Forgiveness

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To some people, forgiveness means a complete victim-offender reconciliation without offenders' efforts, which gives offenders opportunities to hurt victims again, and victims should no longer whine over the pain (basically a task of Saint!); to some people, forgiveness simply means victims' giving up the ideas of revenge, shifting focus from the past to current, moving on with their own life.

Forgiveness = X - Revenge (X is a "variable" defined by different persons).

My Life Relativity - Offence

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Offence, to many people means some serious physical or verbal attack, but to some people, it can be a few words that state a difference opinion.

Offence =  physical or mental sensitivity / physical or verbal attack or verbal assertion  .

My Life Relativity - Suffering

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When facing same adversity, persons with less endurance suffer more than those with stronger endurance.

Suffering = adversity/endurance

My Life Relativity - Courage

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It takes much more courage to a person who has vertigo standing on the second floor balcony than to a healthy person climbing a thousand foot high cliff.

Courage = Difficulty/Potentiality

Knowledge & Wisdom

Knowledge is gained by learning, wisdom by insight.

My Thoughts On Tolerance

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Tolerance is refer to differences (ideas, life style, etc.), not to offence, abuse or injustice. (The "tolerance" to latter is better to be defined as "forgiveness".)

Tolerance to injustice is the best "gift" humans offered to Evil. It does help injustice prevails.

A healthy relationship is built on understanding, or accepting/embracing (without understanding) each others' differences, NOT on one-sided tolerance to mistreatment, or abusive behaviors.

If violence were not avoidable, I rather see guilty persons punished by violence, than seeing innocent people keeping suffering by never ending violence that escaped by "tolerance".

Quotes From "Dexter"

"You used God, not another way around."
"Light cannot exist without darkness. Each has its purpose. If there is the purpose to my darkness, maybe it is to bring some balance to the world. "
Dexter - "a father, a son, a serial killer"

 

Harmony of Friendship --- Inspired by "Golden Girls"

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I always believe that true harmony is built on embracing the differences, not on conformity.

Making "Golden Girls" as example: each of them has distinguishable personality: Dorothy is so wise and sharp that she could throw "judgement" at any moment like "Goddess"; Rose is so naive that she virtually believes everything; Blanche is so incredibly sexy that she believe she is obliged to be the first one to attract all men's attention among her friends (actually among all women on this planet). However they get along perfectly well - each of them totally accept others' differences, and support each others special quality. This means, among three of them, no one would constantly go against Dorothy's wit, scorn Rose's being innocent, or be judgmental about Blanche's being "bitchy". This acceptance makes each of them feel so appreciated. And the reason they could do so, I believe is because each of them feel content about who she is (in other words, feel completely ok with their own "limitation"). If not, they would not feel comfortable about what others two have, and be harsh on each others', compete with each other with what they lack, thus the harmony is impossible.

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Jealousy might be one of major causes of breaking up (or fading away) of friendships. So what is jealousy? I think it is basically an uncomfortable feeling toward the fact that others possess something we lack. To feel comfortable about who we are, requires not only being content about what we have, but also what we lack. I once wrote, the wisdom is not measured by the amount of our knowledge, but how much we know about our limitation. The harmony shown within these Golden Girls demonstrates this idea perfectly: each of them know exactly what's their own limitation is, do not "invade" others' "specialty" easily. Therefor, even if each of them has different level of intelligence (with Dorothy on the top obviously), they are all WISE girls to me.

Of course I do not mean our intelligence or strength should not be challenged. No. As matter of fact, I believe Dorothy loves challenge, Rose does not mind criticizing, Blanche enjoys competing, but, deep in their hearts, they respect each others' quality, prove this quality as their strength. And I sincerely consider this approval as true meaning of "embracing the difference".

"Golden Girls" - the friendship of dream!

4 Musts For Personal Happiness

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1, decent physical health;
2, decent income that covers all basic expenses;
3, freedom;
4. love (esp. self-esteem).

Everything else is secondary.

I Love "Golden Girls"

I don't remember when was the first time I watched this sitcom, all I remember is whenever I saw this show on TV, those girls made me laugh!
I never felt tired about this show. Why? Not because of "brilliant" story lines, not because of any magnificent philosophy, or psychological stunts, but simply because of vivid "personalities" of those "golden girls": the always wise and sharp Dorothy; innocent and naive Rose; and that sexist woman of planet Blanche. Of course, I won't miss that "the older she gets, the naughtier she is" Sophia - who seems to be so disconnected biologically with her daughter Dorothy but psychologically she does have the best chemistry with her giant daughter.

Susan Harris was the writer of this show. She was also a victim of CFS/ME, which let her wrote an episode "Sick and Tired" - a humorous demonstration of a disease that is still yet to be understood. Below was the part of this episode when Dorothy "claims" she was sick but it ends out that Blanche is the "sick" one. I do think this is the best performance of Blanche (Rue Mcclanahan) in the whole show!

Really, each of these girls is a genius to me (with Susan Harris behind all of them). Words cannot express how much I adore their daily plain but fun life.

The Circulation Of Life

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Don't feel, but LOOK;
Don't look, but SEE;
Don't see, but MEMORIZE;
Don't memorize, but UNDERSTAND;
Don't understand, but (just) FEEL GOOD.

Relativity vs. Absolute

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In my previous post I quote Liu Xiaobo's view on "absolute". However, I just realized that based on Einstein's special relativity, all relativity of space and time is based on a single ABSOLUTE: the invariant speed of light. (experts please point out if I am wrong)
I always consider myself a skeptic so basically I doubt everything. And at the same time I would keep a possibility in my mind that there might be an "absolute" exists. It seems Einstein's theory proves I am right. Of course, if there is no ABSOLUTE, where does RELATIVITY  come from? 

