Streams of Life (18)
My sister came to visit me from Suzhou unexpectedly. On MSN she agreed to bring
me some glutinous rice dumplings, which she took from her trip to home during the May Day Festival. Also, she said someone would invite us to seafood restaurant. Half jokingly, I asked tentatively if she wanted to meet my friend and took for granted that she would agree. But she didn’t agree to my disappointment.
In a book I have read lately, one cynical character in it, upon his dying, stated as follows: That’s nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see others die.
That’s the sensation of life—the sense that we remain. Could anything be more
strikingly true than this? Death, as a dispensable part of our life, was covered
with a hue of tragic and allegory. It glooms afar and bides for its due time at
anyone’s course of life.
One may forget transiently for a while, but no matter when it is brought up, one
could never fail to stop to muse upon it: Death is awe-some. This is at least what I thought when I read those lines given by the above-mentioned man. It was cynical, but oddly full of wisdom, which at large illuminated upon most dying men
. Death is a gate traversing from one world to another. When the gate is about to open, for people who is going to pass it or whoever happen to pass by, it is a
time to come to stay with the inner meditation. It is odd, but real, a time to
feel what’s important and what’s not.
It was such a moment when my sister came to visit me. In the botanical garden that I led her to, I grew even more conscious of its existence. It’s true that seeing someone die made us feel the impermanence and fragility of life and made us
value more the life we are holding onto; but sometimes the opposite results the
same consequence: to see the boundless verdant greens and the numerous parti-colored artless flowers blooming under the beams of sunlight make you feel that how wonderful the life is, and even the simplest thing as breathing in and out becomes a miracle in your eyes. You feel that you are never alive as the very moment, and all sense of your body are open to the vast life-striking greens. Life never becomes so grand and marvelous.
At such a moment I realized that how equally important my family and my friend meant to me. Though before that I thought in a way your partner mattered more to
one, given it’s he/she remaining there to share your happiness and sadness, to
give you a push when you struggle, and to strive you forward when you feel lost. But now I am willing to change it: your partner becomes your family once he/
she walks into the gate you reserve for him/her. They are inseparable and both give significance in the vista of your life.
And basically that’s how come I was bitterly disappointed when my sister turned
down my suggestion. Because I couldn’t leave one for the other, how I wish they could walk together and walk hand in hand with me when my life drives on. I couldn’t give up either so as to please the other. I told my friend the other day
in a seemingly casual manner how sometimes I wished he was not a foreigner. It
would have made many things much easier.
Or maybe he thought the same. I could never imagine before that some day the conflict between western and eastern culture would be so striking as to influence my personal life. And for this I felt somewhat guilty toward my friend. Because of his family being so understanding and open, whereas my family oddly reserving
by contrast, I imagine someday I might have to face the problem squarely and might have to give one my preference to the other. I don’t want to see it happen.
Or maybe, matter-of-factly, that’s life: in it you can never go both ways without failure?
