How many times do you misunderstand something each day? Do you really think you understand everything well?

Maybe you can say that you have learned science at school, so you understand the world; you have lived for about 18 years, so you know people’s feelings; and it’s possible that you believe you have a good self-knowledge.

If you have learned science, you ought to know people thought the earth is the center of the universe until 16^th century; people believe phlogiston is necessary for burning until 17^th century; they thought stones can be changed to gold by alchemists. How can we make sure our view on world is right? The world is full of misleading phenomenons. We see the earth pull everything by gravity, which is right; we see the sun, the moon, the stars moving around us, which is partly true; we see the surface of earth is plain, which is totally wrong. The proverb “Seeing is believing” doesn’t hold true today.

If you have lived for 18 years, you should know that people sometimes hide their true feelings and pretend to be happy or sad, by different kinds of reasons; and sometimes we misunderstand others. I misunderstood my parents in the early years of childhood. I thought they didn’t look after me all day because they didn’t care about me. When I realized they just had work to do and loved me very much, I felt very warm, much more than usual. But in most cases, misunderstanding has bad effects. Swindlers mislead us on purpose to get money or valuable things from us. And we may do harm to some good people.

If you still think you have a good self-knowledge, then you must have no emotion. When you have just done a work well, you feel very proud as if you can achieve everything. When you perform terribly or have just lost your job, you feel depressed as though you are foolish, silly, and talentless. Evaluating yourself too high or too low causes them all. It makes us emotional, so it’s a good thing. But always evaluating yourself wrongly is a serious problem.

I think everyone is talented when born. If they are not good enough after education, it is because they are not educated properly, and misunderstand the goal, the way or something else. Suppose you begin to learn something, if others praise your achievement, you will be encouraged and continue learning; if others laugh at you, you will feel depressed and never want to think about it. So those who are “bad” were just not given applause at the right time. On our birth, we are related to a race, which cannot be chosen. Some are educated wrongly so that they regard themselves as a unique excellent race; all other poor races should be destroyed, for example the Germen and Japanese in the WWII. And this kind of thoughts is still held by some people among us, including Chinese. All wars are caused by misunderstanding: being swayed by prejudice and not understand the importance of human unity.

How to reduce or avoid misunderstanding? Perhaps we can communicate with each other frequently and widely. Communicate frequently can ensure we eliminate diverge in time. But it’s not enough. In Japan at wartime, for example, people communicated frequently but they don’t talk with foreigners, so they were easily fooled by government and trained to be killing machines. Today the Japanese government is still trying to hide the truth by juggling the history textbook, and people in North Korea think their living condition is the best because the government even forbids them to use the radio. So communicate widely is important.

The truth is like the sun, and the misleading things are like the dark clouds. The knowledge is not only from book, we must explore for it ourselves. When you misunderstand the truth, you can only see a black sky. If you poke aside the dark clouds, you’ll see a blue velour similar beauty.

The following is what I have thought recently, the structure is not clear, because my thinking hasn’t come to an end:

Yesterday I saw the leaves floating down to the ground. I used to think they would come up in the spring of the next year, but then I realized that they would be totally different——they’re another generation. They wouldn’t know anything about the last generation: they don’t know the growing in the spring, the ripeness in the summer, the falling off in the autumn. Not to say the freezing cold in winter, only branches have experienced that.

We humans are similar. After a century, would the people notice there was a man called Mike Rong? During the development of humans, there had been billions of people showing up for scores of years. Do we know their names, faces, or experiences? I always ask myself: “What am I living for?” “Where am I heading for?” Recently I hear the same questions again, and realized that I am not the only one who has such doubts. Maybe they are common questions. I know it’s a really difficult problem. One day I asked my mother, she told me that we are here to contribute to the society. And another question came:“Why should we make contributions?” She said:“We humans hold together to achieve what other creatures cannot reach. A single person’s ability is very limited, and a group of people’s ability is infinite.” As a little boy, I didn’t understand what she said, and laid aside these endless questions.

We had a talk in a bar last night, just the Halloween. So death is unavoidable in our topics. I heard some people said they believe in soul. When people passed away, the soul will not disappear, it will floating in the air or “live” in another place in the universe, where we don’t know. I don’t want to argue about that, but I don’t believe. I used to fear the darkness and ghosts seriously for a long time, until I learned science. I saw the power of science: skyscrapers, nuclear explosion, the satellites in the space……All those were done by humans, it made me feel powerful and confident. So I believe in science firmly. Our consciousness is based on our brain, or rather, the connections of nerve cells. When we die, the blood circulation will stop, and the cells will die because of the lack of oxygen. According to the researches, there shouldn’t be something like soul. I think the superior tells us we have souls is to guide us to live in the sun, concentrate on our business, not to worry too much. They say good man will live in heaven after die, when you do immoral things you will get punishment in the hell, in order to make everybody behave well. I think religion makes illusion to make people live happily, but illusion is not reality. The dead won’t come back. When I think of this, I always feel a sense of sorrow. After I die, I will know nothing about my life, no matter how great I was, or how criminal I was. So it is with my mom, dad, and all good people I know.

Does a life need a meaning? Life is a series of physical movements and chemical reactions. Do they have meanings? Maybe yes, maybe no. From my point of view, all the scientists are doing one thing: try everything to understand the nature, the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, and somewhere out of the universe……They want answers to the same question: “What’s the meaning of us?” We learn faster now, under the education system built by the former generations, a pupil’s knowledge is beyond ancient people. We live longer, under the medical techniques invented by the former generations, many deadly diseases can be cured today. I think an important point made us powerful is inheritance. We can use the yesterday’s technology without spending time to develop it. We just use directly even you know nothing about it or improve it if you are a professor in this field. Generation after generation, we are like an undead person who always exploring, understanding, which gives hope to the possibly that we will find the answer one day. It’s a faith of humans. No matter if we can find the answer, what the answer will be, where the exploration lead to. We will try, to find it.

The world is too complex to be understood, but at least I know: if you make a great achievement in the human history, you will be remembered, like Newton, Bell, Wright Brothers, Einstein……Once your name is written in history, your life is not wasted. Now do you know what is worth doing? Not studying something boring to get a higher mark, to find a high-income job, and breed, and die. What we need to do is something really important to achieve our goals. Of course it’s personal. You should make your own plan and follow your own goal. Some people are actually doing it, what are we waiting for?