Friendship "Crisis"

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Since my life got into "middle age" problem, which was a combination of my health decline and career struggle, I found I was also in relationship crisis - my old friends were all estranged from my life, more or less, one by one.

I often wonder, what made my friendships faded after all these years (25 plus)? I don't know, but I at least know it happened during my "middle age crisis". Most of my friends take my struggle as an action driven by my "selfishness" ("you only think of yourself, but not your family, your parents", as one of my friend pointed out), but in fact it is an action of individualism, which seems to be the same by their understanding. This fundamental difference between my old friends and I seems to be very hard to overcome just by my effort (I tried very hard to explain, but most of my effort were taken as "excuses").

I have to wonder, what had really kept my friendships for this long (25 plus years is not a short term)? For so many years I thought I had the best friends in the world, I thought they would accept me no matter what. And I do not find myself changed, except my thoughts: individualism, a gradually matured life attitude during my life in America. I guess this is it. It was along this "change", my old friends saw a "different" me, who had so many useless ideas they were not familiar with. I must say, none of my old friends are fond of "thinking" (I had these type of friends mostly because I grew up and educated in art environment).

As I always understood, Chinese culture is a culture of uniformity, not diversity. I consider I was one of "victim" of such culture. Of course, I should not jump into conclusion that I have already lost these friends, and I am sure in future it is totally possible that we embrace each other again. However, meanwhile, there is no better way to deal with this situation than "looking forward". Plus, I no longer live in that country, neither should I live in the past anymore.

Between Extraordinary & Ordinary - A Forgotten Artist Guan Zilan

I grew up in an artists' family, entered the same art college my parents worked, but I never really knew anything about Guan Zilan - a woman artist who died in 1986 (I was in college at the time ). I seem to remember I heard of her name, but never paid any attention to it. Yesterday during a discussion in a Chinese forum regarding my article about value of art works, one person mentioned her name again. Out of curiosity, I googled her name and found her works. Immediately, I fell in love with her art. 

Simplicity, boldness, unpredictable composition was my first impression. And the freedom she had in her paintings amazes me: even though I did see very little traces of the influence of western modern art, but overall, I saw herself: a distinguish style that mixed both Chinese and Western, low toned in subject matters which are playfully & cheerfully depicted. Nothing is affected, but natural, fluent and beautiful.

Guan Zilan, born in 1903, graduated in University of Shanghai (in art department), went to Japan continuing her art education in 1927. In Japan, she was influenced by western modern art, especially post-impressionism and fauvism. She came back to China in 1930, and worked as an art professor in an art college of Shanghai. During that time she was quite active and made herself  a very famous young woman artist. Married when she was 35, she had one daughter. 

After 1949, she pretty much lived like a "hermitess", especially during Cultural revolution, she did not paint anything. Beside her regular job (based on internet source she worked in a history & art museum in Shanghai), she lived as a plain housewife until she died of heart disease in 1986.

Guan painted mostly oil paintings, in which I saw mostly "Chinese" style - a similar atmosphere I see in Chinese traditional (brush) paintings. I always have a thought on Chinese traditional painting, that due to certain limitation of traditional Chinese painting technique, contemporary Chinese (brush parinting) artists do not have to stick on traditional mediums, rather, they could adapt to western art technique and transmit Chinese art "spirit" in western art medium (such as oil painting or acrylic painting). I had this idea back when I was a student, when many artists struggled with creating "brand new" effects by using Chinese brush painting materials. The fact is, that Chinese painting materials have very strict and limited attributes and can only produce certain special visual effects, and this limitation gives artists very little room to be creative and unique. However, since I believe that mediums and techniques are not the most important elements in art, working with western mediums can be a better choice for those who really want to be creative. Oil painting (and acrylic) might be the freest art medium in the world (in terms of effects) and it really gives artists maximum freedom to be unique. Furthermore, I do not believe technique alone can define "style", Western or Chinese. So, my point is, the spirit of Chinese art can be continued in western art technique. I think Guan Zilan proved my point. 

Guan's talent struck the world when she was young (both in Japan and China), but during communist era, she stayed as ordinary as possible. People knew her in real life mostly recognized her as a housewife and a widow (her husband died when she was 55). Art in China since 1949 has been tied to politics (Communism). Was it the reason that Guan did not paint that much anymore? Or she gave up painting simply because she found passion in her ordinary life as a wife and mother? No matter what reasons, during all those decades of her later years, within Chinese art circle almost nobody talked about her anymore. After she died quietly in 1986, as she wished, her ashes was scattered in West Lake of Huang Zhou City - one of the most beautiful lake that inspired most of her landscape paintings. 

Agatha Christie said "the best time to plan a book is while you're doing dishes". I wonder Guan would think the same way. Or maybe to her, washing dishes WAS as same as painting a masterpiece. After gaining such a fame as a young artist (she was the first Chinese woman artist who painted oil painting), it is said that she was happy and satisfied with her plain daily life. I believe that, because from her paintings, I do see a "plain" women with a "plain" heart, which resonates with every beautiful detail of the Nature. 

Guan was a beautiful old style women. Is God really fair to give her both beauty and talent? (Just kidding. :-)) However, both her career and personal life stayed low-toned. Maybe, it is exactly because of this quality of being "ordinary", Guan enjoyed her life in its maximum scale. From this view, being forgotten by this noisy world really does not do any damage to her life.