How to overcome the I don’t know what to say syndrome

One of the most common problems that people may run into in conversations – based on my own experiences, emails/comments I get and feedback from people in real life – is that their heads go empty and they don’t know what to say next. The conversation stalls and there is even perhaps an uncomfortable silence.

So how can you overcome this challenge?

Here’s what I do.

Why does this problem even come up?

First, here’s my short explanation why you might run into this problem. One reason might be that you are simply not prepared or out of your “regular world” (meaning for example that you go to a party to watch the finals in the world championship in rugby but know nothing about the sport while the other people are huge fans).

But a more common reason why you may run into this problem is that you feel that you need to say the “right thing”. You may want to not want to appear stupid by saying the wrong things or asking the wrong question. Or you want to impress someone.

1. You don’t have to be perfect.

Realize that you don’t always have to have the best answer or say the perfect thing. No one is expecting that except you.
Setting such ridiculous expectations just screws with your mind and improves nothing. Instead it can lead to a sort of performance anxiety that winds up paralyzing your mind. And so you don’t know what to say next.

2. Don’t think too much.

When you think too much you tend to have your focus inwards. You become self conscious, start to question yourself and fear what the future may bring. You get stuck between options for what to say and nothing comes out.

If you instead bring your awareness back the present moment you shift your focus outwards again. You notice what the people you are talking to are actually saying, what is happening in your conversation and around you.

This is the natural headspace stay in when you’re in a conversation. It’s a place where you probably are most of the time with your closest friends and family.

So how do you get into this comfortable and social headspace?

- Breathe or observe. The simplest way to reconnect with the now is to just focus on your breathing or to observe and take in your surroundings with all your senses for just a minute.

- Assume rapport. Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport). How do you do that? Just before the meeting, you just think/pretend that you’ll be meeting a good friend. Then you’ll naturally slip into a more comfortable, confident and enjoyable emotional state and frame of mind. In this state of mind conversation tends to flow more naturally without much thinking. Just like with your friends.

You may want to do a combination of breathing to relax if you feel tense and stressed and then you assume rapport to bring yourself into an even more positive headspace. Going straight from nervous to assuming rapport successfully may be too big of a leap.

3. Tap into curiosity.

When you are stuck in some kind of negative emotional state then you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people.

Curiosity on the other hand is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your nervousness or fear. So be curious.

But when you are curious, don’t get stuck in the questions game where the conversation turns into an interrogation. Mix the questions up with making statements. Instead of asking what someone’s favorite film is just tell them what your favorite one is and the let them continue from that statement.

4. Associate.

Find something in what you are already talking about to help you move into the next topic. The topic of fishing lure commercials on TV can help you bounce over to the time you and your uncle got trapped in boat without fuel while fishing. And then you and the people in the conversation can go on to talking about family or the oil problems the world is facing.

You can also find inspiration for topics by simply observing your surroundings.

5. Prepare.

The tips above should help you out but if you get really stuck anyway then you may want prepare and have a few topics in your mental backpocket.

- The person you are talking to. Again, curiosity is good because people like to talk about themselves.

- Passions. People love to share positive emotions and usually like to know what makes the other person tick.

- Watercooler topics and the news. It never hurts to be updated on what’s happening in the world.

6. Do the right thing.

This is more of a long-term solution but it makes conversations and just about anything easier and makes your life flow in a natural way.

If your thoughts and actions aren’t in harmony then you don’t feel so good about yourself. You feel like you are disappointing yourself and your self esteem sinks. If you on the other hand do what you deep down think is the right thing as much as you can then you feel like you deserve good things in life (and so the need to impress anyone significantly decreases). You feel confident and alive.

This does of course come through in a major way in any interaction.

Source: positivityblog

How to see people, not just our reactions to them

When we encounter someone, usually the mind automatically slots the person into a category: man, woman, your friend Tom, the kid next door, etc. Watch this happen in your own mind as you meet or talk with a co-worker, salesclerk, or family member.

In effect, the mind summarizes and simplifies tons of details into a single thing – a human thing to be sure, but one with an umbrella label that makes it easy to know how to act. For example: “Oh, that’s my boss (or mother-in-law, or boyfriend, or traffic cop, or waiter) . . . and now I know what to do. Good.”

