A life can be overturned in a single moment. This May Day holiday has felt especially heavy. News of the Meida Expressway collapse was deeply shocking and heartbreaking. It took innocent lives and left survivors and families carrying wounds that are not only physical, but emotional and lasting. Tragedies like this force us to pause and ask what life really means, and what it is we spend our years chasing.
A sudden disaster does not only shatter the families directly affected. It also leaves everyone else confronting an unsettling question: what are we exhausting ourselves for in the end? So many people miss a simple truth—life, at its core, is a journey. Not everything needs to prove its value. Eating well, resting, laughing, and enjoying yourself are not signs of wasting time. Enduring hardship and working relentlessly do not automatically make a life more meaningful.
The happiness people long for is not hidden in the past, nor waiting somewhere in the future. It lives in the present. Life is an open field, not a fixed track. If you are able to feel genuine ease or joy in this moment, then that moment already has meaning.
Perhaps the simplest picture of happiness is this: a home to return to, someone waiting for you, a meal shared at the table. What people call a peaceful life is often nothing grand. It is the bowl of hot soup in the kitchen, the care of family, the lamp that is always left on for you. These things may seem small, but they are among the most important parts of being alive.
Yang Jiang once wrote that life is full of uncertainty and challenge. A little pressure should not be enough to make us collapse under the weight of everything. A little uncertainty should not convince us that the future is hopeless. A few setbacks should not leave us unable to rise again.
We cannot draw tomorrow in advance, but we can choose how to meet it. In this lifetime, the detours we are meant to take, the hardships we are meant to bear, the walls we are meant to run into, and the traps we are meant to fall through—none of them can be completely avoided. That is why strength, optimism, and an active will to keep going are among the most valuable things a person can carry. Endure it, survive it, get through it, and the turn in fortune may come on its own.
So there is no need to panic. When the sun sets, there is still moonlight. When the moon goes down, morning follows. Even in the dark, if you look up, there may still be a sky full of stars.
