There’s an incident that happened right before Justin passed away that I would like to share (and remember for the rest of my life).
So while I was in Taiwan, actually we spent most of the time in hotel. My dad even jokingly said that happiness is a whole family being together in a room, each with their own laptops and working on their own business. Which, I think, is true on a philosophical level. So what was I working on?? Because the last summer I interned at Google, my passion for programming somehow got re-ignited, so I decide to work on programming problems that I gave up on solving before (There’s a website with various programming challenges which I work on back in high school).
Seeing that I worked so hard even during vacation, my dad got reminded and started forcing Justin to also work on Calculus problems (on a theoretical, i.e. math major, level) in order to improve his logical skills, because Justin was never too solid in math. Obviously, Justin kind of unwillingly did it (because after all he expects to be on vacation), but he obeyed and I was also pushing him along the way.
Anyways, so throughout the vacation me and my dad was pushing Justin to do math, because we’re never satisfied with his work level (being work-a-holics, it is hard to impress us). When we’re in the airport, waiting for our airplane to take us back to US, we forced Justin to work again. But since I always like to say something extra (in Chinese we call this 馬後砲), I said that I want to push Justin this hard because this is probably the last time he seriously worked on this (which ironically comes out to be true). Of course my dad strongly agrees and we went on this argument that consists basically of Justin trying to defend his willingness to study and mad at why we wouldn’t trust him. The argument ended with Justin leaving my dad in anger (because he thought for the moment my dad is unreasonable to be with), and went to a massage chair waiting place with me and the math book.
At that point I felt bad, because I basically started the argument between Justin and me/dad. I really feel like apologizing but feel like this makes me look bad (because as pointed out by my roommates, I really hate to be wrong about a certain thing) and don’t want to. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit asks me: “What’s more important to you? Your relationship with your brother or pretend you’re right about everything?”, Obviously this is a rhetorical question, and I apologized.
To my surprise, instead of bashing me about saying that Justin just replied “It’s alright, you did nothing wrong. Dad is just being unreasonable as he always is.”
He continued working on the math and did pretty well. Well, saying that he did pretty well would be lying, but at least he got the point and started doing things correctly (instead of guessing the solution like he did most of the time, which is a big reason we’re unsatisfied with him).
Recalling this incident, I really feel fortunate, because that became the last chance that I can be true to myself and reconcil with him, and if I haven’t done that it’ll be the biggest regret of my life. But I’m trying to say something more than this.
Really, I think Calvin is very right, at least in his point of total deprevity. Many times we all know what’s the right thing to do, but for some silly reason (be it laziness, personal philosophy that doesn’t even matter, etc.) we just don’t do it. Like today I played like 2-3 hours straight of minesweeper although I should work on my homework which is due tomorrow (oh shoot it is tomorrow not the day after). We are really all hopeless and helpless. Without the grace of the Holy Spirit I can’t even apoligize to Justin, and there are numerous times before this one that I did the same thing but choose not to apologize. Really, we need to know that we’re weak and we need constant help from the Holy Spirit, accepting one’s weakness is the first step to correct it, and this is even more true in a Christian perspective.
Also, I think that personally I should try to show my love and care for other people more. Is pushing Justin to study over vacation right? I think it is, because it’s one of the now-rare times that I’ll be with my brothe. But could I have done it better? I think so. It is right to push people to study, but how we do it I think we need help from the Holy Spirit. Yes, we still have to be strict, but at the same time we should find ways to show our love and care for the person, after all we’re doing these things all for them. It’s a difficult balance, and I think this can only be achieved in constant prayer and guidance from the Holy Spirit. And we should never forget about our starting point: we’re doing this because we love him.
Also, a lot of times we focus on the bad things of people, like I have to admit I kind of despise Justin because although he’s EE he does not have a strong logic and reasoning skills like I see in most Berkeley EE students. I have to admit that during the vacation I have the thought that it’s embrassing having a brother like this and I need to fix that. However, it’s not until he passed away that I realized he’s the one who have the right to be embrassed at me. He had grown so much spiritually during college and possess so many good qualities, and what have I done since high school?? Spiritually, not very much. But did he? No, he always loved me and is always proud of me.
Today I found out I got into MIT grad school and also got an offer from Oracle for $92,000 a year (yes, I’m here to brag, actually I’m not). While I feel happy first, but really, compare to what Justin had, I have nothing. What Justin had will last until eternity, and all these are but worldly achievements. If I do not follow the Lord closely and listen to him, all of these (and maybe even me) will vanish one day. I have offers from the best places in the world, but Justin had an offer (and accepted) from the Greatest One.
Life is about the things that last, is about characters that you can take with you to heaven and also impact those around you, and that should be my focus and my pride, not money and success in the world. That’s why I should go exercise now. And by the power of Holy Spirit I will keep this up.
