Right next to the western window of that tiny attic inside, always stands an old-fashioned elm table on which many books and draft papers pile up.What you can see, often, through that window from outside, is a fifty something hunching over his desk and concentrating on what’s in his hand, be it immersed in his reading or writing. On the very left side of the desk is a big shelf where his books of all kinds are stored, including the genre of history, logic, psychology and the like. That is “the man and his study”.
Almost all the conversations I had with him, as far as I can remember, in those months, happened in his study, small and crowded but infused with the smell of wisdom. Now looking back all those days gone by, I always feel so lucky that I have met such a man like him serving as a guiding star not merely in those days, but in my entire life as well.
He likes books more than everything else. Whenever he gets great books, he would like to get them printed out and give them to his friends as well as his students who love great books as much as he does. Sharing--one of his many features--has penetrated in his whole life. He always said to me,“life is too short. Great ideas are worth spreading.You’ve gotta read great books with great ideas to enrich your life and soul, and use those ideas to create and serve as well.”
That man’s earlier story I heard him tell about himself, constantly with a low and peaceful tone, is of a little boy who suffered a lot in his childhood.
Talking about human nature to little children is really ridiculous, for,without being humanized by any education, they absolutely know nothing about that complex thing. Born with a heart disease, he couldn’t live as a normal child. It was hard for him to run in and out of his house, to play sports in the backyard with little fellows,or to climb trees up and down like other kids. Even a short and plain road, he couldn’t finish without my his mother’s help. No kids, therefore, at that time, would like to be his friends. What’s worse, he was often bullied by those kids who were much stronger and older than him.
To live his life in the world he had to live in will require love, faith and courage, and it was his mother who gave him all those things.He has told me more than once how thankful he feels to his mother. To a little child whose early life was filled with such harsh circumstances and mean people, being in isolation, bully and contempt, it is excusable for him to hold any grudge and resentment toward his life and those people, but he never did that. All he did was just condone and forgive and force himself to see the bright side of things. That process was hard, and it was slow. It takes many years for him to recover. His study was once used as a kind of treatment in his life. He read, in his study, a lot of great books about psychology and history, and had conversations with those great characters in history all the time. That’s how he conducted his inner healing.
Having earned enough money, he had a surgery and got his heart disease cured.Now it seems to him everything is getting increasingly better, and now he can always see things positively. Because of the wealth of his spirit he has poured into me,I, too, to a large extent, can have the benefit of love and security and steadfast belief in my own life. I am beginning to see the things that really matter to me.
Sometimes it’s difficult to see clearly what truly counts in this world. Most of the people dedicate their lives to pursuing credits, honors, dollars and power, while that bony but powerful man cares very little about those things. In his life, it is always those spiritual and noble things that matter most, such as love and sympathy to the poor and the weak, inter-confidence among people we love, and humanity contained deep within our souls.
Those are also what I’ve learned from him and his study. Compared with the infinite, I am nobody, but I am still endeavoring to better myself, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”. I think that's the kind of life I want to live and it is worth living for.
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