The Truth behind Happiness

I cry. I cry a lot. When I failed an exam, I cried. When I did something stupid, I cried. When a fight happens, I cry.

Over time, I realized why I cried. It was because I was scared of all the bad things that happened around me. I couldn’t control when they were going to happen. I was afraid that I would have to awkwardly observe these bad things happen.

Then I realized something. These bad things happen for a reason. They may be out of my control, but that doesn’t mean I have to cry. I can instead stare at the situation and observe. Observe what happened. Observe how it happened. Observe why it happened. Maybe I can learn something about it. Maybe the bad things occur because they are trying to teach me something.

Maybe, all these negative situations surround me because they are an obstacle to true happiness.

Frustrations of Learning a Language

Learning a language can go one of three ways: you work hard and learn the language well, you work on it once in a while and know the language to a limited extent, or you completely forget how to say hello in that language.

I found that the best way to learn a language was to ask myself: “Why do I want to learn this language?” To impress others? To improve business or political relationships? A hobby or passion? Just like anything else in life, we must find a passion to learn something. I believe that we should not just learn a language, but rather learn it well. Once we reach that point, not only do we acquire a new skill, we can look back and feel satisfied at all the heart and determination it took to accomplish this daunting task.

A few years ago, I was trying to learn Mandarin. For those who have tried to learn Mandarin, you must understand the difficult in trying to listen to all those tones. I could not distinguish a second tone from a first tone. When someone says something to me in Mandarin, I shake nervously because I could not understand a single sound they made. You know what kept me going? It was my hatred for those tones that kept me going. I was not going to stop until I could hear those tones. I would rather die trying to learn those tones than to give up.