陳一帆 上海外國語大學
Live every minute fully

The lyric goes: “Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure-measure a year?” Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred is the number of minutes in a year, and multiply like 20.8 is my life.

I was writing my CV recently, a list of awards, achievements and activities that I assume could measure my life and value. Now we are all busy finding ways to go on, looking for jobs, going for masters. And our life is haunted by the questions, what have you achieved in the past and what you want to do in the future? But here is my query where is the word “now”?

The reason for us to study is to get a degree and the reason to get a job is to make money. Our life is occupied by the expectation of the future fruits that may grow on the tree in the autumn. But when the fruits fail to come, we feel frustrated; when the fruits did come, we feel cheated, for it is not as sweet as we thought. Too obsessed are we with the future that we never have today. Too greedy are we on fruits that we miss the flower, the leaves and all the seasons. We missed life.

Life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. And our CVs are not our life. The passion of life is not in the waiting of the final fruits, but in every minute of seeding and watering the tree, smelling and appreciating the flower, and then finally we can taste the sweetness of the fruit.

And the taste of joy is a part of life and to shed tears is another part. Living fully the present cannot deny any difficulties and complexity in our life. There is the dark tunnel that appears in the life journey. There may be the time that we fear we can never go through it to see the light. Then confront the fear in the moment, and let it all in. If I want to cry, I cry, let the emotion wash me up, and then when I dry, I can go on. Being fully present also to the sorrows, frustrations and hard times and we will find ourselves the torch in the dark.

Once an educationalist said, a three year old is not half a six year old. His life is not a preparation for the six year old he will become. And us, the twenty-old is not half the forty-year old, the socially good timing of achieving our dreams. And the forty year old is not half way to the final destination. This minute is our moment, why sell it to the future?

Seize the day. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift that's why we call it present. My fellow peers, believe in ourselves that we can really live every day, every minute through the happiness and sorrows, through the flowers and the fruits and through the peaks and tunnels. And to our former generations, believe in us as much as we believe in you that we can live up to this dream.
Thoreau wrote: “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life. And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Life is not to be measured, but to be lived. 525,600 drops of dreams forms this stream of our life.