Source: The internet
There was an elderly gentleman called Mr. Ho who wrote a letter of complaint to the Editor in a newspaper, commenting: One morning, he saw a young man tying a property advertisement for an estate agent onto a tree, he then asked him politely, “Sir, are you aware of the property advertisements on the trees? They were removed by the Cleaning-team from the Urban Council recently.”
“I know!” replied the young man annoyingly.
“If you already know, then why do you still put these adverts up? It’s illegal to destroy the appearance and cleanliness of the city!”
After hearing this, the young man carried on tying up the advertisement, and without lifting his head said, “…just trying to earn some money…”
“So just because you want to earn some spare money, you think you can break the law by destroying the environment and revolt against our government’s law enforcement?” the elderly gentleman said in a righteous and stern manner.
“Breaking the law? Well, there’re many examples of breaking the law, many rich people park their cars wherever they wish, and that’s never breaking the law!” replied the young man.
“Do you mean that, ‘if you break the law, then everyone can break the law together’ Oh! How can there be any hope in this country?”
“Yes, there’s no hope!” As soon as the young man finished speaking, he jumped back onto his motorbike and hurriedly rode off towards another tree to tie up another advertisement.
“There is no hope!” I could visualise the scene of the young man saying this cynically whilst disappearing away on his motorcycle! It may seem quite amusing, yet also quite saddening. If there is no hope in a society, if there is no hope in a young person, how terribly pitiful and terribly frightening that is!
I also read a story in a newspaper written by one reader: I was once travelling by public transport, where the driver suddenly pulled our bus over to the side of the road, opened the door and shouted to those sitting on the back row, “You three secondary students at the back, get off this bus at once, get off! Did you hear me? Get －－ off －－”
As all the other passengers turned towards the back of the bus still puzzled, the driver again shouted loudly, “Today’s education system is such a failure, all three of you still sat in the back smoking! All I need to do is to drive this bus to the police station, and each of you will be fined three thousand dollars! Do you think it’s easy to earn money? The current economic climate is so adverse; do you know how hard it is for your parents to earn a living?”
This time, all the passengers were speechless, the driver now took from his pocket a hundred dollar note and said, “This was given to me this morning by my wife, it’s money for my lunch and dinner. However, it’s now after 5pm, I still haven’t spent any of it. I have been so busy driving and dropping off passengers, how can I have time to eat? My stomach is starved… You students are in secondary school, don’t know how to behave, and still wasting money on cigarettes, get off my bus all three of you!”
However, those three secondary students simply responded with an expression “You control me? So what, I’m happy!”
At a primary school, a teacher asked the young pupils to make sentences, the title was “Ahhh… how…” One of the pupils wrote: “Ahhh…How come I’m dead?”
How should we live to be seen as worth ‘living’? Some trees may look withered on the outside; however once winter passes and spring arrives, the branches will still diligently ‘sprout green leaves’! Although the scrap collector, Mr Wong Guan-ying, picks up rubbish and collects bits of scrap every day, he still possesses the goal and hope of ‘building a library to benefit young scholars’!
And yet, there are some young people who take drugs on a daily basis, gamble, and commit armed robbery… hopelessly ‘pass the day in ignorance’, and live by the day; or there may come a day, when they will suddenly realise with a shock “Ahh, how come I’m dead? … ”
In fact, to live ‘without a goal, without fighting spirit, without vitality’ is no different from ‘being dead’! Therefore, there is a maxim: “Direction of trees, Wind-determined; Direction in life, Self-determined.”
It’s true that perhaps nobody is our enemy; our real enemy is our very own mind of “laziness, slackness, lack of direction, lack of vigour to strive forward, and lack of determination on how to persist to the end!”
