Allow Them to Travel Their Own Paths

The commencement speaker’s talking here!  What we should leave for our younger generations, in the sense of an inheritance, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…

When we’d gathered for a meal, the president of a prestigious university called my friend to invite him to make a commencement speech to the graduating class, this was the affirmation of his social status and his studies, we all congratulated him.  But he’d shaken his head told us, “This was a job that nobody wanted, which of those graduates would actually listen to you?  They’re all in a hurry, to get out, to find their families and friends to celebrate.  During the commencement speech, the speaker talks on the podium, while the members of the audience talk amongst themselves.  How many can make a commencement speech like Steve Jobs?

If so, then why had you agreed?  He’d smiled bitterly, “as professors, we all want to exert some sort of an influence on the students, although Jia-Cheng Lee advised on never lecturing the younger generations, and just let him touch the fires and get burned on his own.  But, there’s no rewind in life, sometimes, one wrong step, their whole lives, ruined, and, when they turned around, they’re already, too old and gray.  So, I shall still just, go, after all, this is, their, last FREE counseling, if they want to hear me, they’d needed to pay me $3,000N.T. per hour for the sessions!

We all started laughing, but I felt deeply about his words, “you can’t turn back the hands of time for regrets”, now, I’d regretted every single day, why I’d not spent the time I took to translate the books, with my own parents.  When I was younger, I’d never imagined that my parents would grow old, felt that they will always be mountains, right there, watching over me, so long as I come across a problem, I just needed to head home and ask, “hey dad, what do I do?”, problem solved.  My friend was right, he was doing something worthwhile, to give back, making the commencement speeches to the graduates.

Actually, prioritizing in the most important lesson of life, to NOT run around like headless chickens.  A lot of people don’t believe that they should do what’s imposed on them, and after all of that is done, they’ll have the time to do what they want to do.  The best example is filling a bottle with the rocks: you’d already, stuffed the bottle up with the rocks, but you can, stuff more sand in, and after the sand is stuffed in, there’s still, room for water.  And this bottle would be your whole life, what do you put into it, it all depends on your priorities—careers, families, children, everybody is different, every life, not the same too.

Mostly, the order in the Chinese ancient text of The Book of Rites is correct, “Family, Country, the World”, because in the terminal wards, there are almost none of those who’d, regretted over not having published enough theses, not made that extra dollar, but all had regretted, not spending enough time with their children, their loved ones, so, as you filled up your bottles, consider this, putting what’s necessary in first, no matter how full, you can always, add in the water, and the water represents time, so long as you have the heart, you will, make the time to do what you want to do in life.

In being a good person, doing things right, honesty is the most important, because telling the truth, you’d not need to tax your brain on remembering all those lies, and you get to, spread the resources of your brain to other things, like a career.  Fulfilling the promises you’d made, don’t promise others something you can’t deliver, then, you wouldn’t lose your trusts.  We all need friends, but, we can’t, vouch for them, because you can’t take the responsibilities for someone else’s behaviors.  We were more influenced by our friends than our own parents, people can know what sort of a person you are from your friends.  A study showed, that the very first job a college grad gets, sixty-percent was from the friend of a friend.  Sometimes, the words of a friend, it’d, opened up a brand new door to your life.

Don’t be too calculating on the job, do more.  Like my mother told, you can’t use up all your energies, you go to sleep, and you’re, regenerated.  The Buddhist belief of being the light for someone else, you think you were, helping someone, but in the very end, you’d, helped yourself.

To the students, who’d felt helpless: we want to teach, but they don’t learn; a lot of things, they should know better, but don’t.  But, every generation came like this, this is, life I suppose.  Just let them go their own ways!  Each generation is different from the previous and the next, so long as we’d done our best.

And so, this is trying to set the parents’ minds at ease, to NOT worry about your own young, so long as, you’d provided them with enough tools, that they won’t starve to death, then, you’d, done your jobs, unlike how some of the parents today still believed that they need to leave a huge sum of inheritance for their own young, as a sort of a legacy of love.  Giving them the ability to learn, to find the tools they need to achieve their dreams, that’s, way more, valuable than any materialistic wealth you can leave behind.