Once there is a bird. She lives together with her parents. Her parents shield her from all the possible hurts and frustrations. As a result, she can always fly as high as she likes in the small cage that her parents have established to protect her. She takes it by mistake that she is as excellent as her parents think of her, as she doesn’t notice how small the cage she is flying in.
A few months ago, she made a decision to fly away from the nest to see what’s like in the outside world. At first, everything was fresh to her. She couldn’t help thinking she could fly even higher than before. However, there came storms and heavy rain. She could hardly keep balance any more. Her young and tender wings were too weak to support her. She was left far behind of those veteran birds that had survived all the bad weather in their lives. Eventually she came to realize that she was actually a little bit clumsy, and should have started flying earlier. I’m not telling you a fairy tale, because I’m exactly this poor bird. Looking back the half year of my stay in Sydney, it was full of confusions and depression.
At first, I could hardly figure out why I could not even do such an easy part-time job very well, so was my first essay. I clearly remember that at that moment, I looked at the computer screen for nearly half an hour, and couldn’t write even a single word. I was almost in despair, even wanted to weep when walking in the street, as I had never thought I was so slow and incapable. This sudden beat made me clear-headed than ever. I began to admit that I was very incompetent, originated from lack of practice in the early life.
As I believe, it’s actually sort of a release to admit that you are not good, at least, much better than having blind confidence in yourself or trying to deceive yourself this way. However, it may also mean the start of trouble, because discovery of a problem doesn’t necessarily mean you are able to solve it as soon as you like. It often takes time and effort to improve. Sometimes, I do feel hard and want to give up trying, or begin to doubt whether I am too slow and stupid to solve the problem.
Last semester, I told Linda, one of my best friends here, that I could hardly bear the very fact that I got lower score than many of my Chinese classmates, although I seemed to have worked so harder. She just smiled and showed me an example.
Once in her middle school; there were some students from the rural area. They knew it’s difficult for their parents to send them to school, so they worked much harder than those in the city. These students were good at subjects in Science; however, they might not perform very well in some of the subjects, calling for a wide range of reading in arts, such as Chinese, etc. They were disadvantageous, not because they didn’t work hard in arts, but their accumulated knowledge in early life was insufficient. They were not in the exposure of new things and ideas as many and timely as those kids in the city. Living in a remote area with few books to read, and few things to experience, their vision and knowledge scope were thus limited to a certain way, which had hindered their performances in these subjects.
I was silent then, as I knew what she was talking about. Compared with most of my classmates, who used to work in these metropolises for many years and had achieved greatly, it’s really hard for me, a newly university graduate from a relative small city with almost no working experience to catch up with them in such a short term.
Life is actually a dynamic process with many different stages, like sort of flight. Yours great efforts in the middle of the entire process may not be enough to bring you in front, because you might have been left behind for a certain distance in the early stages. Likewise, being in front at the early stage doesn’t necessarily mean you can remain it later, as what really speaks is the final victory.
Actually, being left behind is nothing to feel too ashamed of or worried about, because everybody has their own track of life. Some of them know how to start flying earlier than you, but you also get the chance to catch them up, or even leave them behind later, as long as you keep on flying a little bit faster to shorten the gap gradually, one step by the other.
It calls for great endeavors of course. As a matter of fact, I used to often say to myself that “Everything is possible so long as you work hard”, but as I’ve mentioned above, I simply suspected it because of my bad performances in part-time job and study despite my great efforts. Therefore, there is actually something more between the possible and impossible, and I get to know it’s all about determination, a firm belief that someday it will come your day, however long and torturing the process goes.
Life is a continuous flight, and for those clumsy birds, they “have to start flying earlier”. I was so convinced that my second diary in Sydney was entitled this way. I simply warn myself to be committed to incompetence, and then really try hard to make compensation by “starting flying a little bit earlier” in every assignments at hand.
A few days ago, I also came across a story in the popular Chinese magazine ‘Reader’. A top student in the best University of China revealed in his speech that all his success came from the enlightenment of her mum. He worked extremely hard from primary school, but never could he rank the top in his class, though he was always shortening the distance from the top. He felt very unhappy, and asked his mum why it happened. Then the wise lady brought him to travel to the sea. She pointed at the birds in the beach and said to him, “Look, the little sprawls could always started fly earlier than the seagulls, and it’s also easier for them to do so, nevertheless, only the slow seagulls can eventually fly across the huge ocean.”
It best explains that making continuous progress is the key to bring you to the final victory of the flight, what do you think then?
(Joan 2004-09-12 in Sydney)
