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The title is a line from Lynn in the 2017 Thai movie, Bad Genius. “Don’t you see – even if you don’t cheat, life cheats you anyway.” When I learn English, the literal meaning is easy to get but the subtle culture and personal feel is hard to grasp. This can come to the difference between two persons. What do I know what you say means the same as I say the same words and sentences? In this sense, the language is not static as a book waiting to be read but a two-way interaction between you and the world. This can be rephrased as another line: I know what I give you but I do not know what you receive. ...

哲学的重要性在于世界观和价值观是与政治直接挂钩的。人类的种种冲突多半源于这两观的差异，以唯心为基础的哲学本质就是个人自我中心，而唯物论的基础则在于事实和科学认知。唯心论者从一己观世界，却不能跳出自己的局限与狭隘。虽是人性，却不利于解决人与人之间的矛盾。唯物论者看到宇宙浩渺，个人若尘，因此不必过于看重自己，或许对冲突的解决有利。 上篇提到佩索阿的诗句Nature is parts without a whole.其实可以稍稍改动一下： Truth is parts without a whole. Universe is parts without a center.这样看世界，或许更接近真相。当然，每个人从自己的经历得出的认识总是各有不同，知道生命的局限或许能看得更清楚更真实。 执与不执，总是一个问题。不过这个问题归根结底是如何选择，欲海无边，人生苦短。正如赫尔曼黑塞（Hermann Hesse）这样说：人们必须找到自己的梦，这样一来，这条路就会变得轻松许多。不过，没有一个梦可以永远持续，每个梦都会被新的梦取代，我们不可以想要紧抓任何一个梦。

Nature, is parts without a whole. When I read this line, it is like a lightning strike. For each of us, there are some universial patterns of our experiece in this world. However, it is each of us that makes the whole, loosely connected and remotely located. Yes, there is no such a whole. No one could experience everything in this universe. 2023-04-20 Another line from Marilyn Monroe’s poem runs in the same vein. ...

In my backyard, there are always bird dramas going on and on. As you may know that birds are territorial animals. One year, a robin couple fought with another couple of black crow because somehow the black crow stole their chick and ate it. the poor robins called all their friends and had a fight on the garage’s roof. This spring, two Magpies built their nest on the apple tree. The construction took about a month. Now both are busy for internal decorations. ...

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received. Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity. Out of a hundred years a few minutes were made that stayed with me, not a hundred years. One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

The quest for truth seems a noble endeavor. Generally I want to know more about the world and how it works. Why people do something instead of others? How to live your life to its best potentials? At the same time, I know I will have a short life, limited time, limited resources, and there is no way for me to know the world. At most, I am just experiencing my little world, family, a few friends, and a few colleagues. Still the quest is always on. ...

The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.

Here is one piece on Cormac McCarthy’s two books, The Passenger and Stella Maris, by Nicolas Medina Mora on Nation (Apr 3/10, 2023). Ned Rorem jokes that everything in the world from music to food to people was either German or French. In the same facetious spirit, the author says every era in the history of taste can be classified into one of two categories: those that prefer the Opera Prima and those that prefer the Late Masterpiece. Periods that favor debutantes are romantic and avant-garde, or else give rise to a classicist revival in which the old forms are imbued with youthful vigor. Times that admire maturity gravitate toward the baroque and the mannered, or else to a modernist refashioning of tradition. When the essence of art is associated with youth, a whole generation rediscovers Mozart; when it’s associated with wisdom, Bach becomes fashionable yet again. ...

“When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.” 君子之交，其淡如水。执象而求，咫尺千里。问余何适，廓儿忘言。华枝春满，天心月圆。