Joy Luck (part II)

"O! Hwai dungsyi" -- You bad little thing -- said the woman, teasing her baby granddaughter. "Is Buddha teaching you to laugh for no reason?" As the baby continued to gurgle, the woman felt a deep stirring in her heart.

"Even if I could live forever," she said to the baby, " I still don't know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and innocent. I too laughed for no reason.

"But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well.

"Hwai dungsyi, was this kind of thinking wrong? If I now recognize evil in other people, it is not because I have become evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, have I not smelled the same bad things?"

The baby laughed, listening to her grandmother's laments.

"O! O! You say you are laughing because you have already lived forever, over and over again? You say you are Syi Wang Mu, Queen Mother of the Western Skies, now come back to give me the answer! Good, good, I am listening...

"Thank you Little Queen. Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."

closer

"and any man who knows a thing

knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all."

like a rolling stone

I wonder if I'm doing this right. Then I wonder what IS right, and often I wonder if this is what the rest of my life will be like; wondering.

"Every day it changes," I explain over and over. "Sometimes, I'm so excited to go. But other days, I'm scared out of my mind." I always feel like I could have done a better job. I know that I procrastinate, and I know that I goof off. I know that I could be more focused, and that I could do more than I do for the people around me. I know that I have never gotten the balance right between fun and work. I know that I have gotten distracted and let people down. I know that I have overworked myself, and let myself down.

I sometimes think that suddenly things will click next year. I sometimes hope that college will magically make me know how to live an adult life. But I know that's not true.

That's when I get scared. That's when I worry that I will go out into the world and fail. I worry that I will let people down, and not live up to their expectations. I worry that I'm not good enough.

But who is anyone to say, really? Who is anyone else to tell me who I am or what to be? I wish I could be this strong, I wish I could be weak.

One thing I know is that as I get older, I know less and less.

winds (part II)

"we're so arrogant, aren't we? so afraid of age, we do everything we can to prevent it. we don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old with someone."

saving our own lives