歌背后的故事The story behind it
我们家有一位很特别的成员。
它原本躲在一把芥蓝里面。我老婆发现的时候，第一反应是把它丢掉。结果被我儿子看见了。
于是它现在住进了一个塑料外卖盒，每天都有吃不完的蔬菜和水果。不用找食物，不用躲风雨，也不用担心哪一天突然被踩到。
有时候我看着它，会觉得它好像比我们还懂得怎么生活。慢慢吃，慢慢走，天黑了就回家。
一开始我写的真的只是它 —— 我们怎么把它从一把芥蓝里捡起来，怎么给它找菜叶，怎么每天看它慢慢爬。写着写着，它变了。
我想到自己。在亚洲长大的人大概都懂：父母的期待、环境、社会、同事。每一样都在推你走快一点。
它不用赶。它背着一个壳，走得很慢，可是它随时都能回家。
所以这首歌里，「壳」一开始是负面的。背着壳的人走得慢，被笑，被超过。到了副歌，它翻了过来：原来我的壳不是负担，是我走累以后可以回去的地方。
如果你今天也觉得走得比别人慢，这首歌是写给你的。
We have a rather special member of the family: a snail.
It was hiding in a bunch of kailan. When my wife found it, her first instinct was to throw it out. Then my son saw it.
So now it lives in a plastic takeaway box, with more vegetables and fruit than it can eat. No foraging, no hiding from the rain, no worrying about being stepped on one day.
Sometimes, watching it, I think it understands how to live better than we do. Eat slowly, walk slowly, go home when it gets dark.
At first I really was only writing about it: how we picked it out of the kailan, found it leaves, watched it crawl every day. Somewhere along the way, the song changed.
I thought about myself. Anyone who grew up in Asia probably knows it: parents' expectations, your surroundings, society, colleagues. Every one of them pushes you to go faster.
The snail doesn't hurry. It carries its shell and moves slowly, but it can always go home.
So in this song the shell starts out as a burden. Whoever carries it is slow, laughed at, overtaken. In the chorus it turns around: the shell isn't a burden, it's the place I can go back to when I'm tired.
If you feel today that you're moving slower than everyone else, this song is for you.