There are many brilliant and talented people, yet many fail to cultivate their virtue or expand their achievements because they remain stuck in old habits, wasting their lives. Regarding self-correction, it is a sign of fortune or calamity: those who act upon goodness will find blessings, while those who act upon ill-will will face misfortune. Sincerity aligns with heaven; when fortune approaches, it can be foreseen by observing goodness; when calamity approaches, it can be foreseen by observing unrighteousness.
If you constantly criticize society, conflict will persist. How can you hope to grasp everything if you waste your limited life on phenomena outside your heart? What we can do is learn to "let go." When the heart is tranquil, the external environment will also transform. True tranquility resides within; the most beautiful scenery is in one's own heart, not outside the self.
You may share what you know and believe to be right, but do not attach expected outcomes to it (for instance, insisting that others must listen to you). This way, others are more likely to accept your ideas. This applies to partners and parents and children alike. If you force your views upon them, their ego will instinctively resist.
If the motherland is a ship on a long expedition, my pen is an oar pulling forcefully forward; if life is a long piece of music, my footsteps are the leaping notes.
Since I cannot yet become profound, I will allow myself to be lighthearted. How can one with a sorrowful face hear the sound of flowers blooming? How can one who is pretending understand the excitement within the chorus of frogs?
Time flows like water, and years slip away, leaving much forgotten. Familiar faces seem to drift further away in the winds of time, leaving only traces of memory scattered like mottled shadows, unable to reclaim yesterday's splendor. Having witnessed the blooming and falling of flowers and the ebb and flow of tides, one no longer craves or clings. Those who must go, depart; those we wished would stay, also depart.
