I long for change, and change demands courage and a kind of determination I have to gather from within.
But reality stays quiet, obeying its own laws: like an apple dropping to the ground, following nothing except the most basic rules of physics.
We can even write it as an equation, Newton’s F = G * (m₁ * m₂) / r². I’ve made my vow: to change, to live with intention, knowing that transformation takes time and relentless effort.
Truthfully, it’s hard. Change never comes easily. In this sprawling city, long train rides sometimes leave me dizzy, unmoored. I try to pull back, to hide inside the shell of my pride, but something underneath keeps shouting—while music keeps echoing all around me.
我从山中来，带着兰花草。
种在小园中，希望花开早。
一日看三回，看得花时过。
兰花却依然，苞也无一个。
There is a particular bitterness in showing weakness—in giving words to what I’d rather keep unsaid. It stings, like fire against raw skin. Sometimes I’d rather disappear into endless programming tasks than face that exposure. The whole journey feels like a plum’s bitterness: sour, astringent, slow to sweeten. All I can do is keep going, wrapped in helplessness and stubbornness at once.
I spent seven years at my alma mater, and from the first day I set foot on foreign soil I knew its motto: “Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum”—first, to learn the nature of things.
Maybe I’m only now beginning to understand it, with the clarity time gives. Even after two degrees, in different colleges within the same university, it’s taken me this long. I used to think I wasn’t smart, only good at little tricks. But perhaps it was never about intelligence. Perhaps it was simply nature playing its own tricks, while I built castles to conceal my real self—knowing the truth all along, yet refusing to admit it.
Still, I’m doing alright. Let me endure—to taste the plum’s sharp, tart edge to the very end. Let the world not tighten around me as the long season passes.