Choice

Oracle: I told you before. No one can see beyond a choice they don't understand, and I mean no one.
--Matrix, Revolution

Though the choice seems obvious for me, I experienced a certain extent of confusion when facing big decision in life: to work or to pursue a higher degree. The underlying question of this choice seems to be what I am going to do in the future, what my life goal is, because this decision will undoubtedly affect my life in future. However, I found that my decision is based mostly, not on the vision of the future, which is inherently vague and indefinite for me, but on what I have done in the past. Since every graduate or professional program asks the candidates what preparation of knowledge and skill they have in that specific area, it also seems to be practical and reasonable to do things as if we are laying the bricks, one based another, never awry. But isn't it a bit monotonous?

Where is the change? Where is the turn? Where is the jump? But before answering those questions, answer these questions first: what to change? Where to turn? Where to jump? Ironically, I am back on the original point of the old-friend-like question, which is asked again and again since primary school: what do I want to do? What I have done and what I will do seem to like the questions of which is the first: egg or chicken? The truth, I think, may be that one will never make a decision with absolutely full confidence of its consequences.

Everyone travels with a certain degree of confusion of the destiny. And so do I.

one friend's signature

One should never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

It's an interesting sentence provoking philosophical thought. Before analyzing this claim, I would like to limit "anything" to "things met in ordinary daily life", which exludes any scientific, political or social issues. Things like that will spoil the pure philosophical query here

Understandably, everyone need "some entities" to explain the world and himself or herself if one remain conscious. It's also a great thing that everything is able to be explained by a handful of "entities", and guide the action accordingly when one faces complicated siuations. Imagine that there are principles of life that guide the life just as there are three Newton's laws of mechanism that predict the motion an object. Isn't it a great triumph of human intellect?

It might grow to be an infinite list, but several most important entities that used to explain the motivation of human action includes: (from How to Win Friends and Influence People)

1. Health and preservation of life.
2. Food
3. Sleep
4. Money and the things money will buy
5. Life in the hereafter
6. Sexual gratification
7. The well-being of our children
8. The feeling of importance

If one does not want to be exhaustive about his/her list, the above mentioned entities are well-enough in explaining every day's action. One can experience limited situation compared with the sum of all human beings'. Therefore, one does not necessarily to be exhaustive in making his/her own list. Perhaps that's why the author put a constraint: "beyond what is necessary".

the use of paranormal pursuits

Admittedly, these non-mainstream areas of inquiry address certain human needs, which mainstream science and other areas of intellectural inquiry inherently cannot. One such needs involves our common experience as human that we freely make our own choices and decisions in life and therefore carry some responsibilities for their consquences. Faced with infinite choices, we experience uncertainty, insecurity, and confusion; and we feel remorse, regret, and guilt when in retrospect our choices turn out to be poor ones. Understandably, to prevent these bad feelings many people try to shift the burden of making difficult choices and decisions to some nebulous authority outside themselves--by relying on the stars or on a stack of tarot cards for guidance.

Above is a paragraph in the GRE analytical writing preparation book. I like this paragraph particularly because of its keen perception and revelation of human trait in the course of argument, which reminds me of the following paragraph:

We continue to share with our remotest ancestors the most tangled and evasive attitudes about death, despite the great distance we have come in understanding some of the profound aspects of biology. We have as much distaste for talking about personal death as for thinking about it; it is an indelicacy, like talking in mixed company about venereal disease or abortion in the old days. Death on a grand scale does not bother us in the same special way: we can sit around a dinner table and discuss war, involving 60 billion volatilized human deaths, as though we were talking about bad weather; we can watch abrupt bloody death every day, in color, on films and television, without blinking back a tear. It is when the numbers of dead are very small, and very close, that we begin to think in scurrying circles. At the very center of the problem is the naked cold deadness of one’s own self, the only reality in nature of which we can have absolute certainty, and it is unmentionable, unthinkable. We may be even less willing to face the issue at first hand than our predecessors because of a secret new hope that maybe it will go away. We like to think, hiding the thought, that with all the marvelous ways in which we seem now to lead nature around by the nose, perhaps we can avoid the central problem if we just become, next year, say, a bit smarter.

the beginning of a new season

The top five football leagues in Europe has been opening their new season one by one. For me, today marks the beginning of a new season, a season that is full with exams and tests. I had the GRE writing test this morning.

I had so many tests before, but this one is of particular importance, because I believed in this exam I reached such a stage of mindset that enables me to "journey through" tests.

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world.

I don't know who wrote these words, but I'd like to keep them as a reminder that the process is all the important, and that being defeated does not necessarily mean imperfection.

In fact, everything can be perfect. The trick is how you define "perfect".