What Love Tells Me (3)

I remember once seeing a video where someone stood in Harvard Yard and randomly interviewed Chinese students, asking: “What would you say to younger people from back home?”

One student answered: We should feel proud of the soil in which we were raised, because it nurtured in us a profound sense of spirituality—the level of spirituality.

For a long time, I resonated deeply with those words. Coming abroad to study, I often felt that something was missing—conversations rarely reached the same depths, and it felt difficult to speak in a truly profound way with friends from different countries and cultures. In some sense, the spiritual sensitivity I carry may indeed be a gift of the culture that formed me.

But on the other hand, after journeying for so many years through the realms of the mind and spirit, I began to realize how exhausting this pursuit can become. Not only in mathematics—systematic learning in any field eventually becomes increasingly abstract. The mind jumps like a restless monkey from one thought to another, and once you’ve lived like this long enough, you start unconsciously applying the same methodology to everything: to understanding life, understanding people, understanding the world. Slowly, the body seems to drift further into the spiritual realm, and one’s physical presence feels more and more transparent, as if fading slightly from the material world.

And so—this young Li wandered further and further into abstraction and spirituality. He felt that, using the methods he had mastered, he could almost understand everything about the world. The only thing that still held his curiosity was death, and the afterlife—places his reasoning and experiences could not reach.

But just as he was settling into this belief, he encountered something he could not comprehend at all: love.

No matter how “elevated” his thinking was, no matter how thorough his reflections, no matter how strong his spiritual resolve—when love arrived, he still could not withstand the flood of emotion. He still became that young boy who couldn’t move his feet when he saw a beautiful girl walk by.

“Friendly reminder that feelings aren’t problems to be solved. They’re more like a museum or a piece of art. They don’t need solutions, they want to be seen, heard, and understood in their imperfections.”
— Chris Lee

A few days ago, on the way to a play with friends, we chatted about which character we’d most want to play if we were actors.
Li Shaonian’s answer was The Little Prince.

Whenever he sees something beautiful, he observes from afar—admiring, learning, quietly watching—rather than rushing forward. But one day, after watching something beautiful for a long time, he suddenly realized: to understand death, one must first understand life.

To break through the state he is in and go one step further, perhaps the essential move is this:
to return to the world.

I want to live each day with a vigorous, overflowing sense of life.
I want to bring my fullest energy into every seemingly ordinary moment.
I want to offer genuine praise to every person I meet.
I want to give people real embraces.
I want to love—to let my vitality and joy wash over others, to bring strength to the environment around me—just like all the beautiful things I have quietly observed and cherished.

Maybe one day, I will truly understand the meaning of life, and then the meaning of death. And after brilliance burns itself bright, I will embrace the eternal stillness that follows—just like when I was little and my mother called me home for dinner after a long day of playing outside.

That’s all for now.
Time to go watch the sunset.
We’ll talk again soon.