A Bridge to Chinese

Just another weblog about China and Chinese

If you ask me do you fear something, my answer will be Yes, I DO!

The table topic I made for the first time several weeks ago was DO NOT FEAR. But the turtle I bought for the prop and award as well was sent back to the seller, just because I do fear I can’t raise it well.

There are a lot of other things I did fear or do fear.

I was scared of big dogs, because I had been chased by a ferocious dog.

I was afraid of feeling sorry for myself, because I am a completist.

I fear of aging, because I am not such young any more.

I am worried about my parents, they are getting old, but I do not satisfy them. I regret having not planed my life according to the ordinary people’s timetable.

……

One day I started to think why I have so many fears.

Then I found with my growing, the big dogs are not as big as when I was 12 years old, and one of the most ferocious dogs named Husky becomes my favorite one.

I am a person who chases for flawlessness. But now I find out that things are not going worse if I lower my standard.

Age is not only a number. When I count it, the feeling of getting older and the pressure from the people around me affects me truly. But we are lucky that birthday is counted every single year and to each one of us is equal, no one could skip or prolong seconds for minutes, minutes for hours or hours for a day.

My parents are at their sixties; to me they are the most tolerant parents to their children in the world. The more they understand me, the more I feel guilty about what they do for me. Loving them is to put saying into practice.

……

The conclusion I made from the above presumption is my ability to continue with an unpleasant or difficult situation, experience, or activity over a long period of time has been improved. This ability is called endurance.

To endure the scare of ferocious animal, to endure the feeling of sorry for myself, to endure the fear of aging, to endure the worry of regret …

To endure is to experience it and do not avoid it or give up.

I feel ease and peaceful when I suddenly realized it.

I do fear, at the same period, I become mature. It’s growth. As we grow, we learn more. If I stayed at twenty-four, I would always be as ignorant as I was at twenty-four. I turned to my thirties this July, the last few days before my 30’s birthday and the first few days after that time has been one of the most painful time up till now. We hear people always say, “Oh, if I were young again.” We never hear people say, “I wish I were sixty.”

All these fears will happen anyhow, no matter whether we are always going to be unhappy or not. Fears reflect unsatisfied lives, unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if we’ve found meaning in our life, we don’t want to go back. We want to go forward. We want to see more, do more. And we can’t wait until sixty or even much older.          

The culture we have doesn’t encourage us to think about the question like what if today were the last day you had on earth. We are wrapped up with our career, family, having enough money, meeting the balance, buying a new car, so we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, is this all I want? Is something missing?

Having a fear is not such a terrible thing, but lost ourselves is.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 8:19 am and is filed under Toastmasters Club. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.