06-25-2019
While discussing the change of personalities that come with age, my son recommended to me a book called “The Little Prince”, which is often a required reading in high school (originally written in French).
“The Little Prince” described a few adults who appeared very strange from a boy’s point of view. From those adults, I felt some familiar adult behaviors: in the process of growing up, the hardworking adults who lost their dreams and weakened their desires slowly became inflexible and devoted workers.
The lamplighter in the book tirelessly light and put out the lamp every minute also moved me.
Recently, while reading my father’s blog, I suddenly realized my over 90 year old father is the adult who didn’t lose his dreams, as mentioned in the story: “All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it.”
My father’s path is as follows:as In 1950, my father dropped out of college (ChongQing University) to join the air force in the new China. After he became a member of the Communist Party, he was chosen as a golden boy and became a young instructor to study and teach the theory and history of newly established Chinese Communist Party in the Air Force Academy, in Changchun.
My father had his dream and was very precise. In a series of political reforms in China in 1950s and 1960s, my father didn’t go along with the mainstream, but instead voiced out his criticism and suggestions to some events which he thought were not right, this negatively affected my father’s career, thus losing his golden boy rank.
A few decades hardship in his career did not destroy my father’s dream which motivated him to drop out of college to join the army when he was young. Nowadays, some of my father’s daily pleasures are: reading books, reading newspapers, writing articles to discuss common questions and thoughts related to Chinese social development.
I felt my father’s articles come alive with his patriotic blood and full of his dreams for a better society.
May my father be a role model to guide me to be enjoy reading and writing.
Little Episodes
[Father's Day] My father, once handsome, is very modern now. After his article was published on his official website, my father read his work for the first time from a mobile phone, a advanced enjoyment. My dad is a good role model who never stops learning. (Today, my brother published my daddy’s article and captured dad’s appreciation his work.)
Screenshot from ：50 classics from (almost) everyone’s high school reading list: “In ‘The Little Prince’, a pilot whose plane has crashed in the Sahara desert meets a young boy from outer space. The boy is traveling from planet to planet in search of friendship. On the boy’s home—an asteroid—he lived alone, accompanied only by a solitary rose. Once on Earth, the boy meets a wise fox who tells him he can only see clearly with his heart.”