This labeling process is fast, efficient, and gets to the essentials. As our ancestors evolved, rapid sorting of friend or foe was very useful. For example, if you’re a mouse, as soon as you smell something in the “cat” category, that’s all you need to know: freeze or run like crazy!

On the other hand, categorizing has lots of problems. It fixes attention on surface features of the person’s body, such as age, gender, attractiveness, or role. It leads to objectifying others (e.g., “pretty woman,” “authority figure”) rather than respecting their humanity. It tricks us into thinking that a person comprised of changing complexities is a static unified entity. It’s easier to feel threatened by someone you’ve labeled as this or that. And categorizing is the start of the slippery slope toward “us” and “them,” prejudice, and discrimination.

Flip it around, too: what’s it like for you when you can tell that another person has slotted you into some category? In effect, they’ve thingified you, turned you into a kind of “it” to be managed or used or dismissed, and lost sight of you as a “thou.” What’s this feel like? Personally, I don’t like it much. Of course, it’s a two-way street: if we don’t like it when it’s done to us, that’s a good reason not to do it to others.

The practice I’m about to describe can get abstract or intellectual, so try to bring it down to earth and close to your experience.

When you encounter or talk with someone, instead of reacting to what their body looks like or is doing or what category it falls into:

- Be aware of the many things they are, such as: son, brother, father, uncle, schoolteacher, agnostic, retired, American, fisherman, politically conservative, cancer survivor, friendly, smart, donor to the YMCA, reader of detective novels, etc. etc.

- Recognize some of the many thoughts, feelings, and reactions swirling around in the mind of the other person. Knowing the complexity of your own mind, try to imagine some of the many bubbling-up contents in their stream of consciousness.

- Being aware of your own changes – alert one moment and sleepy another, nervous now and calm later – see changes happening in the other person.

- Feeling how things land on you, tune into the sense of things landing on the other person. There is an experiencing of things over there – pleasure and pain, ease and stress, joy and sorrow – just like there is in you. This inherent subjectivity to experience, this quality of be-ing, underlies and transcends any particular attribute, identity, or role a person might have.

- Knowing that there is more to you than any label could ever encompass, and that there is a mystery at the heart of you – perhaps a sacred one at that – offer the other person the gift of knowing this about them as well.

At first, try this practice with someone who is neutral to you, that you don’t know well, like another driver in traffic or a person in line with you at the deli. Then try it both with people who are close to you – such as a friend, family member, or mate – and with people who are challenging for you, such as a critical relative, intimidating boss, or rebellious teenager.

The more significant the relationship, the more it helps to see beings, not bodies.

Rick Hanson PhD

Source: wildmind.org

The wrong, the real and the right questions

The Wrong Questions

Because I honestly consider this to be a very wrong question. Just as wrong as the following questions:

• How Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook?
• How Bill Gates became the richest person in the world?
• How can Lionel Messi play that incredible soccer that he plays?
• How can rich people live such an incredible life?

Here’s the pattern for all these wrong questions: everything is happening outside. We’re identifying the people we’re focusing on with some sort of social models, then start to compare what we have with what those models have, in terms of self-esteem, money and lifestyle, and then we realize they have more than we do. So we start to ask these questions. Which, in fact, are just placeholders for the real ones.

The Real Questions

And the real ones are:

• Why can’t I create something as powerful as Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg can?
• Why can’t I be the richest person in the world and Bill Gates can?
• Why can’t I play soccer as good as Lionel Messi?
• Why can’t I live a beautiful life, like all the rich people are living?

You see? Every time they’re talking about somebody else, people are in fact talking about themselves. It’s always about some hidden desire that they cannot express or some difficult goal that they don’t even dream to set. In fact, they’re asking themselves why can’t they be somebody else.

The real questions, those that you’re avoiding, are always about how do you fit. What’s your place here and how do you make use of it. How much do you want to have, to do, to experience, to live.

At some point in your life, most likely when you were a child, you changed your genuine personality for a different one, one that you’ve been taught to be “the correct one”. So, instead of accepting yourself, your own intentions, instead of following your own plans, you changed things to fit in. And started to make detours, compromises and replaced your desires with others, much more acceptable, or fashionable, or socially compliant.

