Essays and Snippets: Appreciate What You Have, Seek Not to Lose Its Significance
Seek, Author: Qingya (Shandong)
Content: ‘Contentment brings happiness.’
Humans are inherently driven by desires, constantly seeking and never satisfied. Ultimately, they either return to their starting point or lose something more valuable. Heaven grants each person a certain amount; some things, no matter how hard you search, you won’t find. The most important thing is to cherish what you have while searching.
On life’s long journey, we often have so much, but we still constantly strive to find. Life is a continuous process of having and seeking. If you haven’t obtained it, you’ll try to find it; if you’ve lost it, you’ll search everywhere. Sometimes, in your frantic search, you lose what you originally possessed; sometimes, you desperately seek and find nothing. When you look back, the person you’ve been searching for is there. In this process of having and seeking, the most important thing isn't having or striving, but this beautiful process and the attitude towards having and seeking. Cherish what you have, and you won’t lose direction. Pursuing status and fame at the expense of faith and conscience indicates that your search has lost its direction, you've become lost, adrift in a turbulent stream, unable to rise above the waves. Sun Wu searched for the opportunity of life, but he didn't abandon his faith and dignity; he found it, and his name is forever remembered. Li Bai sought the reputation of a hero, but didn’t abandon his faith—he found it. Cherish what you have, and you’ll know what you truly want, and you’ll not lose direction.
Cherish what you have, and you won’t lose meaning.
If you don’t cherish what you have, how can you cherish what you’ve sought? If you continue like this, what meaning does searching have? The Qin and Han emperors, failing to cherish their lives, constantly sought the method of ascending to the immortal realm, ultimately leading to the emperor's fall and destruction. The search, intended to prolong life, ended in self-destruction.
Someone searching, constantly losing, losing more valuable things than they sought—faith, conscience, dignity, emotion, and health. When they finally realize their mistake and want to retrieve what they’ve lost, it’s already too late, they can only regret: ‘Why didn’t we cherish it?’ Yes, why didn’t we cherish it?
Searching is important, but cherishing is more important. Cherish what you have now, don’t wait until you’ve lost it to regret.
When you search while cherishing, what you find is truly yours.
