| A Way Out |
| By Cheah Lee Hwa Translated by Wu Hsiao-ting Graphic by Su Fang-pei |
An old woman was hospitalized for a few days. When she had recovered and was about to go home, she realized that she had lost her bus pass. A student of mine happened to be volunteering at the hospital. He looked everywhere for her pass but couldn’t find it. Though he was worried about her, the woman didn’t seem to be bothered by it. She told my student, “Don’t worry. I’ll figure a way out.” My student asked naively, “What way out can you think of?” “Well, I can walk home. It just takes 30 minutes,” she answered. My student, used to a life of convenience, didn’t think her solution was a good way out at all. For him, 30 minutes was a long way to walk! After he shared this story with me, I in turn shared it with my other students in class. I told them that it would do us good to learn from the woman’s sanguine attitude. Her way of thinking—“I’ll figure a way out”—was admirable. She demonstrated to us that when we encounter a problem, we shouldn’t just throw up our hands in defeat and expect others to help us. Every problem has a way out. We just need to be positive and have the courage to work it out. This episode brought to mind the story of a Tzu Chi recycling volunteer and her family. The volunteer’s son had lost part of his arm in a work accident. Her older daughter suffered from a mental disorder brought on by a traumatic event. Her younger daughter, though appearing healthy, was deaf, and she talked with slurred speech as a result. You couldn’t help feeling sorry for the family; they had every reason to wallow in self-pity and complain about their bad lot in life. However, when the younger daughter was interviewed by Da Ai TV, she said that although her family first took the setbacks hard, they soon realized that they had to move on and leave the past behind. “If you want to move forward, you can’t keep looking back, or else you will trip and fall.” That statement is full of truth and wisdom. It is just as Master Cheng Yen says: “When we put the front foot down, we lift the back foot up. We let yesterday go and focus on today.” Lingering on the past won’t help things; only when we let go can we be free to face the future. Through their setbacks in life, that younger daughter taught us that dwelling on what cannot be undone will just hinder us from creating a better life for ourselves. A positive attitude makes life’s challenges easier to handle. Both the older woman and the younger daughter make that obvious. I wonder if my students, belonging to that younger generation who generally have had a cushy life, understand this. I wonder if my students can be positive when life throws a curveball at them. I give them my best wishes. I hope they all develop the kind of wisdom and positive attitude which will help them to find a way through the challenges of life, instead of finding excuses and evading problems. It might be helpful to bear in mind this quote by the American author Ann Brashares: “Your problem isn’t the problem, it’s your attitude about the problem.”
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