And that’s the source for the wrong questions. You forgot your real identity and now you try to find ways to get it back, by comparing yourself with others. And you keep asking these wrong questions, when instead you should focus on the real ones.

But even when you start asking the real questions, it doesn’t mean you’re there yet. After all, the title of this article says something about the wrong, the real AND the right questions. So, what’s the right question to ask, anyway?

The Right Questions

To make a long story short, here are the right questions:

• Do I really want to build Facebook?
• Do I really need all Bill Gates money?
• Do I really want to play soccer?
• Do I really want to be a rich person?

In 99.99% of the cases, the answers to the right questions are “No”. You don’t want to create Facebook, nor to play soccer like Lionel Messi, not even to be a rich person. (Believe me, deep down, each individual has a very different and personal representation of richness, very different form the “a shitload of money” approach). There is already a Facebook in place, you don’t need to build another one. It’s impossible anyway. You may build something better, but, as you already started to understand, that’s a completely different question.

You may think you want all of the above, because you kept your focus on the outside world for so much time, that you forgot what it’s like inside you. You forgot what you really want, and replaced your wishes with some ready made ones. Your goals are the goals of everybody. You try to fit your entire existence into some limited lifestyles patterns. Which is fundamentally wrong, since we’re all different. Beautifully different, I may add.

I think it’s ok to react to outside stimuli and have opinions. If something catches our attention somehow, we should take and sustain a certain position. Like when we talk about Facebook, for instance, to acknowledge that this is a very interesting trend. Or to acknowledge the fact that Lionel Messi plays very good soccer. These are our opinions, and it’s part of our personality to express them.

But what I think it’s not ok – and, subsequently, I try to change first in my own behavior – it’s the type of question that I’m asking about those stimuli.

So, the real question that I hear in fact from other people is:

“Why can’t I own a popular self-improvement blog, some apps in the AppStore and some ebooks published?”.

When you put it like this, it really makes you think, right? I’m sure you didn’t think about that… But wait, that’s only the real question you’re asking. So, you’d better move on and ask the right one:

“Do I really want to be someone else? Or just me?”.

Source: dragosroua.com

Love the one you’re with

After C. S. Lewis lost his wife, Helen, to cancer, he realized he didn’t have a single good picture of her. Maybe that’s hard to grasp in our culture of profile pics from every angle, but he wasn’t upset about it. In fact, he saw the distinct advantage of lacking a quality image of his wife. He wrote:

I want H., not something that is like her. A really good photograph might become in the end a snare, a horror, and an obstacle.

How could a photo of the woman he loved become a snare? Because in the absence of the real person, he saw his tendency to fill the image with his own fancy. In fact, this was one of the prominent themes for Lewis in A Grief Observed. He was terrified at the prospect of shaping Helen into a phantom of his own making. Particularly alarming was his inclination to long for certain aspects of Helen’s personality more than others. Of course he would never intentionally import something fictitious about her, but, he mused, “won’t the composition inevitably become more and more my own?” What worried Lewis most was that Helen would become to him merely an extension of himself, of his old bachelor pipe-dreams.

Spousal Resistance

Lewis illuminates an overlooked gift in marriage: spousal resistance. I am not talking about red-faced tension or caustic defiance. I mean the simple fact that your spouse is a real person whose very existence will not conform to the image you have of him or her. Spousal resistance anchors you to reality, a reality in which God calls you to love your actual spouse, not your preferred one. Lewis observed:

All reality is iconoclastic. The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness. That is, in her foursquare and independent reality. And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead.

And, I would argue, when she is alive, too. As odd as it sounds, we can be thankful for the thousands of little disagreements that season the marital relationship, the countless differences of perspective that make it alive. These indicate that you are interacting with an independent being, one you’ve been entrusted with to love sacrificially.

The Original and Best

The very essence of sacrificial love is accommodating another rather than expecting another to accommodate self. Taking Lewis’s insight, then, we should be suspicious of our tendency to admire only those characteristics we approve of in our spouse and to revise those we don’t. When remembering a deceased spouse, this is bad enough; you aren’t loving her, but an edited memory of her. When serving a living spouse, it is worse; you aren’t pursuing her, but what you hope she would be. Far better is to love the original, not your revised edition. After all, you’re an original, too.

