Streams of Life (23)
I had quite a busy day yesterday. I spent the whole morning in doing alloy components research online and called companies for information whose websites looked
professional and promising. Then in the afternoon I met up at subway with my friend and led her to the shop for interview. I stayed in the shop from 2 to 6:30
pm, during which I helped them arrange the shop and being the interpreter between the shop owners and their accountant, shop builder and business clients.
I got cheered up when I did that. It was really a life experience. By working in
the shop, I have known a lot of things. They may not be very useful in the tangible future. But who knows? I always believe life itself will help find your experience and learned skills a place sooner or later. The shop owners have a taste
for stuff, and expertise in running it. Yesterday one of them bought a bunch of
really elegant flowers, trimmed them, put them in glass vase, and arranged the
vase inside the shop window with other homely items. It looked really English countryside style. I was impressed.
I worked on French a while after I got back. My friend seemed a bit strange. He
looked absent-minded and bothered. We have been talking about life these days. While we were on the trip the other day, he mentioned River Cottage and Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall, who had a holding and lived his self-sufficient life style
there with his family at Dorset, England.
My friend said that Hugh was once his favourite writer, and watching episodes of
River Cottage once gave him incomparable pleasure and enjoyment. He said that
having his own holding, raising livestock on it, building his own gardens, and bringing up his children on its open space were what he wanted for his life. He drew it on our white board, and I was greatly attracted and interested.
I told him that I was, am, and would always be the one who had no fancy for city
life. What impress and attract most people are not my option and expectation for my life. I like to have an open space, where I, and my future children, can develop well-roundly. And I like to be with him to build up and influence our own
environment, instead of letting it build up and influence us. And I believe it’
s not something that we have to wait and work on through all our life time.
He was troubled by the subject yesterday. But at the beginning when being asked
why he looked listless, he didn’t say anything. He got troubled because he had
watched part of the episodes while I was out, and didn’t get impressed at all.
Those things once fascinated him all of a sudden lost their influence on him. It
was as if he looked at them through a heavy fog. All became oblivious and remote. He didn’t know what went wrong with him.
Then we had a very long talk. I got bothered as a start because he asked me quite a few vague questions. It was until later that I understood that all the while
he was just trying to figure things out himself. He said he wanted to talk to me, but somewhat it was too vague to put into words explicitly at one time. I was
touched. I told him that there were varied factors that built up our state right now. That I was not happy had nothing to do with us being together. Oftentimes
it had something to do with myself. But in general I am glad to see we are improving by time, and I believe we will make progress that way continuously now after.
I was relieved when I saw him cheer up later in the night. We went out for a walk, and there on the street there were almost no people around. The sky started to clear up and the temperature, to our favour, became much less unpleasant. We talked a few things more on the quiet street, such as we need to arrange the appointment well for the mother and his 9 year old boy well, buying folders for our
research on components and student contacts, improving our website forum, and sort our food problem again. It was a good feeling. Life itself is a big project,
to do it well needs efforts, and communication if there are two people involved.
I am glad we are a good team in the pursuit.
