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While
I am drunk, my mind floats, too, because my head is not clear. One time, it
floated to the lakeside "eagle platform." About two years ago, on
this lookout platform, a professor met a boy who was building it for his scouting
project, which he called "eagle."
The boy looks very young. He seems to
have so much potential and so much to look forward to, and I do wish him a
wonderful life. Still, I am a bit worried, just as when returning home from
college for the first summer break, I was sitting on the bus and about to
see my niece (just born then, in college now) and couldn't help worrying
what would be waiting for her in the coming decades, for I know life is not
an easy journey. It is hard enough to make a living, to say nothing of
making a meaning, and thus many lives end up sheer struggling for survival.
Some have enjoyed a couple of good moments while a few have achieved
greatness. Most of those who seek for a meaning have chosen to exit early,
unable to bear the boredom and toiling of making a living.
The professor has come a long way, and
yet has a long way to go. He has and can still open up new possibilities -
after all, people are not born equal. Furthermore, the economic increasing
return also applies to life - those who are born advantaged are more likely
to achieve more, and continue to grow more once they have capitalized the
advantages born with them. And this is why we need social welfare systems
(especially when a society has accumulated sufficient wealth and can afford
such systems): to address the unfairness that is born, inherently with
individuals themselves or externally such as with their families and
places, so that each human being can have a dignified and more purposeful
existence, and to prove humans are indeed human and different from other
animals in the natural world. It has nothing to do with political isms.
A woman, standing at the mid-point of
life, has witnessed this historical meeting, and printed the picture of the
professor and the boy conversing on her mind.
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