Fu Rong, Class 7, Senior 2, Shenzhen Foreign Languages School Instructed by Tang Hong

Have you found joy in your life? Has your life brought joy to others? If you don’t know how to answer these two questions, I heartily recommend to you the film “The Bucket List.” According to the story, two elders with incurable disease traveled around the world and achieved many dreams which were regarded as a blue moon in their age.

The film is neither complicatedly plotted, nor garishly designed. Of the two protagonists, one is Carter, a mechanic, who had worked hard for 45 years but ended up in the hospital with cancer, and the other is a billionaire, Edward, who suffered from incurable diseases. Denial, anger, and resistance brought them together. When they were told they had six months to live, they bit the bullet to realize their crazy dreams written on their bucket lists. Together, they skydived, raced cars at racetracks, chased lions in Africa, climbed the Egyptian pyramids to watch the sunset, and scooted around the Great Wall of China. As time flew by, more and more of the wishes on the list were crossed off while the time left for them was less and less.

The most touching moment in the film came when just before Carter was wheeled into the operating room, under acute pain he told Edward the amusing anecdote of the Luwak coffee. The joke may not be so funny but the elders laughed out loud into tears. Tears of joy might just be normal to us, but for them, it’s their first time as well as the last time to laugh so happily, so heartily.

None of us are immune to death, to the feeling of suffocation, to the dribbling a way of life. Fortunately, in our transient life, we will meet many people to spend time with us, including family, friends or even strangers. As a result, when we go to the end of life and look back, it’s surprising and delightful to see we are not alone along the way. There has been a lot of warmth and affection accompanying us.

Just as the lines in the film said, “It’s difficult to understand the sum of a person’s life. Some people will tell you it’s measured by the ones left behind. Some believe it can be measured in faith. Some say by love. Other folks say life has no meaning at all. I believe that you measure yourself by the people who measured themselves by you.”

The road of life may be arduous or easy; the feeling of the world may be meaner than a junkyard dog or warmer than the sun. Whatever life will be, what we should embrace is to live in the moment. Everything is born in heart. The wise do not dwell on the past, the open-minded do not worry about the future, and the brave do not fear the present. Rather than hesitating or wandering, what matters most is to grasp the present and do what we are dying to do.

In the end, they are buried together in the snow-capped mountains, listening to the sound of the mountains. What’s the meaning of life? There is no exact answer. “The Bucket List” may tell us that the answer to the question is just leaving without regret.

“Our lives are streams flowing into the same river towards whatever heaven lies in the mist beyond the falls.” So why not find the joy in your life, close your eyes and let the water take you home?