Loving the original requires lifelong adjustment on your part, and this deference is a key proof of the marital love that Christians are called to (Eph. 5:21-33). Don’t be discouraged when you don’t see eye-to-eye with your spouse. Where there is no disagreement, no annoyance, no resistance, there is no opportunity for sacrifice. If we love only what is pleasing to us in our spouse, we are loving only our preferences. We don’t need the gospel to do that.

We do need it to free us from our tendency to adjust one another constantly to our liking. Jesus came to serve an impulsive Peter, a distracted Martha, a dubious Thomas. And he came to serve a silly person like each one of us. And yes, Christ’s redemptive love changes us by degree, but this change is about conformity to righteousness, not conformity to personal preference.

So if your wife laughs too easily for your taste, love her for it. If she’s more pessimistic than you prefer, minister to her fears. If your husband is quieter in social gatherings than you’d like, be grateful for it. If he has more difficulty making plans than you think reasonable, come alongside happily. In all the little spousal resistances, celebrate the privilege of loving a person, not an image.

As Lewis said, reality is iconoclastic. And thank God this is especially true in marriage.

Source: thegospelcoalition.org

Ngày hạnh phúc

Raindrops keep falling on my head

Facebook trapped in MySQL ‘fate worse than death’

According to database pioneer Michael Stonebraker, Facebook is operating a huge, complex MySQL implementation equivalent to “a fate worse than death,” and the only way out is “bite the bullet and rewrite everything.”

Not that it’s necessarily Facebook’s fault, though. Stonebraker says the social network’s predicament is all too common among web startups that start small and grow to epic proportions.

During an interview this week, Stonebraker explained to me that Facebook has split its MySQL database into 4,000 shards in order to handle the site’s massive data volume, and is running 9,000 instances of memcached in order to keep up with the number of transactions the database must serve. I’m checking with Facebook to verify the accuracy of those numbers, but Facebook’s history with MySQL is no mystery.

The oft-quoted statistic from 2008 is that the site had 1,800 servers dedicated to MySQL and 805 servers dedicated to memcached, although multiple MySQL shards and memcached instances can run on a single server. Facebook even maintains a MySQL at Facebook page dedicated to updating readers on the progress of its extensive work to make the database scale along with the site.

The widely accepted problem with MySQL is that it wasn’t built for webscale applications or those that must handle excessive transaction volumes. Stonebraker said the problem with MySQL and other SQL databases is that they consume too many resources for overhead tasks (e.g., maintaining ACID compliance and handling multithreading) and relatively few on actually finding and serving data. This might be fine for a small application with a small data set, but it quickly becomes too much to handle as data and transaction volumes grow.

This is a problem for a company like Facebook because it has so much user data, and because every user clicking “Like,” updating his status, joining a new group or otherwise interacting with the site constitutes a transaction its MySQL database has to process. Every second a user has to wait while a Facebook service calls the database is time that user might spend wondering if it’s worth the wait.

Not just a Facebook problem

In Stonebraker’s opinion, “old SQL (as he calls it) is good for nothing” and needs to be “sent to the home for retired software.” After all, he explained, SQL was created decades ago before the web, mobile devices and sensors forever changed how and how often databases are accessed.

But products such as MySQL are also open-source and free, and SQL skills aren’t hard to come by. This means, Stonebraker says, that when web startups decide they need to build a product in a hurry, MySQL is natural choice. But then they hit that hockey-stick-like growth rate like Facebook did, and they don’t really have the time to re-engineer the service from the database up. Instead, he said, they end up applying Band-Aid fixes that solve problems as they occur, but that never really fix the underlying problem of an inadequate data-management strategy.

There have been various attempts to overcome SQL’s performance and scalability problems, including the buzzworthy NoSQL movement that burst onto the scene a couple of years ago. However, it was quickly discovered that while NoSQL might be faster and scale better, it did so at the expense of ACID consistency. As I explained in a post earlier this year about Citrusleaf, a NoSQL provider claiming to maintain ACID properties:

ACID is an acronym for “Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability” — a relatively complicated way of saying transactions are performed reliably and accurately, which can be very important in situations like e-commerce, where every transaction relies on the accuracy of the data set.

Stonebraker thinks sacrificing ACID is a “terrible idea,” and, he noted, NoSQL databases end up only being marginally faster because they require writing certain consistency and other functions into the application’s business logic.

