Thanks readers for the opportunity

Today marks the end of 14 years of writing this weekly column for this newspaper. I hope, but cannot say for sure, that I will be here again next year on the last weekend of September. Who can say? Perhaps then I will rest again and look back, a tiny bit amazed by the past, but very grateful for it. Or maybe I'll be gone.

“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens,” says the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible (3, 1). There is “a time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them” (3, 5), “a time to keep, and a time to cast away” (3, 6). There is “a time to be silent, and a time to speak” (3, 7).

I believe the time has not yet arrived for me to be silent. I believe one of the tasks I am supposed to still carry out is to gather stones here, not to scatter them, to keep and not throw away.

In many ways, this column has become more rather than less difficult to write in recent months and years. I fear I have already said in this place what is within me to say. I worry that I have already done my best work for readers, and am walking on the perilous edge of mediocrity. But since I do not sense this deep in my bones, since I am uncertain and may only be tired, for now, I'll act as if I am heading into a snow blizzard. With my eyes I cannot see beyond a step or two ahead. The wind sends blasts of cold upon my face. But, for the present, I aim to hunker down and tread trustingly on, one step at a time.

The story of what I think is presently the longest surviving weekly column in Taiwan's English press began on this page on September 28, 1995. That was more or less by agreement between the editors of The China Post and I, because September 28 in Chinese culture is the traditional birthday of Confucius, still sometimes called “Teacher's Day.” I wrote my first column on the subject of teachers and students, and reflected on the mysterious bond that may grow between students and their teachers, if patience and care, and hard work and blessings from above all come together at the right time.

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