Dear potato

Dear little potato,
I dream of you nearly every night.
When I walk by the vegetable counter in a supermarket,
I cannot keep myself from gazing at your moon-surface-like face.
You keep such a low-key style that you never show off.
However you are shiny in my eye and your beauty will never fade away.
Though I'm going to cut you up right now,
You will always stay in my heart.

with an orchid

When I first heard the song “with an orchid,” I was busy preparing for SAT and the enormous vocabulary requirement really drove me mad. Facing Barron Critical Reading and Core Vocabulary 3500 all the time, spending every night in a single room in a library, being frustrated by the score after finishing every practice test, I was really bored and thought life plain. I started to lose the idea why initially I decided to prepare for SAT. People that kind of situation fickleness. I could hardly find a reason to keep fighting.

That was a summer night when I finished a day’s assignment and started to randomly listening to programs on iTunes. I came across the song “with an orchid.” The beginning of the song was like a storyteller slowly saying “A long time ago…” in a quiet background. It was also like the narrow and shadow origin of a stream. I expected the stream would gradually follow wider, but there seemed to be an unexpectable steep cliff—the melody flew suddenly and naturally into a vast plain area, and then it deepened and deepened, sometimes jumped like a naughty child. The night was silent and there was wind. I was guided into a wonderland following the melody.

Just like a cool breeze in the hot summer, or a clear stream going through a desert, the song reminded me of the beauty of life and my dream to explore the outside world. The later part of the song which was magnificent influenced me to look further, beyond the practice themselves to pay more attention on the beauty of the language and the beauty of the writing skills. In that way, the song changed me.

comfort zone

Grown up in China, I had hardly heard anything about the "comfort zone" until I attended a Foreign Language School. Since young, I had been told to "keep close to your fellows in order to show unity." So in kindergarten, our class went to the dinning hall at noon in an intense line led by the teacher. In primary school when there was a class trip, I was told to seat next to my classmate on a bus even though there were still unoccupied seats. I once sat in a 70-meter-square classroom with another 50 students in the junior middle school. Sometimes I to stand in a twisted queue in a small poorly-ventilated room with arm next to another sweating arm, just as the case when I was in Shanghai EXPO. Sounds disgusting, right? However, that is the truth. 

In Western countries, keeping the comfort zone is appreciated. Lines in front of cashiers are loose here. People would rather stand than sitting close to a stranger on the subway. When people greet with each other, they tend to keep a distance of one meter in order to be polite or thoughtful.

I believe that to keep personal comfort zone is necessary. However, we have such a large population that the average space for a person is quite limited. Maybe that is why Chinese don't pay much attention to comfort zone.

If ask how can the drain be so clean, it’s because there is running water from the source

My famous quotation is a sentence from a famous Chinese poem "thoughts generated from reading(观书有感)" by Xi Zhu, "If ask how can the drain be so clean, it’s because there is running water from the source(问渠哪得清如许，为有源头活水来)." Literally, it means that the reason for a drain to keep clean and clear is that there is always new water coming from the source to refill the drain. By using this metaphor, the author want educate people to keep reading in order to keep minds clear. Here the drain indicate one's mind while the water indicates new thoughts. But as years passed by, O have my own understanding of this sentence.

I knew this sentence at the beginning of my primary school, but didn't really understand the meaning behind. Now I know that life is like a book which will never be out of inspiration and surprise. If one want the mind to grow up appropriately with the pace of physical age, he or she needs to own an awareness of thinking about and learning from and life all the time.

I especially feel that quotation true after I came to NYU. New York is indeed a metropolis and NYU is indeed a place where smart students gathered. After I come here, I know a group of new friends and subtle conflicts happen. I first felt the dilemma so challenged and had no idea to deal with the complicated situation. However, I was inspired and supported by someone else and what's more, I fortunately know humanity better and improve my EQ through those series of things. In China, most students  lead a comparatively simpler life and think less about people and real life just as I did before. Before I came here, I wondered a lot about life but tried in vain to find the answer. But I really feel people here are different. They teach me in various ways and make my world more colorful and those previous wonders got answered. To be with these people is like to drain fresh water to my well of mind. These various experiences help me become more mature.

