There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.
–Romain Rolland

I first felt that life is meaningless when I was a sophomore undergrad. Although I cannot remind myself about how this feeling emerged, I still remember it grew rapidly, occupied my brain and made me extremely unhappy. For almost twenty years, I was told that the meaning of life is contributing to the society, as many mainland Chinese children were. However, I realized that claim totally ignores the thoughts of individuals, and thus it is definitely not true. On the other hand, considering the fact that all people will finally die, I was not able to find a substitution as well. Life became really depressing after starting thinking about this difficult philosophical problem. I could write neither a program nor a poem for several months.

Through years, I heard several talented peers got suicide. Before passing away, they claimed that they had found the true meaning of the world is meaningless, and they could not find anyone surrounding understood this. I was always sad hearing such kind of news, as I almost became one of them at some time.

I was fortunate to share my thoughts with my dear friends, and was even more fortunate that they were able to understand what I was talking about. They strongly supported me by simply saying “you are not alone”. Afterwards, the biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Ray Monk pulled me up from the hole of depression — I was so excited that many stories in the book had actually happened in my life. Indeed, nearly everyone who thinks about the meaning of life faces the situation of nada.

Life is like climbing mountains. Reaching the peak of meaninglessness is not the end, but the start of seeing higher peaks which are edges of the world. What should we do after that? Romain Rolland had already given an answer that I like much: to love our life, to live in the world, and to explore it.

Philosophy is always interesting to think about, though sometimes dangerous. Facing nada, we have no choice but thinking about it and being aware that everyone is with us!