Turn Left, Turn Right

Well, as I am having a break from the research at the moment, I think I should take the advice of trying to write something here more often. Actually, I have had something in mind that I thought I may write. I was going to argue something about if we should still keep write paper based letters to our friends or families in this MATRIX world where SKYPE and MSN have been all over the globe. A friend told me that it is so out of time, happy birthday to Lok by the way. Well I had a big speech prepared that I am so sure I will be able to take his idea down, but, again suddenly, something in me is triggered by a song, which I want to share.

I was cleaning my room. I have got a bunch of old CDs that left over by some of my Chinese friends who have finished their study and left. I just randomly put one in my CD player. They are really old songs now, from my college time I think. While I was still fighting in the battle field in my room, a soft and very familiar melody went to me. It was a sound track from a movie and sung by Gigi, a famous singer in Hong Kong. The movie is made from a well known city comic: Turn Left, Turn Right (also known as: A chance of sunshine).

It was such a simple story, a story that can't be simpler. There was a girl and there was a boy. They lived next to each other, where a wall is shared by the building they lived in. They lived in this small city and they went across each other everyday many times. But, she always turned left when she went out the building and he always turned right. She always turned left at the tube station and he always turned right. She always looked at left side in the bus and he always looked at the right side. Just like this, they have been there for on one knows how long but never meet. One day, just that one day, the joke in the heaven came down to the earth. The big shower made them know the existence of each other for the first time in the park. Maybe love did happen on the first sight. At least in their case it did. The shower stopped and they had to go. So they exchanged their numbers. But right after they parted, both of them lost it. Then, in the little city with nothing special, there were two people seeking their love. They were looking everyplace they knew of, everything they could think of. Every night, they were sleepless and sat in their room and listened to the same song. They passed away each other just in the same way while she turned left at the same place where he turned right. Two hearts had finally been broken and the pain made them unable to stay in their city of sadness so both of them decided to leave, in the same day. At that day, the girl left the building and went to the park for the last time and so did the boy. They stood there on the lawn where there was only a big tree separate them. Both of them didn't say a word, didn't know the existence of each other either, and at the end, the girl went left and the boy went right. They never meet again.

I am not going to start on the movie that made it to be a happy ending. Obviously, movie makers are stick to their directions of making money. We all stick to some directions, do we? Maybe they are not as simple as left and right, but they are still there. We take it so naturally and actually we judge others who are on the different tracks. But is that too naive to define people just because they used to turn right but we turn left? We are going in our way so we never see what they see, never think what they think. We will never know them and maybe never meet them. We may miss nothing, but we may miss everything. I am not saying that change whom you are and try everything stupid. However, maybe just one a while, try to walk to the side that you rarely walk, try to read books you rarely read, try to understand something you barely approve of, try to know someone you barely like, and there will be a big surprise waiting for you. Right or left, which way will you go tomorrow?