After the Storm, Return to Calm; After Calm, Ride the Breaker Again

Life is like the ebb and flow of the tide, always spent amid rises and falls. After great winds and waves, the heart returns to calm. Having gathered one's composure in calm, one must still set out again and step back onto the breaker, not wasting the time of this life.

One must grow in the storms and learn calm in the storms; the storms of life are our best teachers. Having survived death a hundred times in the waves, when one sets out again one will be expert, treading the raging billows as if on level ground.

Confucius said that at forty one is free of perplexity, and Sakyamuni too attained awakening and Buddhahood in middle age. Only when a person reaches middle age does he understand the various flavors of life. The sweet and bitter that should be tasted have all been tasted; the bumps that should be experienced have all been experienced; only then can the nature settle. An active, striving body comes into this world; to waste its time is most regrettable. Talking of social responsibility is making too grand a thing of it, but at the very least one should not waste one's own talent.

So after a spell of storms and the calm that follows, one should still step back onto the breaker. In life's striving, most people inevitably end up like the old man in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: each time he puts out to sea full of hope and catches a great fish, each time, dragging it back, it is snatched by a pack of sharks, and in the end all he brings home is a skeleton. This may be the truest portrait of the great majority of people's lives: countless efforts all flow away east. After failure, lick the wounds, gather strength again, and strive once more.

Mr. Ji Xianlin wrote an essay in his later years whose gist was that, looking back on his life, he felt he had done of little significance. In his youth the gentleman had lofty ideals, harboring the ambition to save the age and bring peace to the people; in old age he found the world did not go as he wished, and so-called saving the age and calming the people was purely a fond dream of his, hence this sigh. But the gentleman's modesty cannot hide his lifelong achievements in the cultural realm.

The humanities renew daily, and the progress of social civilization is always slow, yet the efforts of generation after generation of intellectuals have not been entirely in vain. Each person leaves something in this world, like planting various seeds; these seeds will always gradually sprout and grow into trees, and the day the many trees become a great forest is to be hoped for. Only, success need not reside with me; doing one's utmost and serving as a stepping stone for later generations is also good.

The greatest function of the storms is to teach us to ride the tide in the storms. After a person has experienced storms, the ideal state is "still as a virgin, swift as a fleeing rabbit": when calm, not a word is spoken, only cold observation; when action is required, one is as quick as a fleeing rabbit, striking true with one blow. If one cannot harvest these things in the storms, the storms have been endured in vain.

For any failure, do not blame others; rather turn inward and reflect, seeking one's own shortcomings, and before setting out again, patch oneself up. Those who blame heaven and others will never escape the bitter fate of a complaining woman in a lifetime. Walk forward with the attitude of "contending with no world, bearing no grudge against others," and the obstacles will be fewest and the road one can travel the farthest.

All striving is not for the sake of performing it for others; in the final analysis, the true meaning of striving lies in only three words: I love it!