There's a saying in *The Analects*: "Life and death are preordained; wealth and honor are decreed by Heaven."
Even Confucianism, such a proactive and positive culture, advocates not to struggle against Heaven.
So why should I insist on going against Heaven's will?
*The Analects* also says, "One who does not understand the Mandate of Heaven cannot be a gentleman."
And I fancied myself a bit of a scholar.
I'm actually quite good at talking myself around.
Since it was the will of Heaven, I quickly came to terms with it.
When a person is no longer fixated on something, their heart naturally lets it go.
Of course, letting go is not the same as fatalism.
Confucianism does not believe in fatalism.
Destiny and fatalism are fundamentally different.
Many people assume that Buddhism and Taoism are fatalistic.
In fact, it was only much later that I learned that Buddhism and Taoism aren't fatalistic either.
Otherwise, if you just resigned yourself to fate, what would be the point of cultivating yourself with such diligence and effort?
Of course, that's a story for another time.
As the old saying goes, "Do what is humanly possible, and accept the will of Heaven. To not give your all is to live with regret; to not accept fate is to live in vain."
It means you should work hard when it's time to work hard, and let go when it's time to let go.
Perhaps this is what Marx meant when he said, "Contradiction is a universal reality."
At that moment, I realized I might have caught Lao Dao's disease: the occasional urge to wave the banner of Marx.
I shook my head, chasing away these strange thoughts. I had to return to reality.
Master had said to always remember the two words "morality" and "virtue."
The Dao gives birth, and Virtue nurtures; morality is the foundation of all things.
To be unreasonable, to lack virtue, to go against the way of Heaven—one would inevitably face the cycle of karma and reap what they sow.
Right now, there was something I needed to do with the utmost urgency.
And that was: move!
Get away from people without virtue, lest I be too close and get caught in the crossfire when Heaven's punishment came for them.
There was no time to waste. I had to hurry up and move, the farther away from them, the better.
Having made up my mind, I immediately went online to look for a place.
A quick search online showed a single room for rent near the Payalebar MRT station, in a villa no less.
The rent for one room, converted to RMB, was 2500 a month. It could house three people, was closer to school, and would save me a lot on transportation.
I asked Du Le if he wanted to move in with me.
The reason I asked Du Le was that he was a really genuine guy, and he had treated me to durian.
When something good came up, I'd think of him first.
He was also running low on money, and moving there would cut his rent by more than half.
Du Le said he had to ask Sun Qirui what he thought.
I had no choice but to recount the details of the divination and face reading I had done the other day, telling him: Sun Qirui has his own path, we don't need to worry about him.
But Du Le, that simpleton, refused to believe me and insisted on asking Sun Qirui himself.
The next day, Du Le came to me, wide-eyed, and whispered mysteriously, "You were spot on!"
The sudden, out-of-context remark left me clueless.
Winking and nudging, Du Le whispered, "Sun Qirui got an American girlfriend! She's rich and lives in the apartment building diagonally across from us. He wants to stay close to his girlfriend, so he's not moving."
My interest was immediately piqued. "We've only been in Singapore for a few days! How is that even possible? How did he manage that?"
Du Le just shook his head with a sly grin.
I couldn't tell if he didn't want to tell me or if he didn't know himself.
Sun Qirui had graduated from a vocational college. His English proficiency was probably limited to "hello," "bye," "yes," "no," "sorry," and "thank you." That was about the extent of it.
If he were really pushing it, he might be able to manage a "good morning" or a "how are you."
And I'm not just putting him down.
Even for someone like me, who had passed the national English exams, that proficiency was mostly limited to the written word.
My listening and speaking skills were a complete mess.
Holding a daily conversation purely in English was definitely beyond either of us.
Besides, it had only been a few days! It wouldn't be easy to win over an ordinary girl with no language barrier, let alone a rich one!
And an English-speaking one at that!
Sun Qirui, how on earth did he overcome all these obstacles?
The man's a goddamn genius!
My curiosity was raised to an unprecedented height.
I had to find a chance to learn from his experience.
It wasn't that I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
It was purely to satisfy this bewildered, near-explosive thirst for knowledge of mine.