Spring light seeps through the glass window like flowing water. Wind shakes branches, and newly emerged yellow-green leaves at branch tips sparkle holding sunlight. On a small table by the study window — one bottle of wine and one transparent glass. Today I wanted to pour life slowly into that glass. Not wine, but life itself.
Every time I drink wine, I stand before a mirror. I reach for wine more often when lonely or when regret visits than when joyful. Then I recall the saying "the mirror should be kept in front." Yes, we must always look at ourselves as if viewing someone else, with the mirror kept ahead. The red liquid in the wine glass reflects me — my mistakes, my warmth, and my regrets. Speaking faults first and leaving praise for later may be what keeps people's temperature like wine.
Pouring a glass, I think: "Am I leading with resentment, or leading with a smile?" Wine always approaches like a smile — no sharpness in its deep fragrance. Warmth comes first, and sincerity remains with time. Like how leading with resentment makes others' virtues invisible, but leading with a smile makes even faults understandable. Relationships, like wine, require the devotion of time and temperature — the right distance, appropriate air, gentle warmth. Wine closes its fragrance when too cold, loses its essence when too hot. People are the same — the more you grasp, the further they drift; when released appropriately, they draw closer. "Relationship is perhaps the art of maintaining."
Revisiting a childhood neighborhood, I found the path had vanished — replaced by apartment complexes. But the footsteps I took on that lane, the warm sunlight air, the voices laughing with friends, all remained within me. That memory was "the warmth of existence returning through loss," a quiet whisper reminding me how to live "now." People who have left me — the words and expressions they left still dwell in my life. Like fragrance remaining in an emptied wine glass, the space where someone came, offered their heart, and departed is never hollow. Tilting my glass, I ask myself: "Am I someone who leaves good fragrance, or someone who leaves regret?" Wine always waited for me. So let me wait for myself too.
