When I was a kid, I loved being the smartest one in cram school.

Not because I loved studying but because it was the fastest, easiest, most efficient way to earn praise.

One sentence from a teacher “You’re really good” made me happier than a whole bowl of red bean shaved ice. Back then, I believed that as long as I was the one being seen, life would glide forward like my feet were coated in butter.

Only later did I realize: standing out isn’t actually that fun. Especially when you know you’re a crane, but the entire environment expects you
to behave properly like a chicken.

That suffocating feeling it’s real enough to give your soul an allergy.

As a child, I wanted to be seen. As an adult, I just want to not be targeted. Eventually I understood: it’s not that cranes are hard to get along with. It’s that chickens can’t understand a crane’s perspective.

Cranes look at the sky. Chickens look at the ground. Neither is wrong, they just never line up.

People love to say things like: “We need consensus, community, collective consciousness!” It sounds passionate, even touching. But in reality, you first need soil where different seeds don’t strangle each other.

Soil is the real challenge of civilization. Not the seeds. Even the best seed, thrown into rotten soil, won’t bloom.

It will rot first or get dug up and eaten by some animal starving with hunger in its eyes.

That’s why I no longer want to be the shiny kid in the cram school classroom. Not because I’m no longer bright but because I know this now: shining too early only illuminates other people’s shadows.

A crane doesn’t need a chicken flock’s approval. A crane needs to find the rice field where it can actually stand.

If you insist on flying inside a chicken coop, it’s not rebellion, the ceiling is just too low.



—— XC Scribbles · 參拾參 XXXIII 🪶