I Saw the USS Enterprise
Recently Nanjing has been unbearably hot. I went out for a short run this afternoon and came back drenched in sweat.
That made me think of myself more than twenty years ago, just after the college entrance examination. I turned to an old diary entry from that time:
Today, the damned two-and-a-half-day college entrance exam has finally ended. For me, it feels like setting down a weight of a thousand catties. At last, everything is over. Of the five exams, my own feeling was that English was the best, then physics and chemistry, while Chinese and math were the worst. Later score estimates proved that feeling correct. But what deserves special mention is this: after not doing well in Chinese and math, I was still able to adjust my mindset and finally get through the gaokao. That in itself shows my mental resilience had already reached quite a strong level, at least compared with my peers. So no matter what, I still had reason to feel relieved.
I love July 9, because it always feels like a day of rebirth for me.
In fact, neither you nor I are really afraid of failure. What we fear is not being given another chance. If life worked like a game with cheat codes turned on, who would be afraid?
As the best footnote to today, I was lucky enough to see the strange cloud formation in the picture below, and it instantly reminded me of the USS Enterprise: Live long and prosper.
