Always, amidst my locked up memories
I listen to whispers that I don’t want to forget

Even the faces of a mirror shattered into pieces
Reflect glimpses of new life

Window of beginning stillness, new light of the dawn
Let my silent empty body be filled and reborn

No need to search outside, nor sail across the sea
Because here shining inside me, right here inside me

What is shining is Always With Me

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Digged out from my blog an essay that I wrote years ago for college application. Many things have changed in me since. But a few did not. What is innate in you will always be with you.

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Years ago, when I was still a junior high school student in China, I used to cycle to school each morning on a rusty bike that squeaked at every halt. Sweating across half the city while enjoying or enduring whatever weather had to offer, I never found cycling much of an enjoyment, especially when I was forever straining my head to look through the clogged traffic ahead. Buses rumbled past. And I just caught up with them at every next bus stop, forever inhaling the choking exhaust they left behind.

The way back home ran into many uphills. In the evening when I finished playing soccer and felt like collapsing to the ground, the eight kilometers’ distance to home offered just another test of my stamina. With me plodding at bovine speed, buses rumbled past still, only this time I never caught up with them again. In winter, clad in icy sweat I fell prey to chronic coughing. On rainy days, vehicles ran over the craters all over the road, never failing to drench me in full splashes.

At times, I was just too tired to grudge about others’ carelessness. At times, I was just used to all such ill luck.

When spring came, small insects from nowhere invaded the city without herald. The street was ferment with their riot. A few always bumped into your eyes when you were moving on street. Fluttering open my eyes while tears welled up in my lachrymal, I could hardly keep myself from veering off onto the pedestrian’s pass. And when autumn came, the fluffy seeds just created the same problem as they parachuted down from the parasol trees. In summer, asphalt melted and stuck to your feet while in winter, the city could be as humid as it was cold.

Yet somehow, this monotonous activity of riding has been my fondest memory of the past. There were no breathtaking sights along the way, neither were there historic scenes. Yet, there were just so much more to see, so much to feel for oneself: the different people that came across your way, the little insects that drew a line of intersection with your existence. Even the morning breeze that caressed you contained something more than sheer chance.

And I learnt to appreciate such a simple yet mundane life. The way to school and back home is the only distance for which I could enjoy my solitary being, freed from the stifling curriculum; the only distance for which I could truly be at my will, riding at my ease, while no one was there to judge, or to pressurize. If I were to have anything really to lament about, it would be the people, and the breeze I have so often forgotten to appreciate in my rush to destination.

And I have often missed the time when I was still younger and my father used to ride alongside me late at night, speeding with me through the empty lanes and giggling like an infant. I lost to him every time when we tried to see who can glide further. He would then explain to me how his greater inertia helped him win.

Till this day, I always found gratification from this patch of memory. As I travelled further and for longer away from home, and experienced both ups and downs in my life, I knew how the world could be wonderful if I take another perspective. And when I thought what elements I was made of, it was certainly not the accomplishments and achievements of any kind. It was rather the way I perceive the world. The ability to play piano doesn’t define one; it’s the sort of music one appreciates that defines the person. And I always remember a few words from Saint-Exupery, “One must have ruined oneself for generations keeping a crumbling chateau in repair before one learns to love it.” That is how I learn to love my simple life.

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