Now in the beginning of the next half of year 2018, I plan to write a letter to myself in 2020, which is roughly two years later, as I am afraid that the man will lose his passion for life after two years. There are some words in my mind that I hope to share it with you. I hope that after two years, if I am still alive and have the opportunity to see this letter I write now, it will have some positive effect.
Till the end of year 2020, you will be 27, no longer a school student a decade ago who attended classes, finished homework and read various types of books in the weekends either in the library or the study room. You have fewer chances meeting the hard-working students yearning for knowledge, you have several generation gaps with them. If you are still in the US, you may not meet your old school friends that you valued. It would be 5 years since you left China. Around you are more working professionals living in the same area, working for 5 days and looking for fun at weekends, talking about starting their own business, stocks, state policies, investments, buying houses, establishing families, say who has got married, who has got the 1st or 2nd new born child, which preschool to attend, etc.
I may have several random questions in mind, mostly where are you, what are you doing, with whom, what do you want, etc.
- Are you still in the US, working in the bay area for a living? There is a litte man in mind that strives to go back home, yet still another that wishes to stay.
- If you are in China, which city will you stay? Looking forward to the day that you have access to plenty of Chinese books.
- Are you still single? Or are you lucky enough to meet the other person that you would like to spend the next decades with? Who can and will understand you and listen to your ideas and thoughts? Hope life won’t make your bored. Reading opens up your mind.
- What kind of person will you become?
- Spending most of the spare time in outdoor activities or Internet? Or no longer interested in such kind of social events and tend to read or write by yourself?
- What other aspects do you find that you are interested in or have passion on?
- Do you plan to try something different or other possibilities when you are still young (not approaching 30s) without families behind you? It takes effort and courage to not take the path that the majority does.
Except for yourself, remember to find chances to visit and look after your parents, at least talk to them weekly, or video chat, at least. You were raised and supported by them till undergraduate university, they took care of all your business when you were young; they made some important decisions for you, without which you would not be what you are now. It has been more than a decade that you did not live with them, no longer have the chance to cook and do dishes for them. Few of my friends of similar age as me (born after the 1990s) got married and had their first kid, either their parents take turns to travel to US for months to look after the baby, or the father works full-time in the company to make the bread, the young mother works at home as housewife to raise the kid, which is quite demanding, according the cases that I witnessed and collected from my friends. Not sure if you are ready to step into that stage in your life by then.
As for your body conditions, I am not sure if you are as healthy as now, hope you can have a good sleep every night, hope you do not gain unexpected weight as you age, it will be better if you become stronger, still loving badminton as of now, doing 15 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in a row. You will have more limited time for yourself, terminate the conversation when you feel like both do not share the same values for life or other aspects, or you doubt both are no longer in the same world, after spending years in a different place or environment. Explanation is costly sometimes.
From another perspective, if you chose to continue the old path in 2017, you are sitll in the PhD program at UCI or another US school, you may graduate from there hopefully, with the original degree that you pursued wholeheartedly. You must have traveled to different countries and cities to talk about your work in front of other researchers. On graduation, either looking for a faculty job in an US/China university, spending the rest time doing research and teaching as well as administration work, or like the majority US CS PhD graduates, working in a big company located in the bay area, with someone, or most likely alone. You know, the guys who attended university in 2009, graduated in 2013, then studied for a PhD directly starting in 2013 Fall in US, many of them have graduated, from UIUC, UC Davis, etc. and relocated to the bay area during this summer in 2018, I have seen lots of such cases when I played badminton, after chatting around with them, found this fact out. Time flies fast. Achievements are made in the best 5 years’ youth in one’s life. Wish there is a chance that you make up your mind and choose to go back to school to study for it one day, before you enter your 30s.
Hope you will be less sentimental, you may still remember that you have met persons at school that you spent much time on and did lots of favors for but they turned out to be too selfish to be your genuine friends. Learn a lesson and move on. Hope the people around you are nice enough to be your friends and cherish them. Once you miss it, there is a remote chance for you to go back.
As the lines in the 1994 film Forrest Gump says, “My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”, life has to go on anyway, old friends leave or depart gradually, new friends come, families aged, in their early 50s, living in the home country that they have loved and lived for half a century. These thoughts come to my mind due to two of my recent experiences that I want to share.
The first one is about my intern who left today for the next journey. This is my first intern after I started to work, thanks for my mentor for giving me this opportunity, kind of excited, lucky enough to meet here for a short 4 weeks, she sent me a Marky Sparky dart board as a gift in the end, which is pretty nice and interesting, as she claimed it to be suitable for both kids and the 70s old men… I wish I could play it well and enjoy it one day. Young people tend to have greater ambitions and achievements, which is quite true when seeing these exceptional interns working and learning. Seeing these young people, sometimes I feel like I have aged and am no longer the young man that I once was, with a deeply buried dream. We wrote a thank you letter to each other, which is a general practice when there are people leaving. Opening the letter, neat and clean handwriting in both Chinese and English words were presented to my eyes, with corrected grammar errors (tenses, misspelling words, etc.), expressing gratefulness, quite genuine. It is indeed a valuable letter, for such a student who studied abroad and had not written in Chinese intensively for 5 years. At that moment, I suddenly realized that I could influence a younger people’s mind. And wish I could have devoted more and prepared better. However, there are always pities and improvements in the first time experience.
The second one is about my attempt to add my past classmates as Wechat contacts. A week ago, I suddenly added all my middle school and high school classmates to my contacts list from the two class groups created one or two years ago, despite that I have not chatted with most of them afterwards. Or to be exact, I only talked with less than five of them, peeping through their Wechat moments, just to get an idea of their recent updates if interested, sadly, most of them only set the most recent three days’ moments public, or too many posts to scroll screen over and over again. That is OK, I even have no idea what to say after I added them, let it be. I keep the habit of not liking or commenting any moments or posts, to relieve social burden, as time goes by, they will forget me if there is no interaction or no need of it, that is good, expected. The god will schedule a meeting when there is a need.
In one’s life, there will be always some important persons that come to your life, influence you, bring you a fresher mind with their insightful conversations with you or unique experiences and stories. Be thankful for them. I used to wonder, what if I go back to school and become a teacher, maybe in my old high school, I would spend most of my time with such young people, watching them study, grow and head to other countries or provinces to attend universities, finally live a happy life, contribute to the society. They might come back to school to visit me if I was still recognized by them. Just like what I thought about my past teachers, school staffs and classmates’ parents, who helped me selflessly and had great influence on me as well as my choices and values of life. These great people are to be remembered.
You will always have different companions in different stages of life, despite the various and convenient communication methods nowadays. Everyone has limited time, they may not be interested in listening to your recent situation (where you live and work, what you do, married or not, etc.) or reply to you when you attempt to reach out. Everyone has something to pursue, have different situations, choices, visions, insights for life. Few can become your families, some are just acquaintances. I will feel lucky if I happen to meet one of them somewhere in the world. Most stories come to an end without your acknowledge, there is no need to add an extra ending plot or create a scene that is hard to get characters onto the stage again. No matter what the reasons are, when past friends are away or leave your city, just accept the fact as it is and do not be upset. Wish them a happy life, we used to sit together and share some memories in the old days.
7/13/2018, Sunnyvale