3 Life Lessons from Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” for Adults in the Middle Ages
If one day you wake up and find yourself turned into a giant beetle, you will definitely think that you had a ridiculous dream.
However, if one day, you encounter all kinds of critical shocks such as layoffs and serious illnesses, you will immediately touch the cruelest reality.
In fact, between becoming a beetle and being seriously injured, there is only an illusory door, and the essence is the “deformation” of life.
When the reversal of fate is unavoidable, perhaps we should pay attention to what kind of world we will be in after “transformation”?
More than 100 years ago, the Austrian writer Kafka revealed this answer to the world in his work “The Metamorphosis”.
When people reach middle age, when they read “The Metamorphosis”, they no longer feel absurd.
Instead, in that brain-opening story, I understood the three heart-wrenching truths of life.
Your worth depends on what else you can do
Gregor was a traveling salesman who served the company diligently for five years.
He comes and goes in the wind and rain every day, diligently, and creates performance for the company.
But one morning, he turned into a beetle and had difficulty getting up.
His first instinct was not to worry about his body, but to worry about being late for work.
He knew that in this company, as long as there was a slight mistake, it would immediately attract the greatest suspicion.
Sure enough, because he didn’t get to work on time, the director of the secretary of the company immediately came to the door, suspecting that he had absconded with money.
After seeing Gregor turned into a beetle, the director of the secretary ran away in fright, completely ignoring his explanation and appeal.
Gregor originally expected the chief secretary to report his situation to the company, hoping to get sympathy.
Naively, he imagined that the company could be sympathetic to him because of his past achievements.
However, the reality is that past achievements cannot produce current benefits, and companies will not support idlers in vain.
What awaited Gregor was dismissal from personnel.
In the workplace, how others treat you is determined by your worth.
The value of a person does not lie in what he has done, but only in what he can do in the future.
After becoming a beetle, can Gregor continue to contribute to the company and be squeezed out of the maximum surplus value?
Obviously not.
Therefore, to be abandoned like nothing is the predetermined fate of a “useless person”.
The snobbery of the world and the injustice of reality are so naked, cruel and ruthless.
But that’s real life.
As the saying goes:
“Your relationship with anyone does not depend on how good you are to others, but on how strong you are and how much chips you have.
People are generally more tolerant of the strong, and even if the weak have done nothing wrong, they will be treated harshly. ”
When a person is weak, there are the most bad guys.
When you don’t have enough value to establish a good cooperative relationship with others, no one will give you help.
Any good relationship is built on the strength and value of each other.
Only by making yourself strong enough can the world be kind to you.
Letting others be others is the consciousness that adults should have
In the past few years, Gregor has become the breadwinner of the family, doing his best to make the family live a comfortable life.
His father’s business went bankrupt in his early years and he owed a lot of debts. Gregor helped him pay off the debts and let him enjoy his old age in peace.
His mother was weak, so he hired a maid to help with the housework so that his mother could rest in peace.
His seventeen-year-old sister loves to wear beautiful clothes, eat and play. Gregor loves her very much and plans to raise a sum of money to send her to the music academy.
He is proud of himself for allowing his family to live in a good house and live a good life.
However, a sudden accident broke the peaceful life.
After Gregor became a beetle, he was unable to go to work, and his family lost their source of income.
My father has not worked for five years. Although he is still in good health, he is old and it is difficult to find a job.
My mother suffers from asthma and has difficulty moving. How can I go out and earn money?
My sister is still a child and hasn’t finished her studies yet, so how can she go to work?
When he thought about earning money to support his family, Gregor felt anxious, shame and anxiety took turns.
But life will always go on, and life will not stop because of the absence of anyone.
Soon, my father found a job as a handyman in a bank;
The mother quit the maid, ran the housework by herself, and also did needlework for others to supplement the family;
The younger sister went to work as a salesperson, and in order to find a better job, she was still learning shorthand and French at night.
They also sublet out extra rooms in their homes to earn rent.
Although life is more difficult than before, it has not collapsed; the days can continue in this way, and the transition can be made safely.
Sometimes, I am not as important as I imagined, and others are not as weak as I imagined.
The world of adults goes on as usual without everyone.
When people reach middle age, they are always anxious about their families, children, and partners.
Worried about children’s learning and getting blindsided, worried about their partner’s health but being nagged.
But in fact, in life, everyone has their own responsibilities, and everyone has their own problems.
Close relatives can share the pressure of life, but the growth of life can only be accomplished by ourselves.
After all, no one can replace someone else to grow, and the road that should be taken by oneself must not be missed.
Taking over other people’s lives is not true love either.
Between family members, you can care and care, but you don’t have to do everything for you; you can help and support, but you don’t have to do it for you.
The best protection for him is to let others become others instead of his own vassals.
Learn to love yourself, in order to withstand thousands of wind and frost
In order to catch the five o’clock train, Gregor got up at four o’clock in the morning every day, and after a simple wash, he traveled around non-stop to conduct business.
After years of running around, his diet and work and rest have been irregular for a long time, but he never dared to stop and rest.
The family members take his contribution for granted, are used to asking him for it, and are content with his dedication.
He is bound by his livelihood, has no friends, love, time and freedom in his life, only work is left.
In the morning when he turned into a beetle, what he worried about was not his physical condition, but his fear of losing his job.
After turning into a beetle, he was careful every day, watching his words and actions, and felt pain for the shock and inconvenience caused to his family.
He lives for work, for the needs of his family, and has long since lost himself.
However, his family has gradually turned from sympathy to disgust, and even regarded him as a burden.
Everything he worked for, spurned him after he “transformed”.
If a person bases his own value entirely on the judgment and approval of the outside world, he will lose himself and become a fragile “hollow person”.
Gregor, who had no use value, passed away in loneliness and despair, but his family felt relieved and easily started a new life.
He has been working hard for others all his life, but he forgot to live for himself.
A writer once said: “All the problems in your life come from not loving yourself enough.”
Learning to love yourself is the most important topic in a person’s life:
Learn to care for your body. We need to work hard, but no job for a living is worth sacrificing your health and your life.
Learn to watch your emotions. It is a daily life for an adult to be calm and forbearing, but it is even more necessary to put oneself first, to be aware of emotions in a timely manner, and to understand and guide oneself.
Learn to pay attention to your own needs. Give for others, do your best, don’t need to be on top, let your own needs become the focus of life, and only then can you create your own value.
Regardless of work or life, all our efforts are to achieve a better self.
Only by constantly examining yourself, adjusting yourself, and loving yourself more can you build a stable core and go far in the world of thousands of winds and frosts.
This work written by Kafka more than 100 years ago seems to be a kind of foresight of the current reality.
The people squeezed and deformed by the real world are all Gregor, but they didn’t turn into beetles.
When people reach middle age, they panic every day, just for a few taels of silver.
The pressure of work and the burden of life make people feel melancholy and tired.
The more this is the case, the less you can change your mind according to the situation and feel sad or happy because of things.
Only by establishing a firm mind, finding the nourishment of the soul, and understanding self-fulfillment can we grow in Nirvana while crossing the chasm.
