I must say that these three years were challenging.
We experienced the founding of Huayao Collegiate during the halftime break of the pandemic and spent several more months of dizzying online classes. Many of us, including myself, were affected by the cancellation of AP exams and the disruption of various schedules, and there was a time when we came to A Building every day at noon for Covid testing.
During this time, many of us left, and many people joined, and until now, how amazing that we are still sitting here today.
We, eleven of us, and you, dear teachers, scholars, and friends.
I would say this is a miracle of courage and perseverance that deserves some applause, wouldn't you?
I have thought hard about what kind of person, an adult, I would become.
My first dream was to be a fashion designer, but I soon realized that was just my instinctive pursuit of beauty, and then I wanted to be a screenwriter because I was addicted to the thrill of weaving stories.
Only now, after reflecting on myself and others, have I realized that no matter who I will be or what I will do, only one desire remains constant.
I want my soul to be lighter.
I wanted to be like Remedios, the beauty in One Hundred Years of Solitude, who escaped from her cursed destiny, away from the inferior struggles and wrangle, and floated gently like a cloud.
But I don't want to float to the sky. I want to flow in the direction of the wilderness of life.
I know that it will be a rough and dangerous journey, and I also know that I will fall countless times, but in any case, I do not want to live a superficial life. I do not want to send hope to an empty utopia. I do not want to treat the world perfunctorily.
For this reason, taking this place as the starting point, I decided to experience something seriously. I decided to meet the real world, to escape from the maze of the Internet and tittytainment, to meet those who live outside my life, those who have not experienced everything I have experienced, those who have experienced everything I have not experienced.
The rocks that have been washed by thousands of years of waves, the glaciers, the jungles, the towns beneath the mountains, the moments of glory, the moments of excitement, and the sound of my breath, my pulse, my blood flowing under my skin. My heart thumped in my chest like the first cry of this universe hundreds of millions of years ago to the world it would soon explode into.
Then, I decided to think.
All the knowledge I have learned, all the individuals I have known, all the journeys I have experienced, where will they extend to, and where they will be accepted? How do I weigh the game theory, the struggles, the hidden agendas between human, and the eternal friendship, the greatness of love, how do I let it flow? Under the order of this world lies chaos, and under the chaos lies order. How do I choose, to establish order, or to endure chaos?
With the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me, the torrent of the times, and the whirlpool of history, I am on a unique path, and for this, I will examine everything I experience. Maybe I will find a lighthouse, or perhaps it never existed. In any case, thinking itself is the light.
Then, I will experience failure.
I will suffer, I will weep, I will stagnate, I will face the reality that there is no way to start, I will realize that there is an ending in the world that cannot be reversed, whether how hard I try. I may turn down a bizarre fork in the road, or maybe, I will get back up.
But it is not my duty to stand up. My only duty is to recognize that the world has a harbor that belongs to me whenever and wherever I am—my dear family, my friends, my pets, or a flower that blooms to pass by. I should be loaded with the ability to look back. I should realize that a straight line has no endpoint. It extends infinitely in both directions at the same time.
Finally, I should live hard. Live with the cracks the world has given me. Like deliberately pressing an inflamed wisdom tooth, I want that fire, that fury, that power, that I seek not a home but an eternal journey. My hands will stroke over all the coarse surfaces, but still, I can create something timeless and beautiful.
This is my vision of the wilderness that belongs to me, and the vision that I hope you, my friends, will never stop thinking about. The good news is that today is the first day when this dream begins to come true. Graduation is never the end of the story; it is only the first page. We are embarking on a new adventure today. Congratulations!
Finally, I would like to quote a line from Thoreau in Walden Lake.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Thank you Ms.Carol. Thank you Mr.David Lu. Thank you Mr.Hoek and Mr.Santos. Thank you Mr.JC. Thank you our college counselor Ms. Karen. Thank you to all the teachers and faculties who have taught us, all the friends and family who have supported us, and all the classmates who have accompanied us. And thank you to ourselves who never gave up.
Thank you all!
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