When Destiny Pours the Water
It is often said that a person is like a handful of tea leaves
and destiny like the water poured over them.
Sometimes the water is warm, at other times boiling —
and according to its heat our life slowly unfolds.
Whoever longs for a full and expressive cup
should not offer their leaves only gentle warmth.
Those who have never known hardship are like tea poured with water too mild —
they float on the surface but release none of their true fragrance.
Even the finest tea will not sing in such water.
And then there are the others — those whom life has scalded more than once.
They are like leaves touched by boiling water:
pain turns them over and tosses them for a while,
yet it is precisely there that their deepest strength awakens.
What was hidden begins to breathe.
Each of us passes through the shadows of ordinary days.
Whoever simply drifts with the current receives only a pale infusion.
But the one who stands against the wind and takes pain as a small stone
against which character is sharpened will taste sweetness and bitterness in a new way.
And yet — the current of life remains the same; it is the person within it who ripens
and carries with them more quiet realizations.
Life is a tea full of contrasts.
Sweetness and bitterness arise from the same water.
Without hardship we would not recognize happiness,
without the storm the uprightness of the pines would not stand out.
History holds many stories that quietly bear witness to this.
One tells of the journey of Master Jianzhen 鉴真 to Japan.
Five times storms or officials held him back,
and only the sixth attempt — blind and weary —
brought him to the shores he had long dreamed of.
There he taught monastic discipline, corrected texts by listening
and identified medicines by taste —
and thus a bridge between two cultures was formed.
And then there is the pilgrimage of Xuanzang 玄奘.
Seventeen years, fifty thousand li, one hundred and thirty-eight kingdoms,
and a return with more than six hundred volumes of sacred texts.
No storm, desert, nor mountain could stop him.
Whether master or pilgrim — those who travelled far
never settled for what was easy.
When an obstacle rose before them, they stepped forward again.
And in the end their lives blossomed.
An old saying goes:
有志者事竟成，破釜沉舟，百二秦关终属楚；
苦心人天不负，卧薪尝胆，三千越甲可吞吴
— those who possess true resolve will arrive;
those who do not give up overcome even what seems impossible.
But life also has its second, gentler pole.
The one who is content with a small field of their own,
who finds joy in the quiet of books and music,
who walks where others ride,
and remains content —
has found another path.
A path where bitterness turns into calm
and into the sweet tones of a simple life.