timxu

A couple of months ago, I read a book called “Letters to my Son” by Kent Nerburn. I pulled a group of quotes from the book that especially hit me deep inside, which I rediscovered when I was searching for something else in Gmail. Here they are, with some thoughts attached to some of them.

“Strength based in force is a strength people fear. Strength based in love is a strength people crave.” — Strength based on love is stronger than any force possible. Though I wonder: how does one know that his strength is based in love rather than force? Is it the strength of a parent while his child is sick? Is it the strength of a man or woman who sacrifices everything for his family?

“Measure your greatness by the length of your reach, but also by the gentleness of your touch. For now, the world needs hands that love, not hands that conquer. Let your hands be among them.” — This sounds like something Barack Obama would say.

“Care for those around you. Look past differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made.” — I believe very strongly in this statement, although I may not always live by it. However, recognizing and embracing differences in opinion, differences in character in everyone is something worth striving for.

“Find the few pieces of your life that help you live. Value them for the way they help you give. Never forget that if you just accumulate possessions as the logical outcome of pursuing your desires, you will lose your wings to fly.”

“Remember that you can’t choose love. Love chooses you. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach out and give it away. Give it back to the person who brought it alive in you. Give it to others who seem poor in spirit. Give it to the world around you in any way you can.” — Perhaps my favorite quote of all of these. There is so much depth in this one quote. The ideas: that love cannot be forced, that once you have it, you ought to share it.

“Money is nothing more than a commodity, an agreed-upon abstraction of exchange. It is the spirit of that exchange that animates money and gives it meaning. Great givers, rich and poor, use money to close doors between us all. Be a giver and a sharer. In some unexpected and unforeseeable fashion, all else will take care of itself.”

“The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.” — Truer words have never been said. I love to teach, and this is why.

“We have the power to create joy and happiness by our simplest acts of caring and compassion. We have the power to unlock the goodness in other people’s hearts by sharing the goodness in ours.” — Unfortunately, Former-President Bush did not get this message. Although it wouldn’t have worked, it certainly would have been better than his idea.

“The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become longtime friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other’s laughs, passions, sadnesses, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. This is ideal but not often possible. You need to look beyond your sexual attraction for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other’s company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and healthy, then you will have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.”

“Choose a vocation, not a job, and you will be at peace. Take a job instead of finding a vocation, and you’ll be waiting for retirement. We all owe ourselves better than that.”

“Though there are many good reasons to fight, there are no good fights. Someone always gets harmed, and when one person is harmed we are all diminished. Rise above your passions and fears and you will be able to avoid most fights.” — I’m not sure my predilection for avoiding conflict is based on such poetic terms, but it’s a good sentiment.

“Death should hold no terror, and we should embrace our dying as a momentary passage into the great harmony of eternity.”

Male or female, all of you should definitely look into reading this book. It’s got so many nuggets of great wisdom about growing up and being a truly good person.

Well, I think I’m pretty much settled into this new semester. It’s definitely pleasant to have this happen three weeks into the semester. I’m quite busy, with five classes and a lab, along with a plethora of organizations and clubs and the job, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I still have time to be (somewhat) social, to get my work done, and to relax and watch a bit of TV when I need to take a break.

I’m quite happy with life at this point. I’m rarely bored, and there’s a good mix of fun and work. Of course, stress happens occasionally, but what’s life without excitement?

In other news, happy birthday to Daniel and Tasia! I hope you guys enjoyed the party (and the gigantic card) last night. It was certainly fun to plan. Also, my Obama HOPE poster came in! It’s quite the backdrop to my workspace. If I ever need inspiration while banging out the last hundred words of a paper, I just have to look up!

And yes, I am working on a paper as I write this post. I’m just taking a break! Seriously!

Today commemorates the completion of the first eighteen years of my life, the first eighteen years after leaving the safety of my mother’s womb. Yet it also marks the beginning of the nineteenth year, and, by our culture’s seemingly arbitrary placement, the beginning of my adult life. Today marks my entry into the hallowed ranks of the grown, of the experienced, of the adult. It also means that my childhood is now, by all means, over. The innocent happiness, the ignorant bliss, the thoughtless giddiness is, by definition, gone, relegated to random moments of synaptic motion, to memory. And so, on the verge of this brave new world that awaits me, I look back, look back at the life I’ve led, the childhood of eighteen years that has, for what it’s worth, made me who I am. This is the story of my life.

