感恩回顾
The following content is an excerpt from Dr. Li's grateful retrospective on his legendary life.
以下内容摘自李博士传奇人生的感恩回顾。
Back in 1950, I was here all alone, in a strange new country with a brand-new language, and no relatives. Thankfully, I was given a job sweeping floors in a Lockheed hangar on Saturdays, and the pay fed me for a whole week. Another part-time job paid for my room. When I graduated with honors from flight mechanic’s school, I applied to MIT! Friends and teachers laughed at me. One of my Chinese schoolmates even used the Chinese saying: “A lazy toad wants to eat the meat of a heavenly swan!(懒蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉), You’ll be lucky if you can get into Glendale City College!” One of my teachers even said about MIT: “Bob, you don’t know where it is and you cannot even spell Massachusetts!” Miraculously, I had the last laugh!
回想起1950年，我一个人来到美国 — 对于当时的我而言，那是一片完全陌生的国土，在这里我孤身一人，无依无靠，既没有亲戚，也不懂得当地语言 — 英语。 谢天谢地，我得到了一份周六在洛克希德机库扫地的工作，工资足够我维持生活一个星期。 另外搞了一份兼职工作，足够支付我的房租。 当我以优异的成绩从飞行机械学校毕业时，我申请报考麻省理工学院（MIT）！ 朋友和老师都笑话我。 我的一个中国老乡校友甚至用了一句中文谚语：“A lazy toad wants to eat the meat of a heavenly swan!(就是在嘲笑少年罗伯特，你小子简直就是 懒蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉)！ 如果你能考上格伦代尔城市学院（Glendale City College），你就很幸运了！” (格伦代尔城市学院 属于三流的职业技术学院) 。
对于我当时报考志愿为麻省理工学院的理想，我的一位老师这么说：“鲍勃，你都不知道麻省理工学院（MIT）的地理位置是在哪里，甚至连马萨诸塞州的完整拼写也没有搞对！” 但是，奇迹般地，最后我赢了！
在疫情非常夸张的年代，一些网友可能因为疫情的冲击太大了，心情不好，也没有足够的心思照顾青少年的学习。在这起情况下，青少年学生只要有足够的觉悟，就应该体谅他们的父母，同时，更加努力地学习，争取在未来有更好的机会和技能为祖国效力，同时，也是在拯救他们自己，因为这种努力，将大幅地地减少他们“被消失”的概率！
英语文章全文:
（双语版的完整细节，稍后另外补上）。
Just the other day, the fluorescent tube burned out in the bathroom and I tried to climb up a chair to replace it. To my shock, it was a struggle! But in years past, I had done this countless times without any problem! Ah…there’s the key phrase: “years past.” Yes, I am getting old! Then I recalled how I fell in the shower recently. I was almost helpless to get up! I realized that without friction, the 3rd law of Newton does not work!! There was plenty of ACTION but there was no REACTION ! Ha ha! Just look at the cars slipping and sliding on the East Coast streets after a storm. The view in the shower was somewhat similar, but thankfully there was no other “traffic”!
Instead of being sad, I was filled with the “spirit of gratitude”as I looked back at all my past years.
Back in 1950, I was here all alone, in a strange new country with a brand-new language, and no relatives. Thankfully, I was given a job sweeping floors in a Lockheed hangar on Saturdays, and the pay fed me for a whole week. Another part-time job paid for my room. When I graduated with honors from flight mechanic’s school, I applied to MIT! Friends and teachers laughed at me. One of my Chinese schoolmates even used the Chinese saying: “A lazy toad wants to eat the meat of a heavenly swan!(懒蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉), You’ll be lucky if you can get into Glendale City College!” One of my teachers even said about MIT: “Bob, you don’t know where it is and you cannot even spell Massachusetts!” Miraculously, I had the last laugh!
Looking back, I don’t know how I survived those first 5 years at MIT. So many schoolmates came from high-class prep schools and I had not even taken a formal course in English!! I am so thankful that I had some scholarships and part-time jobs to help me through. How easy it would have been to go astray by getting bad habits like smoking, drug, and drinking. I thank my FF fraternity brothers and sisters who helped guide me on the straight and narrow without expecting anything in return.
