Break the Lucky Silence

Pathways: Dynamic Leadership

Level 1-1: Ice Breaker

I was born in a snowy midnight in a small village of Heilongjiang Province. My mother gave me the name Rui which means lucky in Chinese. That word comes from the saying: A snowy year, A harvest year.

As my mother’s wish, I am truly a lucky boy, not means winning the lottery, to be more precise, I am a quiet boy.

Not like my cousins, I never cried for any toy or candy. My mother told me to study, I just began studying. I didn’t understand why I should learn Chinese and math, actually I didn’t even heard of collage until junior high school. But what I did know is that my parents would feel happy if I said nothing and follow their instruction.

I followed my parents to Zhejiang Province and went through the whole primary school period. The dialect in that place is quite hard to understand. Luckily both teachers and students spoke mandarin in the class. In the school I was a kind of transparent person as I didn’t talk much. My favorite habit was reading books about computer and electronic, those books were put in the corner of the shelf at library, I really enjoyed the content in those books even though I couldn’t understand it.

Talking less let me have more time to read and think, gradually I became a good listener. My friends preferred to share their happiness and sadness with me, of course, they wouldn’t expect much voice response. Also Being quiet prevented me from many troubles, such as fighting with other people.

Things got change at middle high school after I came to Shandong Province with my family. The knowledge became harder and harder to learn, but I was not good at asking others for help. What’s worse, nobody had time talking with me, I could only solve the problem by myself, which would not turn to good result at that period. Eventually I went to an ordinary university at Yantai city to learn computer science.

The shortcoming of being not good at talking became even more obvious in collage. I saw many people make friends, make money, and even make girl friends by communicating with others. I had no idea how to make change because I got nervous and afraid while taking with strangers. At last I joined in a lab and made use of my entire spare time to study. Yes I got a great performance on my subject, but in my deep heart, I knew I didn’t make any progress at some aspect.

After graduated, I came to Beijing with one of my collage classmates and rented a room together. I guess we are the most strange roommates in the world: At weekends, we laid on our beds, played mobile phone or computer, without saying a word among whole day. Even at meal time, we ordered our food silently.

This weakness also started affecting my life, while interviewing for a job, I never had courage to argue for a better salary. While getting along with my girl friend, the failure of expressing my feelings made me lost her.

But just like someone had said: Love has a magic power. I never had made such a great determination to make change after breakup. The sadness forced myself to experience different kind groups of people. Some people got exercise at night, I tried it; Some people were discussing a news, I joined it. Someone joined a club, I am here.

The past is the past, now I am seeking for a rebirth. There is a saying: Silence is gold. but I hope I have the ability to express my thought, to influence people, to break the silence. I need to talk, I want to talk, I will be good at talk.