Home Is the Warmest Place in the World

Last night at home I slept the soundliest sleep I have had in over a hundred days. My wife felt the same; since I left home to study out of town, her sleep quality has declined markedly. She often wakes in the middle of the night and tosses and turns, unable to fall back asleep. It is no different for me at school—to say nothing of homesickness, the handful of youngsters in my dorm, addicted to gaming and often playing all night long, are enough to drive anyone to distraction.

This morning after getting up, I walked my wife to her workplace. Her office is close to our home, and as usual we walked. This was a habit my wife and I had kept without a break for more than twenty years: since marrying, I have always walked her to work each day, chatting idly about everything along the way. This habit was interrupted this year; on this walk to work again, our chatting was not as easy as it used to be.

I am a deeply home-loving person. In the past, wherever my mother was, that was home; now, wherever my child and his mother are, that is home. I hate being away from home for long; ideally I would never leave a step. But now I must temporarily set aside family affection for a while, finish my studies, and obtain the stepping-stone—the Western medical clinical practitioner license—so that in future I may lawfully practice both Chinese and Western medicine.

After one semester at school, I abandoned the back half of my study plan, cutting my planned full-time study in half, from six years to three. I saw no need to sacrifice family life for another degree, say in Chinese medicine or acupuncture.

There are two reasons. First, having seen school-based education up close, I feel it wastes too much time for too little value. Academic education is necessary, but it need not last so long, especially for someone my age. Many courses at school are pure wastes of life—a truth I believe faculty and students alike understand tacitly, though no one feels free to say it. Second, now that I have opened this door, I can tap the rich learning resources of the internet and, at the National Library near my home, complete the rest of my study more efficiently through self-directed learning.

So after these three years of full-time study, I will end my schooling and return to my family. Being away for too long is an ordeal for both my wife and me. Life is short and a good spouse hard to find; for adults, nothing is more precious than a partner’s companionship. Idealism must be tempered by reality if dreams and daily life are both to be honored.

Still, during my time at school I want to make the most of these three years—not only to study well myself, but also to help several young students of fine character and earnest ambition grow better and realize their life goals. With an elder-classmate like me leading the way, their path may run more smoothly.

I will also try to leave them room and not compete for resources. For a middle-aged man like me, comfortably provided for, to vie with young people of modest means who are striving to change their fate over scholarships and various honors would be undignified. I need to maintain a decent grade point average so that, when choosing internships, I have priority in picking a hospital close to home. Apart from securing this one privilege for myself, I will keep a low profile at school.

I am something of a Taoist at heart; I strongly identify with Laozi’s saying in the Daodejing that “the Way of Heaven reduces the surplus to replenish the deficient, whereas the way of humanity reduces the deficient to add to the surplus,” and with his principle of “benefiting without harming, acting without contending.” I will strive to balance my own needs against the interests of others.

We should always believe that the vast majority of people in this world are kind, because that is the truth. In my life, the truly evil people I have met can be counted on one hand, while the kind people who helped me are beyond counting. Most people act on the principle of treating others well.

Returning to school this time, I have been well cared for. The course teachers gave me great freedom to arrange class time as I wished, even allowing me to skip the classroom. I chose not to take that privilege, feeling it might affect classmates and set a bad tone. My counselor, within her authority, also accommodated my family needs to the greatest extent; she never once turned down my leave requests, and even accepted a stack of leave slips at once with a smile rather than making me ask one by one. Without the teachers’ kindness, these school days would have been far harder.

Of course, I myself have done nothing excessive; I never make trouble for them, and when I can help solve a problem, I never stand by. Having reached my forties, one must understand that to earn others’ respect, one must first respect them.