Category: Shouts

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

–Bergson

The absolute regularity of the day, that it has twenty-four hours, that Tuesday comes after Monday, has its comfort in it. It soothes the mind to know night would come then again the sun. Yet occasionally weariness would attack–for it’s not a machine–the mind, may be on account of the sameness, may be a sign of rebelling against its dullness. Or may be, we, at one time or another, all have the acute feeling of alienation between the world and the self: that it’s spring day and we are happy; but the sun might shine brilliantly the day beautiful, and we could be as sad as a lost dog. Aren’t we all, at a time of depression or dejection, a little surprised to find the day goes as usual, one after another, takes absolute no regard of our downcastness? We seem to be dragged along by the hour, it passes by, without our living it. We open the curtain, a little amazed, to find a bright day outside. It takes no account of the darkness within us.

But I am becoming too wordy. Thousands of years ago, Laozi who must have looked at the earth and the sky, the sun and the trees for a considerable time: he did not become romantic or sentimental over “the beauty of nature” nor did he make up a story of God who created all these things. Instead, he soberly observed: 天地不仁，以万物为刍狗. Literally–for there are still disputes over its real meaning–it could be translated into: sky and earth (the world) (have) no kindness (feelings, morality), it regards everything as straw-stuffed-dog (used for sacrifice in ancient time).

As there is no real love without clear-sightedness, maybe there is no real living without facing it squarely that there might be no meaning, that there is the endless–not endless for we will die–dully repetition of days and years.

The paradox here is it is the very fact that we will die, that there is a limited number of days, it is mortality, gives each day under the sun its preciousness.

“O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhausts the limits of the possible.” The book says to me.

活huó, to live, interestingly, means the sound of flowing water: how the Chinese interprets a simple thing! The pronunciation also sounds like water flowing.

创造 chuàng zào, to create, 创 with the knife radical (立刀旁)刂 on the right side, originally means a wound, a knife cut. It developed, very early on, the meaning: start doing something, do something for the first time. 造 with the walking radical （走之地）辶 on the outside, originally means a man suddenly stands up.

So the heart beats and never stops until it dies, the water flows constantly day and night, and this is to live, it is to change, and the man suddenly starts up, it is to do, to create. To create, persistently, in the mid of everyday dullness, to create, bravely, with the clear-sightedness that there might be no meaning. Or the meaning is in the doing.

Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.

–Chekhov

New York, one has to say, is full of gorgeous women. And living in a place as such, seeing them every day on the street striding forward with such confidence and assurance, one aspires to be like them, one aspires to be one of them.

Yet, even a gorgeous woman, I dare say, when looking in the mirror—a common act in our daily life—must have moments of thinking themselves not so gorgeous.

And it must be tiring to be forever gorgeous, for both the onlookers and the gorgeous one. Because, few humans, if they were beautiful, could be unconscious of their beauty. That’s why, for instance, a bird in the air, on a tree branch chirping so admiringly to the morning sun is a sort of beauty with a simpler tone—our praise could not please them nor our criticism disturb them. They are unconscious of their beauty, for them singing in the sun in their red feather—there are quite a few cardinals now in the park as spring comes—are just their being.

But back to the mirror, what feelings what emotions at once rise when we look at ourselves in the mirror? Indeed, there are moments we are startled by the person that appears in it: that’s me? One is not well-acquainted with oneself, a strangeness would occur, how did it happen? From infanthood till now the grown-person in the mirror, what has life imprinted on it? How many joys and sorrows, happiness and disappointments has she gathered up on the way?

Looking in the mirror, at times, we are pleased, one is to learn that if one appears good-looking or not often is a matter of the difference between one sort of light and another, “oh, certainly I am not bad-looking.” One thinks to oneself. At other times, we are appalled, “oh my! I do not know I could look so terrible, maybe even my own mother wouldn’t approve of me.” One turns away from the mirror.

“Mirror” the English word is based on Latin mirare ‘look at’, as we also call it “looking glass”.

In Chinese the word for mirror “镜 jìng” also means “lens 望远镜, 镜头, glasses 眼镜”.

I look at the origin of this character, the left part is the metal radical ‘钅’ which could be explained as mirrors were polished bronze in the beginning.

Another explanation in the dictionary says that 镜 means ‘scenery’ and scenery means ‘the light of the sun’, the gold (the metal) is shining and has light in it so it could light up other objects and be used as 镜.

How curious it is that “mirror” in English derives from ‘look at’ and in Chinese from ‘the light of the sun’!

And how curious it is too that 镜 shares a similar pronunciation as 睛 (eye)!

So we are alive—what a miracle—so we are still in the light of the sun. And we look in the mirror. Does she get your approval? Do you, as occasionally the sidewalks of New York would tell you in chalk written letters, “love yourself”?

Do you really when you are looking at yourself in the mirror? Not only when the light is right and you are pleased, but also at these inevitable terrible moments?