Last Friday I visited Lao Lin's factory. He rose hurriedly and led me to the tea table.
Cold tea remained on a cluttered tray. He apologised, washed the cups again and lit one cigarette after another.
When the room finally became quiet, he looked down and said, very softly: ‘Sir, I am truly exhausted.’
He was less an entrepreneur than a stubborn guard—protecting the glory of twenty years ago and hundreds of workers who had grown old beside him.
We are taught to endure. Few tell us what it feels like to resist the decline of an entire cycle with one's own body.
Industries have seasons. Spring rises, summer grows, autumn gathers and winter stores. Will cannot turn every winter back into summer.
A real breakthrough may begin by accepting that a stage is complete and seeing what can be born from its ending. Recognising timing is not surrender; sometimes it is returning an impossible burden to the order of things.
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