While I read the above chapter once again, I found that things were not as simple
as they were described. Many special thoughts that I didn’t notice before arouse. I realized
that Woolf was implying about the changing things in a time flow.
First, I asked myself, did the Ramsays really eager to visit the Lighthouse? The
answer I came up with was NO. The Lighthouse was a container for their good imagina-
tions, while visiting it was the most direct and realistic way to destroy it. In the Ramsays’
spiritual world, the Lighthouse was their sun, their moon, their most beautiful flowers,
their always fading dream, and their only hope. Since the Lighthouse was distant enough
from them, it seemed reasonable to add those fantastic implied meanings on it, and they
believed that all troubles they met in the reality could be solved simply by the action of
“visiting the Lighthouse”. But was that possible? If the real Lighthouse was totally differ-
ent from their imagination, they could no longer use it as their spiritual container. Moreo-
ver, what should they do after visiting the Lighthouse? If a person had already finished his
life goal, what else could motivate him? The only solution was to find another objective,
which was a solution that would never be chosen by the Ramsays due to their pursuit of
stable things. The Ramsays hated changing, and they would rather regard “visiting the
Lighthouse” as their lifelong goal while never actually setting out the journey.
The second discovery about the story was the unconsciousness of time flow. If the
Ramsays were unwilling to visit the Lighthouse, that might explain why they were putting
off the plan everyday—the bad weather might be one of the reasons, but a determined
heart could definitely defeat this obstacle. Once again, the Ramsays promised to visit the
Lighthouse tomorrow, but then tomorrow became the day after tomorrow, and became the
day after the day after tomorrow. Hopelessly, the wind was blowing for ten years. Time
passed, children grew up, Mrs. Ramsay died, and the weather never got better.
It was a pity that I saw myself in the story. Every time when the Ramsays’ were
preparing for the never-coming visit, I saw myself doing the same thing. Every night I told
myself that things would be different tomorrow, and I would take actions for things I
embraced in the brand-new day. However, instead of becoming an encouragement, this
was more like a ridiculous comfort for the emptiness in previous days. The tomorrow
never came. It was absurd that I continued to waste the “brand-new days” to do the old
repetitive thing—which was nothing. I became the Ramsays, hopelessly waiting and
pursuing for the never-coming tomorrow.