Perished heart

The translated version of previous story blog post.

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Last year, a friend of mine committed to suicide. He is a young Phd holder, employed by a very good company. His wife is a Phd holder in Psychology. I cannot understand the reason he put a full stop to his life. His medical records revealed his serious depression problem. A normal human like me and others, live every day; but there were people who holds to their strong believes and dreams, either continue to chase it, or suicide.

Frequently, there were friends advices to hold a Balanced Life, between life and career.

If you work for 14 hours, seldom talk to your family after that, do you think that is a balanced life? Luckily I don’t. I always feel a walk with family, watch TV together, cook for them and etc are the most precious and enjoyable moment.

Yesterday, a friend forwarded me story. In a temple, a senior monk always offers food to a dog named “Let go” every 6pm. When the sun is almost set, he will always call Let Go and offers the food. The junior monk was puzzled about the dog’s name. They approach the senior and tried to get the answer. The senior just smile and want the junior to find out the answer by himself. After few days, the junior found out after senior offers the food, he will do some Tai Chi Quan exercise; take some walk, instead of keep reading chants. The senior is glad about the findings and explained, “I am so glad you realize it. Whenever I call Let Go, I am also asking myself to let go, let go of some works. A human cannot finish everything in a day, but we should have completed the most important thing in that day itself, and that is good enough.”

Human is getting to more competitive life, which on the other hand shows the importance of Let Go. Whenever you face a problem, just put your hand back, the sky won’t fall, the earth keep spinning and life goes on. This is not lazy, but people who know how to Let Go at right timing and appropriate situation, will be the life winner. In contrast, a man who busy for whole day, usually brings only tiring and worries with him along.

This reminded me on another stories about African.

A western research team went to Africa and hires few locals to be local guide. They need to rush for the journey. Fortunately the locals are fit to walk fast while carrying heavy luggage. The progress went well for the first three days and everyone are happy. On the fourth day morning, the locals refused to continue the journey, no matter how the research team requested. The research team wondered if they offense the locals, or they want a raise in the fee? The locals explained, according to their tradition, if one rushed for journey for three days, he must stop on the fourth day, to let the soul to catch up with the steps.

In this modern world, this seems to be a superstition thought. But I was touched deep in my heart. We are all busy with life. Works and pressures chase us to rush for our journey, caused us seldom stop and leave our soul far behind.

Without our soul, we are just controlled by the outside world, where goes our inner world?

Weekend is coming soon, shall we give ourselves a break, wait for our soul to catch up with us?

In Chinese writing, busy 忙 consist of two parts: 心(heart) and 亡(perish).
A ‘perished heart’, is equal to a human without a soul.