Open the box of chocolates

Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

15 years ago when I heard this sentence from Forrest Gump, I was only an elementary school kid. I never thought about future, nor did I ever imagine that one day, in the United States, during a life-changing journey, I would understand this sentence so deeply and agree with it with all my life.

Before I came to Washington DC and joined this dynamic program, I had always been thinking about the concept of “global mindset”. What does it mean by saying that someone has a “global mindset”? Does it refer to the mastery of several foreign languages, experience of worldwide travels, and four-digit numbers of foreign friends on Facebook? Or does it simply indicate that someone has dual nationality or has multinational living experience?

And here I am, fully immersed in the brilliant capital life, talking to people from all walks of life, tasting food from every continent of the world, discussing headline news from weather to healthcare, and enjoying festivals from various countries. I was amazed by this iridescent picture of communications and exuberant vitality of multi-cultures. Every glimpse of the society provides me new ideas and perspectives to interpret things which I had taken for granted.

If I’d ever offer an advice to the perspective students of TWC, I would recommend them to try as many new things as possible. By trying new things and opening one’s heart to the unfamiliar voices, one grows stronger, wiser, and more critical, thus understands the world better than before. Life is like a box of chocolates. So just give yourself a chance to step forward, open it, taste it, appreciate it, and then you will find the world has more colors. Love it, accept it, respect it, and then you become a world citizen.