nowadays, the unemployment rate is not coming down, and the overall environment is not good. Many people feel worthless and think that they are not good at anything. The root cause is actually not the inability to find a job, but the lack of a skill. If you have a skill, even if you don't rely on it for a living, even if you starve to death, you will still have confidence in yourself. This kind of confidence is different from the confidence gained from praise or achievements in work and career. It cannot be said to be invincible, but it is definitely unbreakable. Because you have something unique, even one-of-a-kind, that has slowly formed within you. People without this kind of confidence will constantly seek validation from others. If someone says you should learn English well, you will learn English. If someone says you should quickly get a certain certification, you will go and get it. These are just skills to make a living. These skills can help you find a job and have an income, but they cannot give you the confidence that comes from a deep recognition of your craft.
Designing a house and building a house as a worker feel different. You can't expect a worker to think that they are contributing to the country by building a house, but if you are a designer, you will have a deep sense of satisfaction and identification with your work. Because when a worker leaves, there will be someone to replace them immediately, but if a designer stops working, the worker won't be able to continue, or at least not in the same way. If Steve Jobs didn't return to Apple, the history of industrial design in the past few decades would have been rewritten. Even if he couldn't return to Apple and eventually went bankrupt and starved to death, he would still be very confident.
Confidence is also relative. People who appear very confident on the surface, those who others think are very confident, may not necessarily have a deep sense of self-confirmation and value in their hearts. They may not be able to confirm their own value at the bottom level. But as you gradually understand and master something that is not easy to understand, pure confidence will continue to grow and solidify. At this point, you no longer need to care about external evaluations. You focus on how deeply you understand the essence of things. Understanding complex things is objectively difficult.
When a child can't solve a problem, and the mother says, "You're already great," although the intention is good, it can only temporarily relieve the child's emotions and create illusions in reality. If the child still can't solve the problem, their anxiety will only increase, and over time, it may cause major psychological problems. It's like what is said in a comedy sketch by Guo Degang: "You are praised at home, but slapped outside and die suddenly." Only when a child puts in effort and works hard to solve the problem can their confidence increase. When anxiety is relieved, confidence will also increase. Unbreakable confidence is not built on the praise and flattery of others, but only through continuously facing reality and deeper levels of reality, layer by layer, to temper oneself.
In the process of acquiring a skill, relying on a skill that is not useful for making a living is useless. It is about learning and understanding things that are originally difficult to understand. It is about experiencing pain and overcoming obstacles time and time again. This is the method to fundamentally build confidence. Because you know how difficult this process is. Similarly, you will also be more able to recognize who has a skill, and you will understand that anyone who has reached this point will definitely recognize you, and they also know the difficulty of this process.