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Dumpling Sister's Thoughts

 

2.4.2007  Belief       (Chinese Version)

 

These past few days I couldn’t bring myself to write, with the only reason being depressed by the depressing things that are happening; I didn’t want to carry a depressing tone.

 

I heard that a friend of mine who was planning to graduate from his PHD degree has to have a change in plan. The reason being his research result didn’t live up to the expectation. This is his 7th year in the study, and the 10th year that he has left his country. He has not being able to attend any happy event of his event, and of course he couldn’t make it to any of the funerals as well. Looked around and it seems that people of his age, or even younger, has had families or a career. They could afford a house or a car. His story reminds me of the students in the ancient China where they were encouraged to study and score well in hope to exchange for an official position. Only this could bring their family fortune and fame. In the present time people want to earn fame in the field that they excel at. Different people same reasons. I couldn’t think more as I couldn’t bare that stress on my shoulder.

 

True, my friend didn’t know to adapt. He should have just gotten a masters degree and get out, so there is nothing much to say about him.

 

Looked at the news online, there is a Taiwanese actress aged 28 who just died on January 28th of this year due to a major car accident. There was a lot of number association to her death. She died on the same day that another Taiwanese female singer who also passed on the same date due to a car accident. At the time of the accident, she had a book and was flipped to page 128, where it talked about a death game. According to the numbers, in 1987 this female singer died, and in 2007 this female actress died, but the news article left on that two people who also died in 1997, Princess Di and this once very popular singer in Taiwan, Zhang Yu Sheng, who were all died from car accidents. I remember reading the articles and had tears in my eyes when he was still in the critical condition.

 

So soon, so soon that a decade has passed away, yet the same story is still happening every where, right among us.

 

Today I heard from NPR, the national public radio, that because Democrats are in power, it is revealed that many scientists that are employed by the government were forced to make up false claim that there was no such thing as global warming and that everything was still ok. I listened and thought about it as I drove, I wondered if the people who work for the oil companies would have more stress and conscience to bare. We all know that oil companies provide excellent pay and benefits. How to say about this?

 

Yes, there are some things that are not as depressing, so when they came, they provide some warmth and some encouragement to those who hear it.

 

A few days ago I received two emails on Bhutan. It is a small country by Himalaya. The weather is harsh and the soil is poor. The produce they get are just small and not firm. However, 97 percent of the population said that they are happy. They gave up digging the minerals in the deep mountains in exchange to preserve the wild life in the forests. The government’s budget does not include military expenses. They do however emphasize on education and health care for all its citizens. There it would be difficult to find orphans and broken schools, which are phenomena that are often seen in the developing countries. This is all possible because of their formal king who decided to emphasize on gross national happiness, GNP, instead of GDP, gross domestic product. He has received his education in the west and there he had seen too much of what was infecting the countries due to the belief of striving for economic success. It is at every corner that crimes are happening, people are losing their jobs, wars are being engaged, and pollutions are being done.

 

At the end, we all hope for a better place and a better sweet voice that would say to us that everything would be fine, isn’t it?
Is it?

 

There are a lot of places that are vanishing due to man-make reasons. The moon-shaped lake by the silk road is drying up, Venice in Italy may get flood upon, Switzerland may lose its glacier, and purple butterflies of Taiwan and the coral reefs of Australia may extinct. I so wish that I could one step on the silk road, go through the path that thousands have gone through, to experience the journey and reflect the change of life.
 

I remember a few months ago I was watching these Japanese dramas. In the show the main character said it with a firm voice that it was because of beliefs . Because of beliefs she may lost her job, or get blamed on, and have to encourage those who had less faith.

 

It is, because of faith, faith it is.

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