The Cicadas Are Singing

My husband,Dapeng and I have known each other for eighteen years.

We were classmates in college. In our third year, we fell in love. I was the one who chased him. He was sunny, handsome, and a lot of girls liked him.These days, he runs the tech side of Lyfairs.

The two of us are very different. I look quiet on the outside, but inside I am quite wild. I was young and reckless once. I always wanted to live a brilliant life, to do something grand. For years, I was trying very hard to become the person I pictured in my mind.

Then came 2024, and a misdiagnosis at a checkup.

Around that time, by chance, I read Krishnamurti. He wrote about living in the present, about total freedom. I read it carefully.

And then I realized that there was already someone like that, right beside me.

He doesn't chase after anything. He just lives, naturally, in the present, enjoying each thing as it comes.

One evening last summer, we were out walking. He suddenly said to me: the cicadas are singing. That summer, for the first time, I truly felt the cicadas were there. All these years, my mind had been on work. I had forgotten what nature really looks like.

One weekend, the weather was fine, and we took our son to the park. He saw the wind move through the grass, and told me, this is the song Li Jian sings, the wind through the wheat.

Another time, on a Saturday, he sat in the office with his sunglasses on, watching the clouds in a wide, clear sky.

He is an artist of living. Every time we travel for work, he turns even a business trip into something fun. He'll ride a bike through the streets and alleys, hunting for good food.

For so many years, I searched for that kind of freedom, that way of living in the present. It turns out he had been living inside it all along.

I really am a lucky person. To have met these lovely, beautiful people.

— Marie, Founder of Lyfairs