Umbrella has been one of the first important tools ever invented by human beings to conquer nature.  Just like sharp rocks were used as knifes and animal skins were dressed as clothes, umbrella were invented so that our activities would not be interfered by the rain.  It is perhaps a more magnificent invention comparing to any of the earlier tools, for our survival depends on the sharpened stones to hunt and cut, and on the processed animal skin to protect us against the cold, but our survival doesn’t depend on how well we build our umbrella.  It is a tool not to comply with nature but to blatantly defy nature.  It acts as a significant symbol of human intelligence, when we can amble freely around while the rest of the world shelters to avoid the pouring rain.  With the staggering development of modern civilization, umbrellas are not that much of a wonder as before anymore.  In fact, an umbrella has rendered into just an umbrella, and not a lot of people would pay much attention to it, unless one day it’s raining outside and you’re standing on the streets.

I was walking one day from home to library when the messy weather in Taiwan began to chance from merely cloudy to downright pouring.  I always carry my umbrella with me so it is not a big deal besides the unpleasant wetness, but the poor high school girl walking in front of me was not that luckily prepared.  Just got out of the MRT station, apparently shocked by the sudden change of weather, she hesitated at the edge of the building, wondering if it was worth to wait for the rain to stop.  And of course, the station was loaded with people making similar choices, and I had to patiently wait for her conclusion before the line could keep moving.  And with a few seconds of brainwork she bravely stepped into the nature and jogged towards the next human civilization, and I followed after her comfortably under my umbrella.  It was a long single winding street with lots of local alleys but only one destination for the passengers – the intersection half a kilometer away.

So we along with some few others walked in a straight line, heading toward the same destination.  At the beginning, she would jog across every time when we encountered an alley of pouring rain.  But after a couple of alleys, she stopped hurrying and just paced a little faster in the rain, as if she didn’t care about the rain anymore, or as if she’s waiting for some nice person to share a piece of umbrella with her for the rest of the way.  I was behind her all the time, so close that I could clearly see through her wet uniform.  And many times I’ve tried to make myself reaching out my umbrella to her, for a stretch of my hand she would be protected against the merciless nature.  But I didn’t.  A part of me warned me that I could be misunderstood as a perverted boy, but deep down inside me I knew what the real reason was.

People often accuse things they don’t like as evil.  But what exactly is the boundary between good and evil?  Is there really exists such a thing as evil?  Perhaps those “evil” aren’t really evil at all.  Perhaps that’s just what life is: struggling to survive.  From the beginning of life on earth, microorganisms gradually evolved into underwater plants that take in sunlight and water for food.  Seems like a real Garden of Eden to me, where the inhabitants live happily and peacefully together along with the abundance in food.  Somehow, it seemed that “chilling” is not what some life forms intended to do on this planet.  They wanted to move, then wanted to see, and they wanted to feel.  Thus they established the early kingdom of animals.  Freed from constrain of roots, life is given the freedom to do whatever it pleases, and the gift furthermore arouse their innate desire to advance, and to acquire more.  But according to God’s will, whoever ate the fruit of knowledge ought to be punished.  With this punishment, the animals lost their contact to sunlight as their source of food.  And here’s where Darwin’s theory took over.  Along the path of advancement had life on earth created a hierarchy of food chain.  And the progress made by some life is piled upon other’s death.

After millions of years of evolution, there finally came us the sapiens firmly seated on top of the life forms on earth.  For the first time in on this planet this particular species of mammal have managed to consciously question their origin.  It was not a physical advancement in which human beings are the most physically gifted species, but it was a mental advancement in which intelligence have granted human beings the ability to create, besides the constant struggle with survival now seems so trivial.

But is that really the case?

Well, let’s just say that there still exists a hierarchy of food chain among human beings.  But unlike the natural food chain, instead of eating other human beings and acquiring their energy directly, a part of the human beings have found out a way to fully exploit the energy of others to fulfill their own advancement.  With the manipulation of social conventions and regulatory, of which were originally formed to bond us together, a small group of human beings can now exploit others of their own species more efficiently.  During the age of empires and kingdoms, royalties and elites sat at thrones high above their people.  With the physical labor of these subjects, empires and kingdoms had written chapters of glorious achievement and progress, from the early Egyptian pyramids, to the middle age Chinese Great Wall, to the fairly recent German Third Reich.  But thousands of years of modern civilization advanced even the mind of the most ordinary people, and one day they finally realized that all the efforts they’ve put and all the progress they’ve achieved did not belong to them.  The honors have all went to the people who merely laid on their stomach and waited for the free lunch, while the people who worked day in and day out like animals received no recognition whatsoever, except for the little food granted to sustain the survival of their physical existence.  And sometimes these sources of energy supply just didn’t come uninterrupted.

