What is death? When I was young, I thought that after a person dies, they would be "reincarnated" to another place. This week, after reading "Reflections on Life Philosophy," I had new thoughts. Does a person come from a certain place, and is death just a way for people to return from this world? "Death is not a return to the sea, but a return to each one's source.
Today, I want to start this article with a little story: a mother tells her child that his father, who he has lost, has turned into a star in the sky, forever shining on them. This semester, we had an activity in our psychology class where everyone was randomly assigned a few cards with words written on them, such as "lost," "fulfilled," "happy." The teacher told us, "If these words represent your high school life, what would your feelings be?" She shared with us that one student drew the word "death." This word was treated as a joke in our class, whoever drew it was considered unlucky. But that student didn't see it that way; he believed that death symbolizes new life, that the old must go for the new to come. The psychology teacher said that when he shared his viewpoint, everyone fell silent.
Death doesn't necessarily mean the end; instead, it signifies a new beginning. If a dense forest doesn't experience a forest fire, the saplings underneath will never receive sunlight. "A thousand sails pass by the sunken ship, ten thousand trees bloom in front of the sick tree." Looking at it from a micro perspective, the fall of a star often brings sadness; but from a macro perspective, the night sky remains brilliant.
Speaking of failure, I want to share another story: in the first year of junior high school, our biology teacher asked us to grow bean sprouts during the National Day holiday and record the growth every day. When we returned from the holiday, only one student had prepared a PPT, but the biology teacher noticed that the images in the PPT were not taken by the student (they had watermarks). The student explained, "The growth of the bean sprouts was not ideal, so I found some pictures online to put in the PPT." The biology teacher told us, "Research is most averse to fabricating data; if the experiment fails, then you must summarize the reasons for the failure."
If an explorer has to choose between the left and right branches of a river, and he chooses the left branch, only to find a dead end ahead, can we say he has failed? I believe he wouldn't think of his choice as a mistake, nor would he feel any guilt or regret—he knows that every "wrong" is guiding him towards the "right."
As stated in the "Guide to Research-Based Learning in the First Year of High School"
We say "failure is the mother of success," without the preceding failures, there would be no 1001st success. Our Chinese teacher said, "Hardship is normal, happiness is precious." By analogy, failure is normal, success is precious. If we are not brave enough to face failure and give up at the first setback, then how will we ever embrace success?
At the opening ceremony of Tsinghua University, teacher representative Mei Ciqi's speech was not about success, but about failure. In his view, compared to success, failure allows us to see the boundaries of our abilities, the scenery beyond winning and losing, and a world beyond the individual.
Failure can bring us more possibilities, just as death brings meaning to life.
I once read a story in a Chinese textbook in elementary school: a father asked his son, who was good at math, to solve a problem about a train, how many people got off at the first station, how many got on, how many got off at the second station, how many got on... His son calculated diligently, but in the end, he asked an unexpected question—"How many stations did the train pass through?" The meaning of life is often not about winning or losing at each stop, but about the scenery on the road, the people and events along the way. When we measure a person's life, it's not about how much money they earn.
We discussed death in class, discussing how to extend human life. Besides using modern medicine to prolong life, we also have the breadth and depth of life. We should take the opportunity now to challenge ourselves to do things we have never done before, to discover things we never thought we could do. Let me end with the words of our Chinese teacher.
"If you do something seriously, you will encounter different scenery."