Hide and Seek
A Personal Story
The world has been playing hide and seek with me all along, challenging me to discover deeper meanings of conventional matters, leading me to put myself in others' shoes and look at the world as an insider.
The volleyball field had appeared a dozen times in small talk during my summer school stay. However, it was near my dorm building but playing hide and seek with me was winning. For three weeks, it had escaped my view and remained as a legend. Then one day, it just jumped in front of me with all its I00 square meter self an amateur in this game," it smirked. Originally, the game was made up to fill the off-school time. I score one point when discover an attribute beyond a matter's conventional recognition. Just within the boundaries of my home, thousands of items and incidents revealed their "other" meanings. Among them, the most shocking findings often came from the "insider's angle" as opposed to an objective position.
My grandma raised a sea turtle in a tiny bowl. It gradually grew big to take the full diameter of its home. I sometimes hung a loach above its tail, watching it chasing the smell but failing to turn around within that confinement. It had spent its entire life in that tiny bowl and tried many times to escape, but, sadly, succeeded only once. When its feet touched the wooden floor of the free world, it began to moan painfully as if
crawling, its born talent, was torture. At that moment, I felt its choice of retrieving back to the bowl. When it "comfortably" rested at its usual place, I discovered, by analogy, that charity for the underprivileged should
be gradual and incremental.
The turtle inspired me to lose my own identity or forget my born limits, and try to become a rock, a color, a drop of old wine, another person, or simply go where I was afraid to go.
I was on the stairs of our dingy basement, having 10 10-minute windows lit up when the sunlight was nearly parallel to the ground. I felt the precious warmth and understood that value is relative. I was the white curtain beside my mother's hospital bed, shielding equipment, patients, or nurses. I saw how lives were saved and reflected that being important puts one in the position of knowing. I was the Chinese herb at my grandpa's old wine, extracting essentials from submerged grasses for curing diseases. I sensed the herb particles were mixing with mine and discovered that borrowing from others could significantly alter one's nature.
I drove my skateboard to the corner of our apartment yard where tree canopy and shrubs had created a scary spot under the dim streetlight. I fell and scraped my knees badly, but discovered that it was just another entrance to our courtyard. My friends were challenging each other to pick up coins from the bottom of a deep swimming pool. I flipped a coin in and dove down. My eardrums were hurt by the pressure, but I discovered that the bottom was just a bit deeper than my usual "comfortable zone". I took the stage to host the school drama show. Thousands of pairs of eyes were fixed on me, and I realized that the lighting prevented me from seeing their faces clearly so my stage fright lost its audience and disappeared.
Although a seasoned player, I still got mocked by the volleyball court and the like. Plain sight is the best camouflage. It takes conscious exercises to pick the trophy findings out from background noises. But, I am in for winning...