In that sense, it is important to explore new things to enrich one's life, no matter by reading or learning life itself.

Response to Aristotle's theory of social justice

1. According to Aristotle, when people argue about justice, they usually are "speaking of a limited and partial justice," which means that the people who are talking about justice don't have comprehensive understanding about justice themselves. Justice is a concept applied to both people and things. It is easier for people to judge things from the point of view of an outsider, while it is pretty hard to judge justice between people, because in this way the judgement is subject instead of absolute object.However, it is even harder for people to be aware of their incorrect judgement, because they imagine themselves to be correct. 2.In Aristotle's example, if people in one group are unequal in wealth, they would think themselves unequal from all aspects. If people in another group are equal  In free birth, instead, they would consider themselves in a society where everything is distributed equally. 3.Because it is nearly impossible for people to notice justice objectively in every field of life. On one hand, people easily focus more on the aspects they care. For example, the disabled seek justice more in social welfare while the rich seek more justice in the solid protection of personal property. On the other hand, people in different social classes have different opinions. When justice is discussed in a larger sense, more elements just as   wealth and free birth should be taken into consideration. So the situation will get more and more complicated. But when justice is thought about in a specific case, the number of variable is limited to few. The situation then becomes simpler. 4.As Aristotle points out in "A Definition of Justice," "political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship. Hence they who contribute most to such a society have a greater share in it than those who have the same or a greater freedom or nobility of birth but are inferior to them in political virtue; or than those who exceed them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue." In this case, the mass may consider the extra tax on the rich a kind of justice while the minority of wealthy people must take it as injustice. The conflict is caused by different social classes between the two sides. Whether the tax is justice or not shouldn't be simply answered "yes" or "no" according to personal will. It should depend on whether a wealthy person contributes more to the society in virtue sense. If he or she does, then he or she deserves the possession and shouldn't pay extra tax only because of more possession.

Personal Independence Far Away

It is always easier for a group of people to declare to be independent than an individual does. Basically, the independence of a group of people means these people can govern themselves, which means they have more rights. People divide themselves into smaller groups if they can gain more benefits through it, just as the United States did. It mostly bases on a rational and economic thought. For individuals, it's totally different. What is the definition of personal independence then? To live alone and be self-sufficient like Robinson Crusoe on an isolated island? If this is the truth, then sentences at the end of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's won't be that impressive--Paul Varjak: "You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.' You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. " If people "belong" to each other, then how can we be so sure and proud to announce that we are independent? To be independent and self-outstanding is trendy and exactly what's on fashion. We can never find a smile on a supermodel on T-stage. Their eyes tells nothing but " I don't give it a damn." Here I'm not criticizing fashion industry alone. There is always a reason behind every fashion element. Here the reason is that after being constrained by many factors for too long time, people all over the world are seeking "independence" crazily and it is popular to stay as "cool" as a cucumber. Independence here means that one needs to be so rich to be self-sufficient and stay indifferent to those who may interrupt that status. First, people seek wealth, which doesn't need much tenderness from others. After becoming wealthy, people keep their eyes close to others because they don't need others to help them live a comfortable life any more. But material life is not the whole. In Haruki Murakami's novel Noweign Wood, main characters just committ suicide one after another without an omen. In the time when the story happens in the novel, economy booms and it's uncommon for people to give up their lives because everyone has something to be busy with--looking for chances to earn more moony. Those who commit suicide find the mainstream of view of the value of life meaningless but feel helpless to find their own way to live a satisfying life, a life with warmth and care and mental pursuit. In Haruki's novel, characters seem to be fragile because they are "sensitive in an insensitive world." They feed on love and tenderness from each other. I agree with Haruki that love and care, like bread, is a must for individual. People do belong to each other. And this is the right way to stay mental health. If independece just means that one can live well alone, it is really hard for individual to keep absolute independence. People's mind is always deep and difficult which is even impossible to calculate. So now I'm not sure weather I am an independent person, because I can't live without all my friends.