Three Questions

    Last week's field trip to BYU, UVU and the U really enriched my experience. Each university has their distinguishing features; they are unique, and fascinating. As an international student, these three top-ranking universities in Utah expanded my knowledge about university. My first impression was they have a great balance between academics and extracurricular activities. They weren't the university I visited before----either academic-focus school or party school. They provide a better campus life and therefore provide greater possibilities in the future. With this regard, I can draw up a clear plan for my life.

    There are three crucial questions to one's life, which are all relevant to the maxim engraved on the stele in the site of Delphi----Know yourself. I wouldn't necessarily relate them to the experience last week, because their answers are too essential to ascribe as the simple reflation from a short week, no matter how significant it is. They are life-long questions to contemplate.

1. Who am I?

If not pursuing for metaphysical answer, the answers could be variable. I can describe myself using all of my attributes----my name, my nationality, my personalities, my hobbies and even my achievements----but all these are impermanent and evanescent. They are changeable, and as they change, the identity that used to describe me lost its validity. I'm just me. This seems like a prevaricated answer, but this is the most precise and accurate answer language can express. The truth, many times, is plain and simple, exposes in the closest place every time, but people always intentionally ignore it. If I have to characterize myself, the only thing I can say is I constantly keep the awareness to obsession from egocentrism, which is the cause of all agony. We obsessed by many things, the things we used to own, the things we own and the things we haven't yet own. From money, power, to our identity, ideology. Both the shallowest and we so called "noblest" thing can obsess us. But there natural evanescence contradict to our will to possess it forever; when this contradiction occurs, we anguish.

I tried as best as I can to transcend this obsession, therefore I'm no one, I'm just myself.

2. What was I born for?

Unlike the majority, I didn't believe one has been predestinated a mission before he was born. Men are like orphans abandoned in the wilderness, perplexed panic, and terrified. The gravity of tracing origin constantly motivate us to ask the question of "where am I from" and "where would I go". Different people can have different answer by appeal to different approach. I asked this question and ended up fruitlessly, therefore I simply attributed to "I born to live". I understand people tend to endow deeper meaning to life to make the existence more valuable. I've seen an introduction of a documentary, it asked the same question----"What is the ultimate goal of your life? For only one in ten million people, that answer is, 'Enlightenment'." Despite my failure in seeking the meaning of life, my nature still strive me to obtain a satisfactory answer. If enlightenment is the approach, I will proceed without hesitation. So my answer to this question is, "to understand what was I born for".

3. What can stop me?

After written the ethereal things above, finally there is some tangible things to talk about. As a mortal human, I'm week and limited. I've been defeated by many things, even the slightest difficulty, and I'm certain that I will still be defeated times and times, but they never stop me to explore. Throughout all, the most difficult obstacle for me to handle is a restrained environment. I lived in a over-pressured, restrained and single-valued society in China. I felt meaningless to pursue what the majority called "mainstream". I felt tired that my behavior, my aspiration and my life have to be dictated by others and constrained by environment. Notwithstanding I'm not what so called "full of potentials", but I merely deserve my own happiness. Under that kind of environment, I felt I was withering gradually, transforming from a creature to a machine, and rusting from time to time. So I seek for change, I came to study abroad. As I visited the three Universities last week, I felt an intense feeling of this would be the life I expect, at least for some period. Because of this, I started to have a clear and specific image about my goal----to live naturally and unrestrainedly.