I knew from my childhood that I was looking for something higher.

I was born in a bustling city in southwestern China, which, perhaps because of its rainy and humid weather, often reveals a small-town dullness. Since I was a child I have been afraid of this dullness, of the routine life my parents led, of the rigid order of the city. It was from this fear that my search was born.

The first important turning point appeared when I enrolled in a forward-thinking school called Curionesty at 13. I viewed my studies at Curionesty as a rebellion against the regularity and dullness of my life, and I began to have bright visions of my future. I believed that, as I would no longer live according to the old rigid order, my future would be exciting and covered in an early morning fog. Thus, believing I have found my something higher, I stopped my pursuit.

However, when I reached the age of 15, the novelty of school had worn off. The sense of dullness began to plague me again and urge me to set off. Thus, I started a new rebellion against my life. With the yearning to search for something higher, I no longer wanted to be caught in the boundaries I had set for myself: I pushed myself to do things I used to dread. However, at the same time, my search began to reveal its dark side: it was destructive. Nothing was satisfying me and the expectations for my goals only continued to rise. I wanted things much higher than anything in my life, which I thought I could only possess by erasing all the orders of my life.

It was then that I suddenly understood what my something higher truly was — I wanted something higher than life itself. The search then became a ridiculous travesty: for what can be higher than life itself?

Philosophy found me with the answer.

When I was first exposed to philosophy, I was immediately enraptured by its prudent way of thinking and its desire for truth. So I have always believed that the role of philosophy is to bring clear answers to everything to reveal the truth. However, philosophy is also subject to its law of contradiction, and its emphasis on skepticism seems to keep men forever blocked from the secure step of truth — the genealogy of philosophy has had many great minds, but none of them is considered to obtain the truth. Everything is still being questioned. I used to suffer from this hopeless perspective of philosophy, a perspective suggesting that human effort is meaningless and the truth is nothing but an illusion.

After tossing and turning for countless nights, I suddenly realized that my understanding of philosophy and my search were wrong from the beginning. What I needed was never the truth nor my something higher. What I really wanted was the process of the pursuit itself — I wanted to be an arrow soaring through the air endlessly without reaching my destination. This coincides with philosophy. Just as an arrow loses its purpose when it hits the bulls-eye, philosophy dies the moment the so-called absolute truth is reached.

Therefore, I found that my search is like a twin brother of philosophy: they will lose their meaning at the moment they find the thing they long for. Although I have not found a solution to the dilemma, I believe it is no longer necessary. Because all I need is to walk with the desire for something higher into the fog of the early morning, even though the road ahead is confusing and long, but it will never be dull. And I will be here, in the realm of forever novelty, crossing the border and spending my life searching and creating my “something higher”.