On destined fortune

This link leads to a listing of web pages containing a statement the honorable Minister of Qing Empire, Zeng Guo Fan, once said: "... believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...(信運氣﹐不信書)". My understanding of his statement is that he believes that any of our achievement manifests by our destined fortune and not just simply from careful planning and persistent effort. He must have made this conclusion from all of his life experience.

I also agree with some other bloggers' view point of this quote. Some said that Zeng's statement was just a reflection of his characteristic of being humble and modest. while some said that instead of emphasizing his accomplishments were the result of his intelligence and hard working, he attributed all of the abundant fruition to the manifestation of his good luck. However, I personally believe that either of the aforesaid point of view shares only 30% of the truth, There is this thing labeled as Karma which is similar to the notion of fortune moving all the trivial and major incidents of our life around, and that force takes up 70% or even more of the end result.

What triggered my intent of writing on this topic was from a chat with my wife this morning. "Jean, Chi-an (our son), started his first class at 9 am, he is teaching those school boys in the school now," I continued, "how lucky he is to get a good jobuch as this." Jean replied,"yeah, two months ago, we were still worried about his job issue, and suddenly the changes brought up this happy opportunity." she said while doing the laundry. "This reminded me of a remark the honorable scholar and government minister of Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guo Fan, once said '...believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...'" I said, "I am going to write a blog about my perception of his famous remark."

May 2 of 2011 marked the day my son started his involvement in the music education in a state run college and another five primary schools and intermediate schools. A few days earlier, he was required to be interviewed by the head of the school's music department and the principal to make sure he was the right one they wanted to recruit to train the four rock bands of the school.

The interview went well and Chi-an was formerly employed by that college. His first class will be on May 5. With this guitar tuition in the state schools plus his other two sectors of practices, his work day hours are reasonably fully booked, and so his income is expected to be sustainable. All that had happened to result in this reality to come true were so unbelievably played one after another, just as dramatic as a playwright containing the various parts of longing , anxious, frustrated, nervous, exciting, disappointing, and all sorts of feelings you name it. Fortunately the desired and expected ending turns out to be a happy one. And now I am, as the father, is noting down the bits and pieces of thoughts with regard to this remarkable episode of Chen family.

Resume my role as a telephone counselor

I had once been a telephone counselor since 1994. That was a voluntary job helping the Chinese speaking residents of Auckland when they are in need of someone to talk about their difficult situation. It was a part-time voluntary job which I contributed six hours per month in the evening sitting and waiting for calls in the telephone room. That job lasted for about 10 years till October 2005 when my Parkinson's disease disabled me from driving.

Although I had stopped serving as a telephone counselor since then, I have been playing this role now and then in the past five years. What motivated me to write this blog was due to my latest experience in helping my family friends going through their problems, and that two cases brought the memory of that 10 years working as a volunteer up my mind screen.

I was browsing on the Internet in the morning of last Friday, the phone rang and I answered it. It was from our family friend. Her tone was frustrated, bit angry and anxious, instantly I knew she must be having some problems and I should provide whatever assistance to help her out. Naturally I had gone through the basic steps of telephone counseling skills with her. And it was a satisfactory one because later in that evening she rang to thank my help as her problems had been solved and she was happy again.

The next day, I received yet another request for counseling from my friend Mr. X his problem was sent to me by text message through mobile. The message reflected anxiety and depressing sort of feelings. I texted back saying that I would reply his message by e-mail as it got to be a lot lengthy. Then we both found that even a long e-mail could not touch the core of the problem, so we arranged a telephone conversation.

Mr. X's case was done in the evening of the next day. It comprised of three seperate contacts by three means of e-mail, telephone and mobile devise.

In the telephone session, I mapped up the whole picture and empathized him, and by the end of the process, I heard the tone of his speech turned from depressing and anxious into calm and hopeful. He commented on my e-mail that I sent to him earlier as having pin-pointed something that was troubling him.

In my diary that noted my recent telephone counselling experience, I could not surpress the joy of my heart and have thus typped to conclude the episode I played in. "... I was affected with my routine, and the tremor becomes bit more rigorous, however, the feeling of being helpful is nice."