Stonebraker added, though, that NoSQL is a fine option for storing and serving unstructured or semi-structured data such as documents, which aren’t really suitable for relational databases. Facebook, for example, created Cassandra for certain tasks and also uses the Hadoop-based HBase heavily, but it’s still a MySQL shop for much of its core needs.

Is ‘NewSQL’ the cure?

But Stonebraker — an entrepreneur as much as a computer scientist — has an answer for the shortcoming of both “old SQL” and NoSQL. It’s called NewSQL (a term coined by 451 Group analyst Matthew Aslett) or scalable SQL, as I’ve referred to it in the past. Pushed by companies such as Xeround, Clustrix, NimbusDB, GenieDB and Stonebraker’s own VoltDB, NewSQL products maintain ACID properties while eliminating most of the other functions that slow legacy SQL performance. VoltDB, an online-transaction processing (OLTP) database, utilizes a number of methods to improve speed, including by running entirely in-memory instead of on disk.

It would be easy to accuse Stonebraker of tooting his own horn, but NewSQL vendors have been garnering lots of attention, investment and customers over the past year. There’s no guarantee they’re the solution for Facebook’s MySQL woes — the complexity of Facebook’s architecture and the company’s penchant for open source being among the reasons — but perhaps NewSQL will help the next generation of web startups avoid falling into the pitfalls of their predecessors. Until, that is, it, too, becomes a relic of the Web 3.0 era.

Source: gigaom

Huynh đệ

1. Lúc nó ra đời, kế hoạch hóa gia đình quản rất ngặt, trong thôn chỉ có hai nhà có em bé. Một nhà nếu không trốn đi vùng khác thì bị phạt tiền, mỗi nó đường đường chính chính oe oe chào đời làm con cưng. Không phải vì nhà nó có quyền có thế mà là vì anh trai nó vốn mang bệnh não bẩm sinh, dân gian gọi là bệnh đần.

Mẹ nó cầm cây roi trên tay dọa anh nó: “Vĩnh viễn không được lại gần em nghe chưa”. Vì sợ anh làm hại nó nên mẹ cấm anh vào phòng của nó. Đến nỗi ăn cơm cũng bắt anh ấy ăn một mình trong căn phòng nhỏ. Anh hay lén lút ngồi xổm bên ngoài khung cửa sổ nhìn trộm nó, thấy em trai là anh sung sướng cười, nước bọt theo khóe miệng chảy xuống…

Thật tình lúc nhỏ anh trai cũng được cưng lắm, đến khi những đứa trẻ cùng tuổi tập nói tập đi thì anh nó vẫn ngốc dại, không mở miệng nói được từ nào. Khám bệnh xong mới biết anh nó bị bệnh não bẩm sinh. Ông bà nội trút hết thất vọng và uất ức lên đầu bố mẹ nó, mẹ nó đem hết oan ức đổ lên đầu anh nó, hễ gặp một chuyện nhỏ là anh nó phải chịu một trận mưa roi.

Có lúc mẹ ôm nó phơi nắng trong vườn, anh nó cẩn thận mon men đến gần, thích quá anh đưa tay sờ lên má nó. Mẹ nó như sợ một bệnh dịch gì vội bồng nó đi chỗ khác, mắng nhiếc anh nó: “Không được lại gần em, mày muốn truyền bệnh cho em à?”.

Một lần, mẹ không có nhà. Từ xa, anh ngắm mợ bồng nó trên tay, vẫn là cười ngốc thôi. Mợ xót lòng, vẫy tay gọi: “Đến đây cầm tay em một tí này”. Anh nó vội trốn đi, miệng lắp bắp nói liên tục không rõ: “Không… không cầm… truyền bệnh, truyền bệnh”.

Hôm đó mợ khóc òa, anh nó đưa tay lên lau nước mắt cho mợ, vẫn là cười ngốc thôi.

2. Nó lớn dần, đang thời tập nói. Mấy lần nó huơ tay lên, bò tới phía anh. Anh nó mừng quá nhảy cẫng lên. Mẹ nó tới kịp, vội vội vàng vàng bồng nó đi chỗ khác.

