David's Life
Friday, July 11, 2008
Brightwind is back!
Brightwind returns today! For a long time I haven't been sure where to go with this site. Ever since my mother got cancer way back in 2005, I've had all sorts of ambiguous feelings about what I should do with my life and even more ambiguous feelings about how in the world I could write about it. But now, that ambiguity is just floating away like so many clouds; I've been learning so much, talking to really interesting people, and most importantly rejuvenating my spiritual life through a series of journeys, prayers and meditations. Some of this is very personal of course, but much of it is on subjects I think lots of people can understand and appreciate.
So from now on, I'm going to start sharing thoughts and pictures and whatever comes to mind more. I might do various updates or changes or whatnot, but really my main purpose is that I can keep in touch and share ideas with my friends scattered about the world, who can also leave comments and share their ideas and thoughts too!
The few minutes you spend here on Brightwind should be very bright indeed, I hope, though not necessarily very windy.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
another change of direction...
I haven’t known how to say this, so I haven’t said anything for a long time. I suppose I still don’t know how to say this, but I should really say something… My fear is that I’m going to sound depressed and upset and I’m going to make other people feel that way as well, so let me state for the record that I am not depressed at the time of writing this entry. Life just threw another curve-ball, that’s all.
I was in China just about a month ago. I had a great time in Macau in February, saw lots of great friends, even met up with a few great friends in Nanjing and Shanghai in the end of February and the beginning of March. And then I got a phone call from my family back in the States saying that my mother was in the hospital.
Turned out that she had a brain tumor, and that the surgery would take quite some time for her to recover from, and that I was needed back in Colorado Springs, Colorado to help take care of her during the next few months. Of course when she told me this I was more than happy to come help my mother! Who wouldn’t?
So the long and the short of it is that I’m not in China anymore. I’m deeply sorry to all my Chinese friends that I missed while I was there for about two weeks. I swear I miss you even more now. Of course I’m very happy to be here with my mother, and I’m grateful for the chance to help her out, but I won’t pretend that my heart doesn’t cry out with longing to return to China, be with my friends, and continue my graduate studies.
Mom and her doctors and everybody are all hoping that I’ll be able to come back to China in September. I think I’ll wait a little while before thinking about it too much. I hate it when I get my hopes up for something and then I have to change plans again. That’s been happening a lot over the last few years, so I’m taking a break from plans of any sort as much as I can.
So that’s the latest on my whereabouts and current condition and all. If you’re concerned about my mom, you can find out the latest on her health at her own personal website: nancybowers.com/updates
Please keep her (and me too, while you’re at it) in your prayers, if you’re the praying sort. If you don’t pray, you could always just send us loads of money instead…
Ha ha… just joking. I know that’s not very funny, but hey… one ought not to be serious all the time. God loves laughter, you know…
Friday, December 31, 2004
The Bright Wind Blows...
My time in America has been fulfilling and good for me, but I've been learning that it's not the place I need to be right now. On one hand, coming back here was like a kick in the face, while on the other, it was like a sweet honey.
For a long time, I had been planning to spend a long time in China - maybe my whole life - learning about the Chinese, living among them, becoming friends with them, and sharing my life with them. This has always exhilarated me -- from every word I breathed in the Chinese language, to every night I spent in a Chinese bed, I knew that my life was growing and expanding in ways I could not predict.
But some things tempted me to come back to America, and to find out if maybe it wouldn't be better for me to stay here for a while. Suffice it to say that even though I always intended to go back to China, I considered being here for a year or so. Then, those temptations which had lured me here suddenly became unhealthy for me and they left me wondering what I should do. I felt ashamed that I had even left China in the first place, when it had been such a great home for me and held so much promise, and I thought maybe I needed to stay here for a while, just in order to become worthy of going back.
But things don't work that way. Worthiness doesn't come from outward measurements: degrees from western universities, or years of experience in some profession. Somehow I realized that if I'm going to be worthy to go back to China, I have to embrace the worthiness I was born with.
You see, I know so many people there in China, who are to me like stars shining in the sky of humility and friendliness. I hear some foreigners complain about problems they have with Chinese people, but somehow I think that they live in a different China from the one I have known for 4 years. Truly, the Chinese friends I am blessed with make me feel awed. They are so different from me, and yet, in every way that counts, not different at all. None of these dear people ever looked at me and thought I was not worthy.
