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Life is like a train. I bought tickets and set off for journeys I have chosen for myself.

The train keeps running toward, carries me from places to places, leave behind things that I have unconsciously forgot. Those are things that hurt, things that content. I was a passenger sitting by the window, looking out at a picture of the outside world that does not stop changing. Relationship revolves around at the same speed. People come. People change. People leave. I come across my own reflection on the window grass. A feeling of nostalgia grows inside me slowly but strongly. I suddenly realize the absence of somebody in my life, somebody important. I can now see the hole that person has left. The longing for the past makes me anxious, sad and tremble.

I hurriedly get off the train, looking back to find the little girl I used to be just to realize another thing. She has gone forever.

                                                                                                                California summer 2011

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us”

These last final two days of Thanksgiving break, I stayed up really late. Drinking a bottle of Cappuccino with vanilla flavor produced by Starbuck, my favorite coffee company; I hope o stay up the whole night. Scarcely did I make the decision when a question occurred to my mind “What am I going to do in the darkness of the night when everybody has fallen into their own dreams on familiar comfy beds?” I did not know the answer.

I did not have any intention to write my journal or do any school work. I had just finished watching “The Notebook” on my laptop, which I had put on must-be-done list for this break. No more movies I liked to watch at this moment. “What is about checking facebook, emails and surfing the internet?”. The mail box that was full of unread emails has been cleared completely by dinner time. I was glad to see my mails to be replied and exchange tender words with those that I held dear to. But not this time. The least thing I wanted to do was to stare at the laptop screen without my glasses on, which I had forgot in The Old Town Mission as I was busy serving drinks and greeting to those poor people who was about to leave after their Thanksgiving lunch.  Therefore, I closed my laptop. The final source of light in the house followed my hand pushing the screen down and disappeared.

Complete darkness surrounded. I stayed still on the couch, looking into the well-decorated room which now appeared as an empty huge black hole. My thought reached Angel, my first friend when I came to Verde Valley School. I remembered the time when we were much closer; I often asked “what were you doing in your room?”. “I was doing nothing”, said he and he meant it. Was he doing the same way I was this moment, just sitting on the couch with my mind not focusing on any specific emotions, events or individuals?. Was I experiencing the same feeling as he was? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Despite the fact that I did not do anything physically, my mind still stayed conscious. My eyes were opened. My ears perceived every single little sound. I listened to the sound of the clock which struck once time every 15 minutes. I felt time passing and darkness growing thicker as it got later. I felt tranquility of my mind and my body although darkness often brings loneliness and sorrow. Darkness was sometimes unusually sweet like that, like the taste of dark chocolate. The intensity of silence caused me to imagine being able to hear Tori’s steady breath in her room, which was on the other side of the house.  I felt my own existence in the world.

What will tomorrow bring to me? What will it be to my family and friends, my teachers and strangers who are not now but will be part of my life in the future. Those are things that are not in my power to control. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us”, Gandalf in Lord of the ring says. When time comes I will know when it is best to enjoy and when it is good to struggle. “Will I be strong enough to go through thick and thin?”. This time I know the answer. It is Yes.

Now it was the time given to me to sneak into bed.

The invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. 

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Hope

" After all the tears dry on my face, a tiny sign of hope twinkles again"
- Ly - 

"A smile

Lopsided

Hardly there

But there.

Behind us, kids were scampering, and a melee of screaming kite runners was chasing the loose kite drifting high above the trees. I blinked and the smile was gone. But it had been there. I had seen it.

“Do you want me to run that kite for you?”

His Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed. The wind lifted his hair. I thought I saw him nod.

“For you, a thousand time over,” I heard myself say.

Then I turned and ran.

It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thin. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight.

But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.

I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn’t care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips.

I ran."

- the kite runner- 

Wish you bad luck today

MaryJoy Sun ' 11

Once my friend asked me: " Do you know why the earth turns?" I shook my head. She laughed: " it turns so that I would not get stuck in a bad-luckspot forever."

Actually, she was right. Nobody wants to have anything to do with bad luck. That's probably the reason why we only wish each other good luck. Have you ever heard anybody wish another person bad luck?

Despite the fact that we try so hard to avoid bad luck, it is still inevitable. Here are some examples of bad luck that I have already experienced.

