The Springtime in Life

Although it’s just mid-October, it was really cold a couple of days ago as if winter had already come. This afternoon when I drove back home, I felt warm and cozy, which was totally different from a couple of days ago.

I remember once I asked my neighbour which was harder for him to endure, the hot summer or the cold winter? He said the winter. His job is to repair cars. In the winter he has to work in the freezing wind. You can imagine the harsh conditions.

Speaking of cold weather, I’m reminded of when I was a child and lived in a village in the north of China. When it snowed in winter, I had to walk through farmland to get to school. Sometimes I had to stop in the middle of my walk to get the snow out of my shoes. Later on, I went to a boarding school for middle school. Some classmates went back home weekly to bring back pancakes as their food for the whole week. When we ate, the food was cold and the pickles were also cold. It was cold in the dorm and classroom since there was no heater. Only the water supplied in the cafeteria was hot. Looking back now, the conditions seem harsh, but at the time most of my classmates all lived the same way, so it didn’t seem harsh back then at all.

Back then the people around me all experienced a lot of suffering. Coldness was just one kind. When I lived in the village, there were seven people in my family but we only had two rooms. It was very crowded. However, another family in the village had an even worse situation. They also had seven people but they only had one room. But it was still not the worst. My father once taught at schools in some remote areas. Many families over there had only one pair of pants. Whoever needed to go out that day put on the pants. The rest of the family had to huddle underneath a broken blanket to keep warm.

Perhaps this was not the worst either. In the years of the CCP’s (Chinese communist party) so-called “Great Leap Forward,” my grandpa lived in another area and my grandma lived in the village. Half of people in the village died due to starvation. No one wants to talk about those years. No one is particularly sad either. After you suffer for such a long time, you get used to it. When the suffering lasts even longer, your heart becomes numb. Moreover, everybody’s life was like this.

How much pain and suffering the land of China has witnessed! It is far beyond description.

After I went to the college, the financial situation in my family got better. But sickness was still a problem because there was no money to buy medicine. One day I opened a drawer where we collected medicine throughout the years, and some medicine was gone. I asked my second older brother why. He smiled wryly and explained that my mother had a toothache. Sometimes when she couldn’t endure the tooth pain, she would take some medicine from the drawer just to try to suppress the pain a little. When any family member was sick, they would do the same thing.

My father once had severe hepatitis which ruined his health. Toothaches were a common trouble of my mother. When it ached, it really hurt. I had toothache when I was in college so I also knew the pain. As my parents got old, their health was a big concern.

Then one day in the spring 12 years ago, when I talked with my parents over the phone, I found that their long-time depression was completely gone. Pleasantly surprised, I asked them why. They happily told me that they had started to practice Falun Dafa. They became healthy. The whole family practiced Falun Dafa and got along with each other and the neighbours very well.

There is really a lot of suffering in life, both mental and physical. Rivers go into the sea; fallen leaves return to the roots. Perhaps after going through the many sufferings, we have to reconsider the significance of life. When we understand the origin of life and the preciousness of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, it becomes easy for us to find the road to the springtime of life.