I don’t remember much of my earliest years – everything I know has been told to me through stories. I was born in Xi’an, China, the eldest child of a young Chinese couple. My father was a graduate student in Northwestern University in Xi’an, my mother a manager in a local chemical plant. It was at this point that the first major incident happened: my parents left me. At the young, impressionable age of two, my parents obtained Student Visas and left for America. I, thanks to the wiles of the U.S. Immigration agent behind the counter, was not granted a Visa. And so, for nearly two years, I was separated from my parents by an ocean.

In hindsight, I realize that this separation was far more than just physical. I was deprived of the two people who have, for the other sixteen years, given me everything. Even if it was just less than two years, I think that deprivation has made the greatest impression on who I am. I’ve always felt a certain shyness with my parents. I don’t share with them my personal life, my social life, as much I should. I often feel awkward talking about life with them. They give me advice, and I take it and try my hardest to use it, but there’s always a certain disconnect, a certain emotional distance whenever we have the deep, life conversations.

My parents would often tell me a story about when I was two-and-a-half years old. They called me, and my grandmother, who was taking care of me at the time, picked up the phone. A few minutes later, my parents asked for me – they wanted to talk to their little boy. So my grandmother called me over to talk with them. I said no. Why would I want to talk to my stupid parents after they left me all by myself in China and were living the good life in America?

But a year later, I was here. My parents, who collectively had $180 in cash to start their new life, had more or less established themselves, and so I arrived into a relatively stable environment. According to them, one of the first things that I asked them, one of the first words I said to my parents after eighteen months of silence, was, “Dad? Where’s our car?” The car, it turns out, was in the parking lot of Detroit International Airport, outside the city I would spend the next five years of my life.

The apartment was called Deroy, 5200 Anthony Wayne Drive, a highrise on the campus of Wayne State University, where my parents were doing their graduate work. I went to nursery school, where I learned my first English word, “elephant.” My first, and nearly only, friends for these early years were two girls, daughters of my parent’s friends. We didn’t exact get off on the right foot. They were two peas in a pod, and I was the new kid who barely spoke English. I remember complaining to one of the their mothers that they were speaking English again, and I couldn’t understand.

Elementary school started too soon. I cried on the first day, I threw up my first lunch, and my father secretly came by the school four times to make sure I was okay (I wasn’t). But I learned, and I learned quickly. My English problem was soon not a problem at all. I memorized how to spell the most words in my kindergarten class. Mrs. Cameron held this game every year where each student had a ring of index cards with words he learned to spell, and the winner had the most cards by the end of the year. In first grade, the evil lady in the front of the room, whose name I cannot remember, gave us daily grammar problems. I graduated ESL in record time, and even passed into the advanced reading class. Like any young immigrant, English came quickly and easily.

And at the same time, I grew closer to the two girls, as close as three young children can get. My mind is filled with random memories – images that, for some inexplicable reason, stick out to me today. I remember the Lego pirate set we put together; I remember watching cartoons and playing house – I was always the father and the son (at the same time) – while our parents laughed and played cards in the living room; I remember playing with barbie dolls; I remember the rabbit we picked up from the park and the time I swung a golf club and hit one of the girls in the neck; I remember the Sega Genesis; I remember the Easter egg hunts and the birthday parties and the Christmases; I remember the playground outside of Deroy and the Chinese school and the brand new library down the stone path; I remember the myriad of toys in the basement of our godmother’s house; I remember Amber, another family friend’s cat; I remember the garage sales and church sales; I remember orchard-picking and the accident on the way back, where I cried as our brand new car lay smoking on the side of the highway; I remember trips to California and Florida and Northern Michigan, where the stars littered the sky, innumerable and starkly beautiful. These were memories I cherished, memories that defined my childhood.

I feel like this segment of my life, until I was eight, tempered me. Being with these two girls molded me, softened who I could have been. I was young, innocent, and curious – ultimately unknowing. There was no awkwardness to taking baths with them, to sleeping in the same bed with them. We were little kids who knew nothing of cooties and the pubescent awkwardness that would eventually have its day.

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