To become a human being, in the first place, is definitely bad luck. Our ancestors created this thing called society and made up repressing tools called laws. Sadly, we were born to be oppressed and restricted, loaded up with responsibilities, too. However, I used to debate whether it is better to be a human or to be a bug. Being a little bug means to be hated by majority of females, especially beautiful teenage girls. Compared to being screamed at and getting squashed all the time, I would rather just be a human, follow a few rules and lead a relatively secure life. Humans are the only animals that have the concept of future. Although thinking about tomorrow and planning ahead might make us panic or overwhelmed, I still regard this thinking ahead ability as a gift. I would rather worry about whether the world will end in 2012 or getting tangled in TOK class, than having to search for food, starving and running for life all the time. Therefore, in a sense it's better to be a human being. I feel my existence more valuable and significant. Well, maybe it's not such bad luck after all.

There are certain things we can do nothing about; one of them is a wall falling on you. May 12th, 2008 is a day I will never forget. When that huge 8.0 earthquake hit my hometown, I experienced the frailty of human lives. I was lucky enough to survive and later on volunteered in the hospital where my parents were both working. No wards or surgery rooms were available, because the buildings might collapse any second during the aftershocks. People died in the tent outside under the burning sun every single day. Our whole town did not have water, electricity or cell phone signals for 3 days. As time went by, the town started to stink, that was because countless dead people could not be identified or buried right away. I carried patients on the stretchers, occasionally gasped under my breathing mask, looked at the gray dusty sky and helplessly waited for the next wave of aftershocks. Nevertheless, it was also during those dark moments that I felt the power of united wills. The survived restaurants had people cook in half-collapsed kitchens and deliver food to the hospital every day. People from all over China and around the world came to support us. There was even a French medical team helping out. All of a sudden I felt so close to other individuals and so close to the vivid energy of life. I learnt to be calm and brave during difficult situations. I also learnt to be loving and helpful for others, because we are all humans, we have the same color of blood, and we are never alone. I always believed this bad luck brought me strong will power and faith in life.

Last but not least, the IB we are all facing or going to face is another example of bad luck. I hope everybody agrees with me. Juniors, don't giggle yet, this is just the first month. Wait till you reach the point when you hold a piece of cake in one hand, and a coke in the other, trying to load yourself up with sugar and caffeine at 3am, and then realizing there is going to be a biology test and history book review due tomorrow. Then you know what I'm talking about. Anyways, I personally think this is still a valuable experience, because we are challenged both physically and academically by the competitive sports and IB program. We acquire so much knowledge and learn how to arrange time wisely. We gain confidence while we become more mature. We are going to be the master of our lives at age 16 or 17 rather than 35. It is good to be prepared and ahead of our contemporaries. You will feel it after you go to college.

The inevitable bad luck in our lives is not there to fail us. It is there to make us better, because the things that don't beat us make us stronger, just like my cycling coach said.

Some people are born smart, just like some are born beautiful, but nobody is perfect. That's why we all get bad luck, so we can make mistakes, and learn from them. Bad luck is a actually a treasure of life.

So, please do me a huge favor now. Put your right hand up in the air, point to the person next to you, smile, and say: " wish you bad luck today".

They appear.They disappear

by Lauren Kessler

They appear. They disappear.

I have always envied women their friendships. It’s not that I don’t have friends. I do. But I don’t have a friend I’ve known since first grade , someone I could call at 4 a.m. who would hop on the next plane to come hold my hand through disasters great and small. I don’t have a friend I’ve known for so many years that I can’t remember life without her. I don’t have a friend who knows all my secrets.

I know of such friendships. We all do. They are the stuff of fiction and melodrama: the YaYa sisterhood, Judy Blume’s “summer sisters,” Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey on the beach. But these are not real women, women, like me, who have moved eight times and lived in six different states since graduating high school and with each move have shed more people from the past; women who have had to trade friends for kids because there wasn’t time to be good and true to both; women who have mostly kept their own counsel.

But it’s hard to be jealous of fictional pals.

Then I read a story in a magazine about five women who have been meeting for dinner once a month for twenty-seven years, and I was, for a moment, truly envious. These were real women. I cannot imagine the stability of a group friendship like that, the sense of history — the marriages, divorces, births and deaths, toddlers and teenagers that must have come and gone — the ease, the comfort, the fullness of time. I will never have that.