Kai Tang

April 2003

    My daughter Caroline is 12 years old this year. I look at her with an awe. She's been growing with a burst in the last one and half year. Now, already 1.58m tall, pretty, two eyes with endless curiosity, still a kid, but like a tulip seed in early April pushed by an unknown force, she seems in a hurry to say goodbye to the passing sleepy yet comfortable innocence and rush to that unknown but fascinating new world. Watching her giggling with her 7th grade classmates on the phone, an indescribable sense of loss overwhelms me – she is no longer 8 years old!

    About four years ago, Caroline started to take some formal swimming lessons. That winter for almost every weekend, we took her and her elder brother to swim in a local middle school. I remember one Saturday afternoon, I was taking a break off the pool and sat on a bench. At the other end of the pool, Caroline and her brother were playing volleyball in the water. Suddenly, I felt such an overwhelming feeling. Here she is, 8 years old, completely immersed in playing with her brother, with that smile on her face indicating the ultimate content and happiness. I prayed at that very moment: please, God, let this moment be frozen; let her be forever an 8 years old.

    Why we live in this world? To pursue happiness, most people would say. Is the happiness to be sought? Or does the genuine one only come from the subconsciousness? To me, it seems a person’s best and happiest time is his child age before the teen, or even before his preteen time. I remember one hot evening when I was 8 years old myself, after supper, I spent more than an hour trying to catch those big green dragonflies flying over a small pond near my parents living quarter. I ran and fell, ran and fell, finally caught one. Folding and then holding her two large wings between my two little fingers, I felt I was floating amid a sea of elation. Indescribable, don’t know what it is, but just happy. After so many years, I still vividly remember that scene. For sure “to feel happy” was never in my little mind when I took off to chase that dragonfly; but for complete certainty I felt this “happiness” afterward. Perhaps this is exactly the quintessence of life?

    In this postmodern time, with more and more gizmos being invented to please teens and adults, it seems people are however becoming more and more unhappy, and more and more people long to go back to their child age, to escape from this world. An eight years old girl does not have to cry for her imperfect legs or thick waist when seeing Cindy Crawford’s ad on TV, as she knows that the shape or length of her legs are never in the mind of that next door aunt and she always likes her; she puzzles when she sees her 16 years old cousin lock herself up and weep for feeling “less” popular in the school, as every classmate in her class seems to be popular and always gets a drawer full of valentines cards every year. An eight years old boy would shrug and wonder why all 16 years old boys always want to have a 6 piece muscle type tummy and worship those mountain like football players, as none of them have it and it doesn’t look that cool at all to them; he laughs at the next door highschool boy who tried to kill himself because his girlfriend dumped him for a taller and cooler boy, as it seems that every girl he knows is the girl friend of every boy he knows, and no body cares about each other’s height since all the boys in his class more or less have the same height.

    An eight years old child is a gift from God. Let her enjoy her god-given innocence and happiness in her cocoon. Let her feel special and sleep soundly in your arms. Shower her with your love and let her have fun and have what she deserves. Because, ahead of her will be a hyper-competitive and cold world in which she will have to constantly fight, with herself and with others, all in the name of pursuing this elusive “happiness” and “self-worthiness”. She is now happy and has the highest worthiness to the people she loves most – her Dad and Mom. Let her be what she is, an eight years old. She only lives once!

(since 2007.11)