Matrix

Do not try and bend the spoon,

that's impossible.

Instead, only try to realize the truth:

There is no spoon.

Then you'll see it is not the spoon that bends,

It is only yourself.

别试着折弯汤匙，

那是不可能的。

你要试着看清真象：

汤匙不存在。

改变的不是汤匙，

而是你自己。

----Matrix I

After finishing the Chinese Literature project on Matrix, I fell in love with these lines. They reveal a truth that you always know, yet there are no words more succinct than those to explain this truth.

The situation in which humans begin to doubt their existence is no longer restricted in religious practice. They put their doubts in movies. And instead of only holding a dubious attitude towards human themselves, people begin to doubt the existence of "the real world". To our grievance, after living in this world for almost 17 years, we have to accept the fact that there lies a possibility that the world we are in is not "real". It sounds ridiculous, but that is where MatrixI, II, III bring us to: a pursuit to the "real world" and a doubt to the "real self".

The theme of "searching for the 'real self' " is not put into literary text for the first time. As early as in 1963, Danish writer Anne Holm encoded this theme in her fiction novel "I am David" and illustrated it well. The boy who worshipped the God of "The Green Pastures and the Still Waters" finally realised what a "real self" meant after experiencing a never-ending list of adventures. However, speak of which, it has never been easy for Neo to realise his real identity, even after much more agonizing adventures.

Why is it so hard to differentiate your true identity from what you display to others? Because a person is ever changing, since he is ever growing. Growing up is a mysterious thing: you find yourself stopped doing lots of things you used to do all the time--playing with toys, watching cartoons, kicking a ball on the mowed lawn--but you never remember deciding to stop. Childhood is thus like a habit you gradually grew out of, unknown to yourself, a bit at a time.

When you are eventually moulded into who you are today, who knows what you were, and without that, how could you expect them to judge you holistically? In the first place, how will you discover you "real self"? It lies in the past, or it stays with you now?

We mundane creatures face such difficulties, so does Neo--The One is disguise. He was inside the Matrix controlled by the Architect, but he refused to be just a programme. He possessed the ability to love which was a "code" absent in the programme, that was how he began to betray and then--upgrade the whole programme, and eventually, got out of the programme while destroying it.

"Everything with a beginning has an end." another of my favourite lines in the movie. With that, I shall end this unfathomable philosophical chunk of words.

Today is Mid-Autumn, a sweet festival in this chill season. There, firecrackers will light up the night when we begin to make well wishes for the rest of the year. It is coming to an end, or it is just a beginning.