For me, the word I made up for this website, "brightwind," has taken on a real meaning. It is that mysterious wind which blows you where you need to be in life. It may blow you onto a certain path, then off it, then on it again, but all the time it is blowing you in the right direction. It is the force behind "Yuan Fen," as the Chinese love to call it -- the way people come into your life just when you need them, and the way you come into their lives, just when they need you.
This brightwind whispered in my ear that China was not waiting for me to be worthy. The reality was something else. When you hear the brightwind calling you, soothing your heart, you can't really put into words the message you hear. But suddenly, it makes you feel warm and content with your life as it is, with the plans as they were before you tried to fix them -- unbroken, whole, and worthy.
I hold in my hands a plane ticket to Nanjing, arriving February 26. (Happy New Year)
China • David's Life • Love • (21) Trackbacks • Permalink
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Wonderful Hope
These last few days I caught a bad head cold, which then progressed, for various reasons, into worse things. Of course, when you are sick, you can’t think of many things, and updating a website seems like a monumental task. Yet I’ve seen other websites’ authors deal with sickness bravely, with such words as “sick now… update later,” or “uggh! I hate being sick! can’t think straight…” But somehow I felt that writing such a thing for Brightwind wouldn’t be right. What’s the deeper meaning behind “uggh”? How is it relevant to you, my dear reader, that I am sick, except as an excuse for not updating Brightwind, and perhaps a plea for sympathy?
Anyway, my particular character is not to bother you with some aspect of my life unless it contains some deeper meaning or is particularly relevant to major things going on with my website (such as the recent redesign).
But then, just as I was getting to feel better today, I realized that something rather interesting is going on here. I no longer have a fever, and my thoughts are once again liberated (although still a bit slower than usual). My headache on the other hand, has merely gotten worse. All day now it’s been pounding around in my head.
But I’m happy about it! Relative to yesterday, today is so much better! My appetite has returned, I can walk around short distances without feeling dizzy! I’m getting all excited about little things like drinking a lot of water and juice and eating a lot of fruits.
And most of all, I have this wonderful hope to look forward to, that my health can only get better I go on taking my medicine and resting as much as I can. It’s amazing how great it feels to be pretty sick after having just been really sick. It feels almost like being healthy again, but maybe even better, because I know that real health is on it’s way.
David's Life • Way of Life • Optimism • (36) Trackbacks • Permalink
Monday, April 19, 2004
Glorious Blue
Once again, Brightwind is blessed with a suitable design. I am pleased. I can rest…
But first let me share: one of the things I have learned from designing my own websites is that you have to be very patient with your computer. Sometimes you come up against strange problems, where the code you’ve written works fine in a reasonable web browser, but when you load it up in the browser most people use, then things look inexplicably unlike what you intended.
You could, of course, just write code with only that most popular browser in mind, but then it would look strange in all the other browsers. You have to remember that many people use an alternative operating system, and the most common browser, that is the version with most of the problems, is only available on windows. To compensate for this, most of the alternative systems and browsers try to adhere to a set of web page coding standards, so that people like me just have to write one set of code and can feel relatively confident that most of it will look the same no matter what system someone is using.
Of course, web pages can be extremely complicated, and various systems’ web browsers have bugs, so things don’t always work out like you would have hoped. But the fact that they make a strong effort to adhere to these standards goes a long way to make the web designer’s life easier. Unfortunately, Microsoft has neglected to update their Internet Explorer at the same speed as other systems’ browsers, so the poor program you are most likely to be using has many problems that have been lingering around for years. If you try to design according to these standards I mentioned, Internet Explorer quickly begins to feel like the old, broken-down car you have to take to work everyday. You spend more time fixing problems with it than actually using it. (If you’re using a windows computer, by the way, fear not—other, much better browsers are available to you, and offer you many more interesting features too.)
So anyway, there I am, studying the code for hours, trying to figure out why Internet Explorer doesn’t like it. Finally, at three in the morning, I have to give up for the night and try to sleep even though I have unfinished problems to solve. I hate that feeling—trying to sleep with unfinished creative work to do.
But then in the morning, I look at it again, and new ideas come to me. I see new possibilities that were not there the night before. It seems like just a few little tweaks and the whole thing starts to look okay no matter which browser I use.
So one moral of this story is that more and more people can use better browsers and allow a better experience both for themselves and for web designers.
And the other moral is that being patient and giving yourself all the time you need to work something out is really the fastest way to do it. Banging your head against problems late into the night leaves you with a sore head and the same amount of problems to solve in the morning. Letting it be for a while saves you both the headache and the lack of sleep.
Brightwind News • David's Life • Weblogs • (44) Trackbacks • Permalink
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