When I was talking with Eric. I started complaining about how much homework we have, and it’s no differences than the Chinese high school. So I asked, “Why does life have to be so painful and why can’t things be easy?” He said, “This is life.”
He told me that: From my experience of life, I can tell you this; there is always a decade of misery. But you can decide whether it comes in the first ten years in your life or the last ten years. If it comes in the first ten years that means you have to study hard and also work hard. And during those ten years, you must find the method of doing things correctly and easily. That can help you save a lot of work and time in the future. The ten years of misery may build you a bright and easy future. However, if it comes in the last ten years in your life it will be a completely different story. You can have all the fun in your life when you are still young. You don’t have to work hard or study hard. And the same, you won’t have a good job or good salary. But when you grow old, your ten years of misery will come. And when that comes, you won’t be able to find your happiness anymore, because you’ve already given it up at the moment you decided to have fun. He told me a story about it: There’s a woman guard in his wife’s company. The woman has a child. Little girl always does badly in study, one day, mother yelled at the girl for that. But the girl replied the mother, “You don’t have the right to criticize me! You are only a guard! You aren’t successful either.” The mother cried.
Although Eric said you could choose whether it comes first or last, but I think what he’s trying to tell me is that, it’s better to come first. That’ll make the life in the future much easier.
I guess it’s time to stop complaining about the misery I’m having now because I’m making my own life in the future easier. Well, second thought, ten years of misery, isn’t very much.
-Kathy Chen