So the revolutions began, whether from within or from without.  Soon governments of democracies burgeoned throughout the world, raising the slogan such as “of the people, by the people, for the people”.  At least a good part of human beings had now seemed to be set free.  For the first time in quite a long while human beings could again enjoy the freedom and privilege once was achieved by human beings by stepping atop that nature’s food chain.  And human beings really believed that they were truly free.

Unfortunately, way before human beings once again started their journey towards the Garden of Eden, another set of mechanism kicked in and strayed them towards a new set of hierarchies and competitions: the “free” market.  With little intervention from the authorities, people can now freely produce, trade, and consume goods and innovations that once was only the privilege of the elites.  The freedom resulted into roughly two kinds of people.

The first kind of people carries the traditional value of the agricultural society, in which for every seed one plants there will be harvest in return.  They too, believe that for every effort they labor in work, whether consciously or unconsciously, there will be innovations and benefits waiting at the finish line, whether for the self or for the general well-being.  Thus again and again, people who took different role in the society somehow acted as an organic whole, pushing the modern civilization forward in an unprecedented speed.  The scientists unveiled more and more mysteries of the world; the engineers turned more and more human knowledge into advanced tools which make life on earth more comfortable and enjoyable; the labors replicated more and more of these tools, hoping that every single human beings can enjoy the products of human marvels affordably and happily.  The flow of wealth circled almost everyone.  The people were both the maker and the user; and they were both the donor and the benefited, until another group of people were developed.

Another kind of people inherits the ideology of the aristocrats and merchants, of whom are not particularly adapt in producing but are good in making profits through trades.  Without being able to master any particular professions, they took on the role as distributers of the society.  Potentials of human achievements are collected through taxes and trades on one hand by the aristocrats and merchants, and are redistributed as social constructions and goods by the other.  Wealth is created through the difference of the incomes and the outcomes, and the growth of wealth can be guaranteed through the increased distribution of potentials.  Once distribution reaches its fullest, the growth of wealth can only depend on an increase in the differences of the incomes and the outcomes.  While distribution succeeds innovation during times of great progress, it is the necessity of distribution that dominates the societies during times of stagnation.  With the growing differences of the incomes and the outcomes, a part of the society can no longer afford to share all of its resources and advances.  Inequity, unfortunately, once again brings back the hierarchy among human beings our forefathers had wished to eradicate.

Perhaps inequity is built into lives existing as physical forms: whenever there’s progress, there are competitions; whenever there’s competition, inequities emerge.  It is the most natural and fundamental law of the physical realm constrained by a single directional time: when an individual makes a choice, other options must be forgone; when an individual makes a move, all other individuals are affected positively or negatively.  When we choose to progress to benefit our descendants, we sacrifice our own energy, of which created inequity between us and our descendants.  And if we choose to either progress or to enjoy benefit beyond our own capability, sacrifice of others is required, and inequity between the providers of energy and the receivers of energy once again deepens.  And that is the ultimate reflection of progression: night school girls selling their art works on the streets when others of same ages partying without worries; vagrants begging for pocket changes while people passing by without cherishing the abundance they possess; people gathering around vendors for clothing ten dollars apiece, while the nearby department stores selling their valued customers thousand-dollars garments.

            Of course, reaching out the umbrella is easy, almost as easy and effortless as taking care the loved ones for the remaining of our life, and that is exactly what most caring people will do.  They will first love their families, and then their friends, then their life-long partners, following by their own families.  It is the notion of providing the best for the loved ones that life prospers in its own style of beauty.  But life doesn’t run on perfect equations.  Just as bombs must be dropped onto some families to protect the safety of ours, others must lose if some wishes to gain.  Through the demise of others, life prospers.

            Perhaps only after experiencing through life’s up’s and down’s can human beings realize the mechanism behind life.  Just like the prince that had lived through the luxurious wonders of life was able to achieve the enlightenment of Buddha.  For the first time in human history, a life form has realized the sufferings caused upon its very foundation.  Under the façade of happiness, beauty, and love, the existence of life is always accompanied by the pain, worry, and ignorance of the self, or of the others. 

如果妳正無奈的沉浮於這個世上

那請找個伴侶呵護相廝

如果妳正徬徨的迷失於無望之中

那請將妳的孩子托付於我

讓那人類未來的希望裡

有著妳那美麗的面龐

和我那覺醒的心房

The Path

Walking alone on a Friday night,

Rainfalls of leaves whispering with puzzled sigh:

“What are they worrying about?

What are they hurrying about?”

And only the thousand-year old trees

Would understand this endless spree.

No matter how hard we would ever try,

One should never make a baby cry.

Our civilization was shaped by different methods,

But with a higher purpose it ties us together.

And even the tiniest candlelight

Can brighten the dusty sky.

Hand in hand, we pray to lighten up the eternal night.

So what is the belief?

A goal that aims to advance the human race;

And why is the faith?

To hope the world would become a better place.

We rise, we fade, that’s the circle of life.

