“The Joy of Strife ”*

I am trying to see if I can find some common threads between what our parents told us in our impressionable years and the profound thoughts this four-word phrase tried to convey.

In a moment of awakening, the orphan girl, Anne Shirley of Green Gables*, thought of facing new challenges is more fun than just for the winnings. After she decided to give up a scholarship she won, she was in awe with the idea of “the joy of strife.” She told herself that “next to trying and winning, the best thing is to trying and failing.”*

And the epiphany of this sixteen-year-old girl does have some things in common with what our late parents had instilled in us when my siblings and I were still in the school system studying. It seems at that time our young lives were always tethered to exams. There were tests for every kind of schools from neighborhood kindergartens to top-notched universities. And I remember the hardest were the ones for colleges of our choice. Of course, there were many times we failed miserably in some of them. Thankfully, we must have the most lenient parents as far as exam scores were concerned. They never admonished us for failed grades. Instead, they would arrange for extra tutoring for us so we could take the flunked tests again.

However, before they sent us off to new tutors, they and other elderly members of the family would always remind us of what a Chinese war-strategist of Three Kingdoms era, Zhu Ge-liang*, told his soldiers after they were defeated by their enemies. The wise thinker said to them more defeats mean more battles ahead.

In spite of the facts these moving thoughts were originated many years apart, they both bear the same timeless truth that one can always learn something while trying. - Ayee

*Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 1994 edition
*Three Kingdoms from years 220 to 265