Way of Life
Friday, May 21, 2004
Old Woman, New World
This is my favorite photo out of the 500 or so that I took last winter in Yunnan. It’s not the most beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, but it has a symbolic meaning to it that I was extremely lucky to catch. I was just walking down the street with my camera open, and as I saw this lady, I stealthily turned to snap a picture from my stomach-height as she walked by.
The woman clings to the past. The future is already here, and she seems almost ill and dizzy in a new world of shopping complexes and brand-name clothes. All of the modern age is caught up in this one blurry moment, and everything is so unclear to her. She clings to the hand of her grandson, who laughs and plays in a world he can understand but she cannot.
But she is the one with the keys to this new world dangling around her neck.
Photos • Yunnan • Way of Life • (59) Trackbacks • Permalink
Taking Humble Steps
As long as I don’t understand why I’m behaving in a certain way, I tend to feel guilty about it. I’ve felt guilty for not updating as often as I have wanted to in the last few weeks. Thinking about why this happens sometimes, I can of course blame it on being occupied with various things, but really I think it comes down to expecting too much of myself. I have tried to learn a lot about writing and web-design, and I have a number of goals in both of these fields that I’m still far from attaining. I have a pretty clear idea of what I like in good writing, but I often feel that I’m not in the right mood—too tired, too sick, too busy, or whatever—to put down writing that lives up to my own standards.
But the real mistake here is to let that stop me from trying—even with just a few words at a time. I need to remember, as many people do, that real progress comes about mainly through the little steps we take on the path towards our goals. The steps that count most are the ones that no one congratulates us for, when we tripped up a little or even just accomplished some small success. Countless little steps cover far more distances than great marathons ever will.
Whatever it is that may be taking place in my life or in the world around me, there is invariably something beautiful there waiting to be discovered… but the approach to that beauty requires humble steps, patient walking, and a steadfast resolution not to let expectations get in the way.
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
Friday, April 09, 2004
Excellence
I learned something about myself yesterday, and maybe something about human nature, too: putting your heart into something is what makes it meaningful to you.
As you already know, I have recently become a graduate student at Nanjing Arts Institute, and so far I’m enjoying it tremendously. Whenever I go there, I feel as though I’m soaking in a special kind of air, breathing in creativity along with oxygen, nitrogen and whatever else. It’s a place specially created for developing artistic talent, skill and inspiration—and it does just that.
I found that as I went there to study and absorb all those new experiences more, teaching at my Chinese high school began to seem older and less interesting. When I came back from my most recent trip, teaching English seemed almost unbearable, and I was filled with a desire to quit as soon as possible.
Then I realized that the high school itself hadn’t changed at all; my attitude towards it had. I let myself begin to think of it as an “old” thing and stopped wanting to try hard at it. In fact it was trying hard to be a good teacher all this time which had made it interesting in the first place. If I didn’t put any heart into this or any other part of my life, that part would certainly deteriorate into meaninglessness.
So now the challenge is to look at whatever I do with the knowledge that somehow just doing my best at whatever it is can really give it a life that it would never have had on its own. This website, for example, can only begin to transcend itself and become something more than just kilobytes on a hard drive when its author spends something of his heart on it, and uses some special love in the writing, a magic which belongs to his soul alone.
Perhaps this magic is a natural love of excellence itself. It can make any daily activity we undertake worthwhile and holy to us. Even if something seems to be meaningless at first, the act of doing our best at it can lift it into the realm of sacred work.
With that spirit, I ought to clean my apartment!
Photos • Yunnan • Way of Life • Writing • (45) Trackbacks • Permalink
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Bleeding Edge
Here it is, the bleeding edge new version of Brightwind (also accessible from China), hosted on a different server and powered by a different weblogging engine. Right now, it’s very raw (and pink, too), but I’m just so excited and I want to let you know that Brightwind is still alive and kicking, and before long it will be restored to all it’s blueness, with all or most of it’s current entries imported over to the new system. Sooner or later here, when you go to http://www.brightwind.org, you’ll go to those servers there, and not to this one. You’ll be able to see the difference. That system is the better one!
Stay with me here… I’ll be trying to get everything ready over the weekend, but I’m really not sure how much work will be involved. Already, I’ve found some parts of the migrating process confusing and strange, but we’ll see how things go.
In the mean time, I went and got myself a .Mac account, and I put up some new photos there. It’s really simple and temporary, but it works. Check it out by clicking here.
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