Boundless Scenery in the Sunset Glow; a World of Sorrow and Joy That Can Never Be Uniform

The rice at the foot of Yuquan Mountain in Beijing is ripe. Under the setting sun, the golden panicles glitter especially brightly. The autumn harvest is near; the weeds along the field ridges have been cleared, leaving the ridges exposed. Walking along them, breathing the distinctive fragrance of rice, every trace of homesickness is swept away.

The evening glow drapes a thin golden veil over the indigo distant hills. The autumn wind sets the rice waves rolling, and drifts through reed marshes and lotus ponds; the reeds rise and fall, and the ponds ripple. This scene is enough to wash away all the cares of the heart.

Someone who grew up in a southern countryside has special memories of the rice fields at harvest time; those memories have become part of his life. Every blade and tree in the sunset-lit paddy feels familiar. No matter how hard his work or how weary his heart, coming here and seeing the scenes of his childhood, he always grows happy.

If childhood memories can heal a person's inner life, it means he had a happy childhood. During his upbringing he was well protected by his parents and had a secure sense of safety, so childhood has always remained joyful to him. We must admit that the adult world has too many disappointments; so many things cause sorrow or worry, which is why childhood memories are so precious.

Adults are adults after all. Pains and sorrows that children cannot understand strike us from time to time. When we see dying patients, or see fellow countrymen who, for the sake of living, endure suffering and even humiliation, doing every kind of work that harms body and dignity, it is hard to remain unmoved.

I encounter both kinds almost every day. Sometimes I can help; sometimes I cannot—and when I cannot, a sense of powerlessness settles in. I hope everyone can be happy, and that there is no suffering in the world. But in fact, in places people cannot see, suffering is everywhere.

Fate is not fair. From the moment a person is born, there is no fairness. Our characteristics are first determined by our genes—more than 25,000 genes in the human genome, plus countless mutations. Which genes we inherit from our parents is entirely random. It is like drawing lots, or solving a math problem in permutations and combinations.

Some are born clever, optimistic and healthy; the lives of these lucky people are of course happy. But some come into the world carrying all kinds of defective genes. The hereditary genes they carry may make cancer, depression, schizophrenia, diabetes and other stubborn ailments inescapable; their lives are unfortunate.

The Creator makes up for this defect with love. Even Einstein said that love is the only salvation. When an unfortunate person is loved by another, his or her suffering is lightened, because the one who loves will care for them. But not everyone is lucky enough to be loved—love also depends on opportunity. So we often encounter patients abandoned by family and spouses, and isolated widows with children. In such moments I always want to warm them, but I often fall short.

I am a lucky person. From my parents I inherited good genes—positive, optimistic and easily satisfied. Although not gifted, I am diligent and love learning, so diligence makes up for dullness and I have achieved a little. My life has had its hard patches, but most of it has gone smoothly. And my luck has been good: I have always met wonderful people who helped me. My mentors, my partner and my friends have all treated me extremely well, which has made me happy both in study and in life.

By Professor Seligman's way of putting it, I am a person born with a strong sense of well-being. In his book Authentic Happiness, after studying a large number of cases, Seligman concluded that at least half of a person's happiness set point is innate, and that a person's level of happiness seems to be a constant, determined by his or her emotional baseline. A born optimist, even in late-stage cancer, still lives happily; a born pessimist, even with a healthy body and great wealth, remains melancholy.

Professor Seligman said that depressed people seem more accurate than happy people, because happy people tend to look away from their own difficulties, failures and setbacks, while depressed people see life's misfortunes more clearly. I can only half agree: at the very least, I am perfectly clear about the flaws in my own body; it is just that they do not bother me.

For as long as I can remember I have had tinnitus and hearing loss; my maternal grandmother and mother had it too, and so do my cousin's children—so it is certainly a hereditary condition. When I graduated from high school I was found to be a hepatitis B virus carrier, and I also have asthma. On my father's side there is a congenital prostate problem; my father's brothers and we brothers all have it. As a child I wet the bed until primary school, and urinary frequency has been a stubborn ailment I could not shake for decades.

I know all of this about myself, but it has never troubled me. I have coexisted harmoniously with these illnesses for decades, usually too lazy to treat them unless my life is seriously affected. By contrast, two classmates who were also found to carry hepatitis B during the college entrance physical eagerly pursued treatment and ruined their health with medication.

So optimistic people are not ignorant; they simply ignore the difficulties they cannot conquer. Accepting misfortune is one of the essential skills for a happy life. Before hardships that human power cannot change, lamentation and anger are useless; accept them and coexist with them, and their harm to us is minimized. Only by learning to stop loss and turning off the program of internal friction can one live happily in an unfortunate life. If happiness required perfection, no one in all history would ever have been happy.

I long for a world of great harmony where everyone can live happily. But such a hope cannot be realized; this sorrowful and joyful human world will probably never see a day of great harmony. There are always unfortunate people living in dire straits, and always greedy people who, having too much, still exploit the unfortunate. We have a duty to work to improve society and make it better. But before society becomes better, it is also necessary to improve our own capacity to perceive happiness, so as not to be tormented by misfortune. This is not some Ah-Q spirit; it is a real human need.

The profession I now practice has as its fundamental purpose the enhancement of human well-being—not only making bodies healthier, but also striving to make spirits happier. Relieving the body-mind suffering of others is a physician's bounden duty. If one day everyone in this world can appreciate this sunset scenery with a light heart and live joyfully, I shall be fully content.