One miracle happened while I was still an atheist. My old jalopy hit another jalopy in the summer after my Junior year at MIT. The other party’s lawyer took every cent I had. I nearly had to drop out of school and work as an illegal immigrant! I am so thankful that I won the C T Loo Fellowship which paid for my tuition plus room and board. It gave me a new lease on life and let me finish my schooling. Mr. Loo also helped many other students through their hardships. I never met Mr. Loo, but what he did is a true example of: What we do in life echoes in eternity!!
I am also thankful for a new direction in life. In 1956, I came across pictures of a baby’s 40-week development inside the womb. It is truly an amazing miracle, and it transformed me from a confirmed atheist into a Christian! This filled my life with faith, hope and love! I recently borrowed the videos from the library: “The Incredible Human Machine” and “The Miracle of Life” and was inspired again! This gave me a new direction of life. (Faith, hope and love). It also taught me that we live in two worlds, the physical world, and the spiritual world. One is temporal the other eternal!
The physical world we all know, the unseen spiritual world consists of: Our wisdom, knowledge, inspirations, faith hope and love, fear envy and greed, mind, spirit, and soul. When God’s spirit is in it, it goes to infinity! We plan our life in the spiritual world, we build it in the physical world.
Life has not always been smooth sailing, but Thank God, many miracles did happen again and again in my life. One of the most memorable was the Layoff of 1957! Three months after my marriage came “Black Thanksgiving”! The company’s big B-70 super bomber contract was cancelled, laying off everyone who had less than 18 months tenure with the company! With only 14 months, I got a lay-off notice! It was my biggest disappointment and also the beginning of a great miracle.
My wife said to pray, and we did. I was laid off on Friday, but on Monday, I was re-hired into the Advance Development Department in Engineering! This allowed me to help the company win the Mercury and later, the Gemini and Apollo projects! My patent for the “adaptive control system” also helped win the multi-million-dollar project of the X-15; these events caused the company to send me back for my PhD at MIT, at full salary and all expenses paid! It was an unbelievable miracle beyond anything we ever asked for or imagined! (God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all we can ask or imagine! Ephesians 3:20)
Another miracle was that my one and only daughter Doreen arrived just when my doctoral thesis was finished and we were able to truly enjoy her.
Still another important miracle was my wife’s recovery from Acute Myelogenous Leukemia(AML) in 2006. She was in and out of the City of Hope Hospital for nine(9) months. At her age of 76, the doctors estimated her survival chance to be between 2 to5 percent. During those 9 months, I had to commute from work to her hospital room daily and stay with her in her room sleeping on the sofa. As she was sleeping all the time, (no TV) I found the time to write my book: “Build the Rainbow of Your Success”. This book has now been translated into Chinese:
It is selling well in China. If it can help just a few young Chinese and give them HOPE, I will be even more thankful and overjoyed. Best of all, God granted remission of Bettie’s leukemia down to the molecular level! A glorious miracle, indeed!
In 2007, we were looking for something to keep Bettie healthy. We found “Kangen Water” made by a machine from Japan. I believe it helped keep her in good health for many years and I also saw my own blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar go down. I also did not experience any relapse of colon cancer. Since then our group has help thousands of people enjoy better health. An unbelievable blessing!
I found that storms come and go, but the sun is always shining above the storm!
Finally, I want to thank my wife Bettie for putting up with me for 61 years and my beautiful daughter Doreen and her husband Tiong. Now I have two beautiful and smart granddaughters, Zoe and Amy. Zoe is doing well at Stanford University; Amy is an artist and studying animation in the film school at Loyola Marymount University. Praise the Lord!
In summary, I truly thank God for a “Wonderful life”! I cannot help but echo the sentiment of King David who wrote the 23rd Psalm some 3,000 years ago, andlook forward to being with The Lord forever!
Some people may say what if there is no Heaven? Wouldn’t you be disappointed? My answer is: Not half as disappointed as an atheist who finds out that there is!!!
In this Festival season, I want to write to you specifically to thank you for blessing my life. “A thankful life is a blessed life”. Indeed, I am thankful for having known you and the fellowship we have that has enriched my life. No one lives forever, however, a sweet memory does! Thank you!
Sincerely,
Bob Lee
No comments:
Post a Comment