My essay (1)

The temperature was neither too high nor too low, but what I breathed in was still the stuffy air. In a carriage of the power car, I kept sweeping every building outside through windows and concentrating on every word the conductor was announcing. When I got off the power car, however, I found that what I had done was futile. Standing on the wrong platform in the twilight, I felt the city huge but chilly, for I could not even feel my existence. After waiting for another 20 minutes, I got on the right power car. But when I passed through the gate of the wicket, and left the Shiroishi station, I got confused about which was the way to my dormitory. The sky turned somber; the cloud misted the vague moon, and the entire Sapporo city was gloomy. I was limp and weary, befogged in mind and fatigued in body. In the end, when I found the dormitory and entered my room, I burst to tears. Loneliness, unfamiliarity, fatigue and difficulty of integrating myself into the class, all of these just brought me back to the real world from the firstly excitement and freshness toward everything in a new country. It seemed that the whole world just came to the end. And what was worse was that, other exchange students like me were seemingly spending wonderful and full-of-new-friends time.

This is the first time I would live without almost all of the familiar people in another strange country. In fact, I had considered before that life in the first month might not be favorable, but I could not imagine how big the changes were. Everything was irregular and out of my control. Even if I told myself that all of these would be OK, I could not comfort my heart at all, for I did not know where my future was. But, the only thing I knew was that I had to change myself, for I had no capability to change the environment.

The first thing I did was writing emails to my cousin who had a job and one of my seniors who studied and lived in the same place as I. They told me this sentence, “you are feeling a tough life, but this is because you are progressing.”

Then I kept these words engraved in my mind, and I began to face everything de novo. For example, I started to compel myself to smile to classmates and insert words in their conversation. And I tried to do my best in basketball club and not skip training even if I got extremely exhausted in the evenings. In the dormitory, I visited the others to have fun. And I even chatted and played with them to 5 a.m. at weekend. Friends came to my room, too. At the same time, I attended every activity that I could participate in, such as speech contests, teaching classes to secondary school students about China and so on.

Simultaneously, I had never forgotten the importance of academics. Thanks to the customs of the dormitory, I could study till 11 p.m. in the cafeteria with others. And then, I came back to my room, continuing doing my assignments and materials till midnight.

Of course, there were a number of troubles and problems when I started to do all of these, such as unwilling to get up early in the morning or strong craving to lie down on the bed after a tough day. But I always recalled those words and then I got pleasure to compel my tired body to move.

So at last, I made it. I became an important part of the class, accomplished most of the activities, and I even changed to another more challenging club. But most important of all, although I do much more than I could in the first couples of days, I don’t feel the toughness of life any more. Instead, I can see my happiness and success after it. Then I feel great passion to achieve the end. And this is the most significant thing I learned from the dark days.

Thanks to my cousin and senior. Otherwise, I can never adhere to my plans. Thanks to those desperate days, or else I would not be who I am now.

Solitude in Walden

Quite a few people consider solitude as a negative state, for example, lack of contact with people or love. However, different from loneliness, which is marked by a sense of isolation, solitude is the state of being alone without being lonely. And that means you may choose to be solitudinous, like H.D. Thoreau, for better self-awareness or other purpose.

The author loved solitude and he was never lonely as long as he is close to nature. He used solitude to refresh and replenish himself. Quiet environment brought peacefulness to his souls or spirits.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

He thought solitude makes people concentrate more upon what they are doing. So those who are in solitude do not feel lonely at all. When people concentrate on the field of work, they always feel companions with them. Attractive contents of books, impressive sceneries of nature, and anything else are companions of people in solitude. And this is because these people are "employed",

The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed;
......
and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

Although a number of people pay too much attention to learn how to deal with people and how to enlarge the social networks. He believed there was no great value to work on social networks. Instead, working on themselves was a much more effective and substantial method,

Society is commonly too cheap...We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war...Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications...It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.

Solitude also has limitation, which means it may turn to loneliness if he spent time with no single company. Even Robinson Crusoe had to consider Friday as a friend, although, obviously, he did not intend to be in solitude. Since Thoreau had "heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions," he prevented loneliness when he was in the long-time solitude ("a two-year and two-month stay at a crude cabin in the woods near Walden Pond").

I have a great deal of company in my house;...I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

Solitude is a period of time of reflection and self-consciousness. He needed this unusual experience and long-time solitude to get rid of the cheap society and reflect his destinations of gaining a more objective understanding of it. However, he did not feel lonely, for he had creatures from nature, and simplicity and self-reliance as his goals.