A Girl and her paycheck

I’m always there…by a small, abandoned window on the forth floor of Law school. I stand there seeing my reflection on the window with the 45th as a background. All I see are motionless lives outside the window and another even more motionless life on the window….me. Pressure, delusion, aspiration, loneliness and tiredness have buried the smiling face I used to see. The face in the window only gives me a very pale smile and a question “Why am I here?” Every time before I can answer that question, I always have to leave and come back to the real life where I find even lifeless than what I see outside of the window.

One day about a week ago before I went down to get my pay check, I stopped by my favorite window as usual. I was there thinking about something, feeling pretty much the same and left the place without answering my same, simple question. On the way to the payroll office, I saw a girl walked out from the office and there it was….the most inspiring picture I have ever seen. She held her pay check close to her face, so that she could see the number on it properly as she walked. On her face, there was a big smile, a smile that said everything, a smile that shook my lack of belief in myself to the very core. The pressure, delusion, aspiration, loneliness and tiredness seemed to suddenly fade away. As I stopped there, the truth about life magically revealed.

All of a sudden, I realized that sometime we are focusing too much on big things in our lives and forget about other tiny pieces. Life is like a journey. We all have a desire destination. We are going for it but sometime we go too fast because we think all the happiness is waiting for us there. We didn’t aware of things that come along with the journey. The real beauty is there, on a sidewalk, on a bridge, in a river and everywhere. If we slow down a little, we will see what we have missed. The journey is where most beauty exist, not the destination.

This made me realized that I don’t need to achieve a big success or any praise to feel good about myself. A very small thing I have done that nobody or even myself seems to notice can be something that brings the happiness back to my life, reminds me who I am, and answers the question I have been asking myself for a long time.

I picked up my pay check. As I walked out, I held a two-hundred-something pay check in my hand but I was smiling like I just got a million dollar pay check. That day I felt like the girl is the man and so am I.