Only when you build a house with your own hands do you realize that there are always some things in life waiting for us to do
Have you ever thought about climbing Yushan, or cycling around the island; perhaps you have dreamed of traveling around the world, or toyed with the idea of going to Cambodia to do social service; maybe you have planned to open a cafe, or picked up a paintbrush to try your hand at being an artist…….
Now, as we grow older, in workplaces where we have become more worldly after entering society, are those unfinished dreams that once lingered in your heart still hanging there?
Yet why are these dreams still unrealized, and why do we still live for work, for salary, for loans, for family? Why is there always endless clingings and attachments in life, delaying our steps and pulling us back onto the so-called track of reality?
Put it down for now! Come with me, pick up tools and build a house.
If you learn how to build a house after joining just one house-building working holiday, then you really are impressive, you are a genius, and I admire you. And if you finish the working holiday and say you learned nothing at all, that is really remarkable too, and you should have some special gift, and I envy you.
Yet in most cases it will be that you are neither of the above. You come to take part, pick up a hammer, shoulder wood, stack stones, spread asphalt…, you put in a little effort, and you will also take something away. What you take away may not be clear to you for a moment, but I want to tell you that joining a working holiday and actually building a house with your own hands is not really about making you learn house building, but about letting you know that there are still things in life you can complete by yourself.
In life, we dare not pursue dreams; in the workplace, we dare not give up a hard-won job; in daily life, we dare not tell family or our partner, "I want to go wandering for a while."
Why? Is it really that practical factors do not allow it? Yet I suspect it is actually because of "inner fear." Fear that if you pursue a dream and it shatters, you will gain nothing; fear that if you quit your job, you will not know where the next job is; fear that the intimate companions around you will stop you, reject you, mock you, disagree with you….
But time once gone never returns! When one day your body suddenly sends warning signs, when life is about to take permanent leave of you, when one day at the moment of "never again possible" you finally admit that the dream you did not complete or never even tried to do was the most important thing in your life. By then, everything is already too late.
If you have one chance to go into the field to plant rice, care for the rice plants, harvest the rice, then dry the grain, thresh it, wash the rice, and cook a bowl of white rice - and then quietly chew the rice and swallow it, warming and filling your stomach; if you have one chance to pick up tools, prepare the land, cut wood, drill holes and drive nails, raise beams and build walls, hammering and knocking together a natural house; if you have such a chance to personally and steadily complete something that cares for life or cares for others. Please remember, all of this is not at all for what you see before your eyes or what you will learn, but to let you know that there are still things in life you can complete by yourself.