The street is empty, and the lamps are sparse. Their pale light shows the way, but it cannot dim the stars. The windows have gone dark. I am alone in the quiet, looking up. A night like this can make the mind quiet enough to turn inward, to examine old mistakes, to ask what I have been doing and why.
What Is All the Fighting For?
I hear people arguing over trivial matters – endlessly, bitterly, each convinced the other is wrong. By the end, words have wounded both sides, and nothing has been gained. Why fight? Zhou Guoping once observed that half the things in this world need not be fought over, and the other half are not worth fighting over. So what is left to fight about? The line is old; the quarrels are not. Perhaps the urge is native to us. Most conflicts are contests over advantage, attempts to satisfy some private wish at another person’s expense. Even if you win, you may have hurt someone and hurt yourself. Is that success? Does it make you happy?
Everyone has private wishes, material and spiritual. But these are not obtained by fighting; they are earned. Earning means effort, sweat, persistence, a strong heart. What is gained that way lasts. So in the world, do not contend; within yourself, work. That is how what you gain can endure.
Why Do We Live for Others’ Eyes?
When I look around, I see vanity everywhere – mine included. Doing one thing, we worry about how it looks, about face. But if you act only when others approve and stop when they do not, you become like a dog trying to please its master, with no place of your own. Dante said, Follow your own path and let people talk. How many actually do? For the sake of face, people abandon the road they wanted to take and wander into wrong ones. Many young people do this. Some even joke by turning Dante around: Walk others’ paths and leave them nowhere to go. Is vanity really so important? It can cost us almost everything and give back things of no value.
Everyone has some vanity, a wish for reputation and respect. But it should not be allowed to run wild. Do what you want to do. Be your own master, not someone else’s dog. If what you do has meaning for you and for society, do it. Do not worry about gossip. Live in your own posture.
Is Faster Always Better?
In a society driven by material desire, we hurry through life and miss the scenery at the roadside. With economic growth and social progress, speed becomes fashionable and compulsory. ‘Fast-food life’ enters everything. We chase efficiency, a rapid rhythm, and become slaves to it; in the chase we lose ourselves. Sometimes we cannot even say what speed has given us.
No one can deny that modern life demands speed. But when we can slow down, we should. Slow down enough to see the roadside. However busy life is, keep an inner composure, a calm state of mind. Then speed will not make us lose ourselves. Life will have meaning and value; even a fast-food life can be slowed enough to taste, to feel, to understand.
The night is deep and still. Three questions for the soul, and a little more thought about society and life. In asking, the spirit is tempered, the mind widens, the heart grows more rational, understanding deepens. And with that, there is peace.