Mastering the Force Within: The Pursuit of Excellence

 

                                After twenty-seven years of living I can conclusively say that existence in this world was meant to be perilous for humans.  Today modern medicine, science, and higher standards of living have coalesced together to create many illusions regarding the ease of our existence.   These fallacies have led to an interesting phenomenon amongst modern humans.  Many modern humans dwell very little on the struggle which our ancestors certainly faced in their everyday lives for survival.  This struggle is what truly encapsulates the experience of all species on this planet.  It is a common bound which we all share together and something that we would be wise to never forget.

 

                               In many ways we should be grateful for our ancestors for helping lead humans to this point of modern living.  We often do not ruminate on all of the great people who helped get civilization to its modern point of development.  The dedication, sacrifice, and leadership of our ancestors all played instrumental roles in allowing humans to live such wonderful lives today.

 

                                I purposefully started off this blog post on an anthropologic note.  I think that many modern humans take for granted the great opportunities we have today to live happy, rewarding, and satisfying lives.  These types of ideals never would have entered into the minds of our distant ancestors as they sallied forth through the difficulties of existence.  The world was hard and harsh to them.  In contrast, we have a world of unquantifiable opportunities in front of us born from centuries of inventors, leaders, wars, developments, science, medicine, and disease.  We would do well for ourselves to take advantage of these things since we never know what fate tomorrow will bring us.    

 

                                In my own life, I am trying to take advantage of this evolutionary privilege and find the happiest life possible to lead.  Using my recent revelations, my new-found sense of self, and the vitality that only a person in their twenties can draw on I courageously pressed forward in the pursuit of my goals my first month in China.

 

                                In my life, I cannot think of a time that I was happier working as hard as I was than during my first month in China.  In one part, my sense of satisfaction stemmed from being able to finally accept myself for who I truly was.  Interestingly, I discovered that this new sense of personal liberty led to a Renaissance in my intellectual life.  Ironically, removing the shackles of my rationally polarized brain also brought back my sense of curiosity for the outside world.  Once my curiosity returned, I was shocked to realize that I had for so long looked upon the world as being a mundane and banal place.  My new outlook had the effect of making me feel excited for even the most routine things in life.

 

                                When I returned to China, I was surprised to see that some things had changed in the six months that I was away from Beibei and Chongqing.  The spirit of economic reforms which started in the eighties is still prevalent in central China where buildings come up almost as fast as the seasons change.

 

                                I picked up my studies of Chinese with the advanced class at Southwest University.  I was pretty excited and not too worried about the outcome of my first classes since I had not been working as assiduously on my Chinese in recent months.

 

                                Even though I wanted to allow myself to ease back in my "Chinesification" process I was still a little disappointed with my reading and writing when I first started studying in March.  At that time, I made it my mission to focus on reading and writing in Chinese.  My change in academic focus would force me to neglect my oral Chinese for the time being.  During my previous experiences in China, I worked tirelessly on perfecting my oral Chinese. 

 

                                In the past, my oral Chinese surprised many native Chinese speakers for its natural flow and for my standardized pronunciation of Mandarin.  I knew that this was my greatest skill; therefore, if I neglected it for a while it would not be lost in the long-run.  I was determined to improve upon my weaknesses, and in order to do that I was going to need to do more reading and writing.  The axioms, "Practice makes perfect" and, "If there is a will there is a way" both wrung through my ears while I was studying my first weeks in China.

 

                                At times, I truly did not think that I could continue working as hard as I was at learning Chinese.  Whenever that type of feeling entered my consciousness I made sure to take note of it.  I really believe that awareness is the first key towards fixing a problem.  At those times when the work became unbearable I allowed for myself to do other things.  In this way, I was learning to promote an all-around type of development instead of solely putting all of my time into reaching one main goal.