Serenity

As the third season ARIA (animation) is on air, the original work in comic is just over. When I heard this news, I felt a little lost. As I was a senior college student, sometimes I felt pressures. I always found new challenge things, and made me have full of things to avoid wasting time. Therefore, I’d like to find a way to relax my mind. I posted a message on an animations and comics discussion board in bbs.gamer.com.tw; “Can any one recommend me a work that can make people have peaceful minds?” I asked in the message. Magically, almost everybody who replied me said that ARIA was the best choice, so I took their recommendations.

First time I watched ARIA (animation), I found the tempo in this story is really slow. Soaking in the fantasy world happened to give me a short period of time to take a rest; I could throw all plans away temporarily, and got back to fight in the real world with more power. The images, music, characters, and stories of ARIA were charming. I admitted that ARIA was not a perfect work, but it was a great work, especially for busy people such as me.

After the first experience with ARIA, I started to read the original work, comics, and listened to the dramas. Of course, I also watched the second season animation. They all brought me a happy time. I understand that someday the world of ARIA will finish, but I don’t expect that it happens so soon. Although I felt a little lost in the beginning, now I am fine to view this fact. As Alicia said to Akari, the true happiness must be incomparable; however, the happiness we feel now is the greatest fortune. Therefore, let’s confront what is about to change someday and cherish the wonderful moment now.

Although I often find some new special things to do, regular daily life is very attractive to me. For example, get up at 8, study in English for two hours, study in mathematics for two hours, and then the morning is over. I like this style of life; however, it’s hard for me to achieve.

Recently, I go to the bed at 0 a.m. and fall into sleep with listening to English dramas, “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”. This is a small step toward to my perfect daily life. It would be better if I could go to the bed at 11 a.m.; I’m still trying. The problem is that I usually get up at 10 a.m. which is a little late. When I can get up at 8 a.m., I can probably go to the bed earlier.

In the past, I schedule different kinds of things everyday. Now I find that the mess schedule is not a good idea to follow. I turn it into a simpler one: Let each kind of thing be done in each specific time. Also, get the most important things done first. With the two principles in mind, I decide to learn English and mathematics in the morning since I seldom spend time learning them in the past years. I know they are the most important, but learning English and mathematics are often not hurry, and thus I learn them with little time. The result is that my abilities about English and mathematics are the same as the ones several years ago.

Speaking of making money, why should we care this so serious? Sometimes people chase the way of making money and lose their ways in life. Therefore, before we start thinking of how to make more money, maybe we should think what life is first.

So what is life? I don’t know, and even I know it, it still can’t be the answer of others because everyone has his/her own life. Psychologist Maslow had given a hierarchy of needs in 1943. The hierarchy from the lowest to the highest is Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem and Self-actualization. The hierarchy is in pyramid form, that is, the lower part it is, the more people there is. The idea is simple: after we have satisfied in the lower parts, we can be interested in the higher one. For example, we won’t be interested in self-actualization if we don’t have food (physiological) and safety.

Or we can view the life in the other way. The basic of life is finding a goal. We will live with more passion as long as we have a goal to achieve. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a kind of goal which is ordered by necessity. Take me as an example, I always would like to find something meaningful to do because I don’t have the problems about no food, no safety or no love. Since I have earned some awards and been the class leader for several times, I do have some esteem from others. However, I never feel comfortable with self-actualization. In deed, I don’t know what kinds of goals I should achieve. Therefore, I lose the way to work hard sometimes.

When I was a boy, I only knew that I should study hard and get a good record of formal schooling, so I can have a good salary. However, because of many people have the same thoughts, there are more people have college degree than before. What’s worse is that even master degree is not valuable as before.

On the other hand, young people are becoming losing their patience in working in company because this makes them have less freedoms and salaries. The new idea about making money is to set up their companies. Actually, some of my friends have done that for a while. The most famous examples are Wretch and Pixnet. Watching they grow up from a nameless company to a famous one is really interesting. Recently, one of the members in out lab is setting up his company. He has gotten a position in ITRI, so he don’t need to worry about no income. Also, working in ITRI is not as busy as the other companies in Science Park in Hsin-Chu, so he is able to have enough free time to manage his company. To be honest, I am becoming having the similar idea. Maybe I won’t set up my company, but I think working in a company is not a good idea, since the salary is getting lower than before. Who knows how lower it would be after I finish the duty in soldier.

There is a famous book named “Rich dad, poor dad” written by Robert T. Kiyosaki. The author has written a series of books after this one. The main idea of these books is to introduce how poor our normal working plan is and some knowledge in making money. We know that if we could earn more money more easily by reading these books, then everybody would earn more money. This implies nobody would earn more money since the richness is relative instead of absolute. Some readers said that although the books teach them some knowledge, to accomplish it is very hard. However, this message gives me a insight of challenges. As what I’ve said, if everybody could earn more money by reading these books, the methods in these books wouldn’t be useful. I think I’ll take some time to read these books, after all if I don’t find new thoughts, I couldn’t achieve new ways to make money.