Nhìn những đứa trẻ khác mút kem que, anh nó liếm môi, cảm thấy nóng và khát lắm. Bọn nhóc nói nếu anh chịu làm chó tụi nó sẽ cho kem. Anh nó làm chó bò trên đất, nhưng bọn nhóc quỵt kem và cười ầm lên. Bằng một động tác nhanh gọn, anh nó nhổm người lên, như điên dại cướp lấy que kem. Bọn nhóc sợ quá khóc rống. Anh nó cầm chiến lợi phẩm chạy về nhà, không biết rằng trên đường que kem tan dần, tan dần. Về đến nhà kem chỉ còn một miếng nhỏ tội nghiệp mà thôi. Nó đang chơi ở vườn sau, nhân lúc mẹ không để ý, anh đem kem đến trước mặt nó và nói: “Ăn… ăn… em ăn đi”.

Mẹ nó thấy anh cầm cái que như đang ra hiệu gì đấy, vội chạy đến xô anh ngã nhoài ra đất, que kem lấm lem đầy đất, anh nó ngẩn người nhìn một lúc lâu rồi ngoác miệng khóc.

Nó biết nói nhưng chưa từng gọi một tiếng anh. Anh nó hi vọng mình có thể như bao người anh khác được em trai là nó gọi một tiếng anh. Vì vậy lúc nó đang đùa nghịch ở sân sau, anh đứng phía ngoài xa ba mét, lấy hết sức hét: “Anh, anh”. Anh muốn nó nghe thấy sẽ học được cách gọi anh. Một lần anh đang cố gắng hét thật to, mẹ mắng nhiếc anh và đuổi đi chỗ khác chơi. Lúc đó nó ngước mắt lên nhìn anh, đột nhiên gọi thật rõ một tiếng: “Anh”.

Anh nó chưa bao giờ vui như thế, hoa chân múa tay, bỗng nhiên chạy đến ôm nó thật chặt, nước mắt nước mũi tèm lem đầy vai áo nó.

3. Từ nhỏ nó đã bị người ta gọi là “em thằng ngốc”. Lớn lên, nó ghét cách gọi này. Bởi vậy nó luôn mặc cảm và hận ghét anh nó.

Một lần, cũng vì chính cách gọi này mà nó bị người ta đánh. Nó bị lũ bạn đè lên người. Bỗng nhiên lũ bạn bị ai đó nhấc lên - là anh trai nó.

Nó chưa bao giờ thấy anh nó mạnh mẽ như thế, nhấc bổng cả lũ bạn nó lên, quật ngã chúng ra đất. Lũ bạn vừa khóc vừa thét đau. Nó thấy sợ, rắc rối rồi, bố chắc chắn sẽ phạt nó. Phút ấy nó hận mẹ tận xương tủy vì sao lại sinh cho nó một ông anh trai đần độn như thế. Nó dùng hết sức đẩy anh trai ra, hét rằng: “Ai bảo anh quản chuyện người khác, anh là thằng ngốc”. Anh nó ngã ra đất, thẫn thờ nhìn theo bóng nó khuất xa dần.

Hôm đó, bố bắt hai anh em quỳ ra đất rồi dùng roi mây quất tới tấp. Anh bò lên người nó, run rẩy nói: “Đánh… đánh con, đừng đánh em”.

Mấy hôm sau mẹ mang kẹo từ thành phố về, chia cho nó tám viên, anh nó ba viên. Không chỉ là chia kẹo, những lần khác anh nó vẫn chịu vậy. Sáng sớm, anh đứng sau cửa gương đợi nó đi ra, xòe bàn tay có hai viên kẹo. Nó lờ đi, coi như không thấy gì. Anh nó lại chạy đến trước mặt, xòe bàn tay có ba viên kẹo và nói: “Ăn… ăn, em ăn đi”.

Không biết vì sao lần này nó đột nhiên không cần, anh nó chạy theo quấn quýt cả chân, không nói lời nào, nhét cả ba viên kẹo vào mồm nó.

Lúc kẹo trôi qua khỏi họng, nó thấy rõ mắt anh trai đẫm nước mắt.