But we fight, and we strike,

Never to underestimate the power of our might.

When beauty lies beyond that endless path,

The soul cries out to the heartless wrath:

“Where have all the Flowers gone?”

Well,

In the deepest part of every beating heart

That’s where love truly rests upon.

Like an old saying, traveling around can broaden one’s sight.  But unless we truly pay attention to what’s really going on in the strange places, we don’t really get anything out of them except the fanciness we don’t usually find in our ordinary dull life.  So there I was, with my buddy, headed out to the famous rainy city of Seattle for the first time, with the hope that there must be something cool among the coffee beans and beneath the alien parking lot.  Not surprisingly, there were many beautiful city scenes and pretty Asian girls in Seattle, Japanese in particular.  But what’s the difference between Champaign and Seattle besides the quantity and the quality of the beauties?  Tall buildings, short buildings, they’re just pretty scenes after all.  Pretty people, ugly people, they’re just human beings after all.  Every city has its own stories and fabulousness, and of course, there were a lot of cool things worth chatting about with friends, but there was one particular image that grabbed my attention for the rest of the trip.

It was near pier 55, where my buddy and I were heading to catch the harbor cruise.  There was this vagabond leaning against the railing of the sidewalk, and with probably his daily routine, begging for small cash.  A card board was held on his hands, saying, “Why Lie / Need a Beer”.  Well, he might have been just another beggar on the street trying to beg a living, or he might have even been a dirty liar who just wanted to get some quick cash.  But what attracted my attention to him among the thousands of homeless people in the city was not of his appearance, but of his outright honesty, and his unintentional consciousness with respect to the thousands-year old human civilization.

Yes, why lie?  We all need a beer.  Except those who refuse to drink for different reasons, we have all tried a beer upon different occasions for different purposes.  But I’m not talking about the crazy-wild-party kind of beer, nor the depressed-let’s-get-drunk kind of beer here, but the “I think it’s happiness, let’s go check it out” kind of beer.  Looking upon our contemporary society and back onto our human history, the world is full of people dedicating their entire life looking for a thing called “happiness”.  We hear leaders promising their citizens, “I will bring you all happiness;” parents telling their children, “I want you to grow up to be a happy man;” and lovers whispering into one another’s ear, “I just want you to be happy.”  Yes, most of us are not ambition-driven, power-craving, money- seeking machines who work 24/7 just to make sure they’re constantly stepping onto more and more people and reaching closer and closer towards that number-one-in-the-world throne. Yes, most of us are just like… you know, ordinary people who just want a decent, oh, and happy, life.  Apparently that’s not a big deal, just people trying to get through life nicely and calmly.  However, thinking harder about it, things are actually more messed up then they appear to be.  Why do people prefer happiness?  Why don’t they look for, say, disappointment?  Sadness?  How about frustration?  Or even simply pissed-off?  What’s so special about this happiness of which everyone sings and praises?  Most people will immediately find the question retarded and reply, well, dummy, happiness is what makes us feel good.  So, why should we cover ourselves with anger and sadness and feel bad about ourselves and others, while we can work our way out and submerge into happiness and feel good about everything else?

What a simple but yet great answer!  A couple of sentences have answered the all time mystery of human behaviors!  Besides me and a handful of people, it seems like everyone else understands the theory perfectly, especially the druggies and the alcoholics.  Of course, why bother dealing with this not-only-imperfect-but-also-pretty-disappointing world when there’s coke powder and beer bottles right next to them?  You don’t have to struggle to make a decent survival.  You don’t have to work hard to realize a simple happiness.  All you have to do is to sniff that powder into your nose or gulp that drink down to your throat, and all the problems will be immediately replaced with utmost ecstasy.  But unfortunately, both beer and coke are poisonous.  Despite the fact that the happiness doesn’t last long before you begin feel very, very sick, they’re also pretty damn expensive.  No working definitely means no beer and coke, but after a couple shots of beer and coke, I wonder who would still be willing to go back to work?  So, most of us good people give up our hope on beers and coke, and shrug back to our old traditional way of happiness seeking – study hard, find a job, get a girl, and settle down.  Nothing orgasm along the way, just little smiles on our face.  By the end of our time, when we look back upon our days, we’ll be glad that we have made a good choice, and we’ll call it a life.

Thinking about this makes my spine chill, for happiness is really what most people spend all their life searching for.  I’m glad that every illusionary drug human beings have ever invented are expensive and has all kinds of nasty side effects, otherwise we’ll have the majority of our human race lying like corpses and cracking dopes for their entire life.  After all, if we don’t discover and understand anything from the happiness we seek, what’s the difference between the desire for phenyl ethylamine of the lovers and the desire for amphetamine of the junkies?

I took a photo of the man and his wittycard board, and gave him five bucks.  If the society can’t give him what he’s looking for, maybe a beer of my treat can help him find his own happiness in this turbulent world, at least for a while.