I’ve been traveling with Binhai Mass Transit between Tianjin and TEDA these days. On the train you can choose to sit either facing front or backwards. I never choose the one makes me facing backwards, because it used to make me feel carsick when I was very little. Sometimes I would rather choose to stand, if there is no empty seat that faces front. There is nothing much I have thought about this kind of seats before, but today, I realized there’s something more than simply the direction you sit. Most of the time we sit facing front and our eyes are looking forwards. It is just like the way we live: we plan, we hope, we pray, and we make wishes; but how many times we summarize, we remember, we conclude, or we learn from the past? How many times we look all the way back and get to see the path we’ve been walking along?
This could possibly be applying to photography, which is what I’ve been interested in. Even though I am nothing close to a pro, I prefer the feeling of seeing the world around me through a viewfinder. Just like many other photography amateurs, I traveled and shoot pictures on the way. I get used to look back every several minutes, just to make sure while focusing on what I see along the trip, I wouldn’t miss any beautiful sceneries which probably could only be found when looking backwards.
There’s a famous saying from the Confucius:”If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as continually to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others.” We might not be teachers of others, but we do learn something new from reviewing the past. In front of us, there are so many directions we could be heading to, but behind us, there’s only one, and no one can ever turn back.
So, look backwards and learn, face forward and go.