4. Cầm giấy trúng tuyển vào đại học, bố mẹ rất mừng, anh trai nó cũng vui lây. Thật ra anh nó không hiểu đại học là gì, nhưng biết rằng em trai đỗ đại học mang vinh hạnh đến cho cả nhà và cũng không ai gọi mình là thằng ngốc nữa.

Trước đêm nó lên thành phố nhập học, anh vẫn không vào phòng nó, chỉ đứng ngoài cửa sổ và đưa cho nó một bọc vải, mở ra thấy vài bộ áo quần mới. Đều là của mợ cho hai anh em nó hoặc là bà cô ở thành phố gửi tặng. Thì ra mấy năm qua anh nó chưa hề mặc áo quần mới. Bởi mẹ không để ý đến nên anh giấu đi. Lúc đó, nó phát hiện áo trên người anh đã cũ mèm, rách vài chỗ, chiếc quần ngắn lên tận mắt cá chân, nom thật tội nghiệp. Mũi nó cay cay, bao nhiêu năm qua ngoài sự ghét bỏ, hận thù nó có cho anh cái gì đâu.

Anh nó vẫn cười ngốc thôi, có điều trong mắt đầy hi vọng, nó không biết đó là hi vọng gì. Mặc dù anh không biết nó đã cao lên rất nhiều, không biết áo quần ấy đã đến lúc lỗi thời không thể chưng diện đi ra phố được nữa nhưng nó vẫn khoác mặc vào, xoay tới xoay lui giả bộ vui mừng ríu rít hỏi anh: “Đẹp không? Có hợp không?”. Anh nó gật đầu, ngoác miệng cười.

Nó viết lên giấy hai chữ “huynh đệ” rồi chỉ cho anh chữ này là huynh, chữ này là đệ, huynh là anh, đệ là em. Huynh đệ có nghĩa là có anh rồi mới có em, không có anh thì không có em. Hôm đó, anh nó lại đọc ngược thành “đệ huynh”. Lúc lên đường nó khóc, anh nói rằng trong lòng anh nó là số 1, không có nó thì không có anh.

5. Nói đến đời sống đại học, nó thấy rất thú vị, nhiều điều mới mẻ, dường như nó quên mất người anh trai nơi quê nhà.

Lần nọ mẹ đi gọi điện thoại cho nó, anh đi theo đến bưu điện. Mẹ nói rất nhiều, cả tiếng đồng hồ rồi bảo với nó: “Nói chuyện với anh con mấy câu này”. Anh tiếp điện thoại, đợi thật lâu không nghe tiếng gì cả, mẹ nói rằng: “Thôi cúp máy đi, anh con khóc rồi, anh con chỉ lên ngực ý nói rằng nhớ con đó”.

Nó vốn muốn nói mẹ đưa điện thoại lại cho anh trai để nói với anh rằng: “Đợi em về sẽ dạy anh học chữ, sẽ mua cho anh những kẹo bánh mà chỉ ở thành phố mới có, đem về cho anh thật nhiều quà”. Nhưng nó không mở nổi miệng và cúp điện thoại. Chỉ vì nó không muốn bạn cùng phòng biết nó có một anh trai bị bệnh não bẩm sinh, một anh trai đần độn.

Hè đến, nó về nhà, trên xe ăn một viên kẹo, bỗng nhiên nhớ lại anh từng nhét kẹo vào miệng nó, kẹo ở trong miệng nhưng lòng nó đắng nghét.

Lần đầu tiên về đến nhà, nó hét thật to: “Anh, anh ơi. Em đã về, xem em mang gì về cho anh này”. Thế nhưng không có tiếng cười ngốc của anh nó nữa, không có bóng ông anh gần 30 tuổi đời còn mặc quần ngắn đến mắt cá chân nữa.

Bố mẹ nước mắt đầm đìa, nói với nó rằng: “Một tháng trước, anh con lao xuống sông cứu một đứa bé, anh không biết bơi. Đứa bé đó được cứu sống nhưng anh con không lên nữa”. Bố mẹ nó úp mặt khóc…

Một mình đứng bên dòng sông, ký ức về anh chợt ùa về tha thiết. Nó rút trong túi một tờ giấy có viết hai chữ “huynh đệ”. Đó là chữ của nó, phía dưới là chữ méo xẹo của anh nó. Nó có thể nhận ra anh nó viết “đệ huynh”.

Nguồn: phapsu

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