Interpreting God

You may call our time a postmodern era, but a Chinese, even one speaks English and works on a Sony Vaio, still can not resist the temptation of peering into a Fortune Book to get some foresight into the ups and downs in a year and on some day to day level, still tries to interpret the will of the God.

By the "God", however, I do not mean Jesus, or even the Budda. Strangely enough, we Chinese are actually the world's largest population without a religion. While having no religion, however, we do have enough of "Dao"s to direct our thoughts and acts in the world, and many of us believe in a general, unknown God in an unspecified way. And when we're faced with some big choices or questions, we still try to interpret the will of the God.

Before this March, my God have always granted my way and I have always been able to get whatever I wanted, or wanted to do. Nevertheless, I have always come to regret all my decisions and thought the other choice could lead me closer to the destination as I later defined.

I went to the university of my first choice and I later regretted and thought I should choose another university in another city; I got the job I dreamed of after college and I later regretted that I should work in a different function in the same industry; I got a full scholarship for a graduate study and I later regretted and thought I should choose another school on another continent. I got the best job I could dream of after graduate school and I later regretted and thought another job I could lead me closer to the kind of work and life I now aspired to.

There was this time when I left an interview, it started to snow in a sunny Winter day in Shanghai, which is quite rare, and I took it for a good sign coz there's a Chinese saying "a good snow is a good sign for a good year". However, that job turned out to be a mis-step and it took more two more years to get back to a position I should be on without that mishap.

So the sign from the God is actually a far more complicated art than what one sees on the surface. And last year, there were a lot of signs pointing to totally different directions and I was quite puzzled. By the end of the day, I come to an realization that perhaps there's nothing like the will of the God, or the way of your destiny, the seeming signs are actually questions instead of answers. And you're the one to make your answer and then your fate is an interaction between the questions and your answers. Moreover, instead of getting the answers right, one perhaps need to get the questions right in the first place. Like Gertrude Stein, a legendary American woman who hosted the most inspiring dinner parties for the likes of Hemingway and Picasso in the 20s' and 30s' Paris � when asked before her death, "what is the answer?", she was reported to reply "what is the question?"

 

Anyway, now that my God has for the very first time stopped me to do something I really wanted to do, perhaps this time I will be finally doing the right thing and I won't come back to regret it, for the first time in my life?