Friday, December 23, 2011
A Gorgeous Tortoise

I’ve seen a gorgeous tortoise.

It has an olive green shell with coffee-colour patterns. The shape of its shell reminds me of a basketball being cut into half. Its shell wasn’t as flat as the usual tortoise. It’s even weirder when I discovered that it owns a big mouth and legs that were crooked upwards. Its face looked like as if it was smiling and there’s a great spirit from its eyes.

I discovered the tortoise in my friend’s art studio.

I stared closely at the tortoise and said “I’ve never seen such a gorgeous tortoise! It’s too bad I didn’t have a camera with me. I must take a photo of it next time.”

My friend began to talk about the tortoise’s history. “He found the tortoise on his trip to Brazil. He fell in love with the tortoise at the first sight, so he bought the tortoise over with a high price.
With the weight of 30 kg, he could only hold the tortoise with both his hands. How should he bring it back?

Through numerous checking and identification from the animal exporting department, he could finally arrange a way to deliver it back here. It took them 3 months to deliver the tortoise from Brazil to Taiwan by ship. Back then, I thought to myself. What if it was dead within that period? But to my astonishment, the tortoise was standing lively in the box when I unwrapped it.”

A month later I visited my friend with the camera with me this time. But it was such a misfortune that my friend had to tell me “The tortoise is dead. What’s left is the shell.” I wondered, how can it be dead when it could travel through the oceans in a box?

My friend explained “I left the house for an exhibition a week ago. I couldn’t feed it everyday, so I left 3 bunches of bananas for it. When I’m home, only 2 bunches were left but the tortoise was dead. When I went to a vet, I was informed that the tortoise died from over-eating.”

Since then, my friend kept the shell with disappointment and regret.

A tortoise could survive from hunger in total darkness, but now it was dead because of satiety? Somehow, danger shouldn’t be feared too much and satiety might not always be good. It appears harder to withstand the situation when we’re in a good environment than a bad one.

Adapted from ‘2006 Junior High’s Language Examination Paper, JingZhou City’



Postscript:

Have you ever been in such situation? It seems hard to struggle through hardship, but in the end we’d still make it through. However, when we’d being under a safe and peaceful condition, we’re often easily defeated. Even a tortoise could make it through 3 months of travelling across the sea, but died from a good environment.

As we look back on ourselves, who wouldn’t have wanted to stay in a comfortable and peaceful life? Who wouldn’t want to live carefree? As far as we know, no one could forever stay in a calm and steady state. There is always challenges in life. You might wonder what’s the importance of such challenges in life. Without it, we might not be able to grow and advance. We learn through problems and mistakes. Try to think about the wars you’ve won. “Back then, I’ve given the fullest effort to overcome a challenge.” If we never went through all those training, we wouldn’t even be where we’re standing at this very moment. Ikeda Sense said “Everything begins from a foundation. Without a proper foundation, houses can never be built. This works the same for life. When we overcome difficulties, we’d become jewels that shine with the spirit of life in the future.

There’s a saying in China that explains “A river that’s continuously flowing will never get filthy. A wooden doorknob that was often used would never attract termites.” As we welcome new challenges in life, we’d never get lazy as well. Or else, we might have lost a chance to gain courage and wisdom. Hence, living in comfort for too long isn’t a good thing after all. When we’re too comfortable with our life, we’d tend to forget the need to strive, which in the end would only make us weaker. Thus, we must remember to update ourselves with new challenges. Participating in Gakkai activities are also one of the platforms to train ourselves. When we have duties and homework that clashed at the same time, we’d start to learn the way of managing things to achieve a balance in all of them. We might feel hard during the struggling period, but as we achieved victory, it’s actually very satisfying and enriching.

Ikeda Sensei’s over 80, and is still striving forward now. He never thought of stopping down. Those seniors at the age of 80 would usually sit at home and live without worries. However, for the sake of kosen-rufu, Sensei was determined to participate in a never ending challenge. As his disciples, we must fight harder like our Sensei’s spirit! We must grow in Gakkai, becoming the undefeatable victors in our life!


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Written at 5:27 PM by Paper Pilot.