# Useless Studies Episode 2: The 3 Places Where Ordinary People Can Never Turn Their Life Around

Recently, Li Juan's "My Altai" has been trending, and there's a line of dialogue in it that really enlightened me.

Li Juan wanted to be a useful person, and her mother said: What is a useful person? For the trees and grass on the river embankment, being cut down and taken away to be burned makes them useful.

Isn't it nice for useless trees and grass to just grow on the earth like that?

My only child is autistic with an IQ of only 39. He may be a standard "worthless person" by worldly standards his entire life.

He won't contribute to the country's GDP pie, won't make a single penny for the family, and won't produce tool people or laborers for society's reproduction...

To others, he's worthless and doesn't deserve to live.

But to me, I think he can live, and live happily without worries, just like grass naturally creating seeds in the wind, trees naturally swaying their leaves in the breeze.

Some people say his living is a waste of air.

I say go fuck yourself.

His feces can be organic fertilizer for the home garden and orchard. His exhaled carbon dioxide is an important part of plants' photosynthesis. His eating snacks, drinking milk, and wearing fashionable clothes promotes consumption and solves overcapacity. If the probability of autism risk from childbirth is fixed, his diagnosis took up one spot, therefore reducing the probability of other children getting this disease by xx fraction...

If I could, I could cite ten thousand examples proving his life is meaningful. Moreover, being close to him makes me secrete the maternal love hormone that makes me happy.

When he smiles at me with bright eyes, the whole world becomes luminous and sunny.

If you think you're worthless, it's probably just that you don't have a mother who loves you.

If you're unfortunately like me—without a mother like Li Juan's or my son's mother who is accepting and loving to her child—this isn't a joke or sensationalism. I don't have such a mother. My mother is the type who curses you out if you don't make money for her to spend.

People like us can be our own mother. Embrace ourselves well, love ourselves, cook ourselves delicious balanced meals when hungry, allow ourselves to sleep when tired, work hard to save money and aim for financial freedom within a low-desire lifestyle, lie flat when exhausted, let go of obsession when depressed, don't scold ourselves as useless good-for-nothings. Living itself is nice enough.