My brother

I wrote this essay for my English essay class. Sorry, I know my writing is horrible but I still work on it. Anyway, it expresses me by some ways and I just wanted to post it on my blog. :D (hope you enjoy)

Every winter morning a 14-year-old boy used to wake up with a cold red nose at 7am and jump over the freezing cold floor to his boots. He put on his clothes as fast as possible because his room was like being in the fridge. In fact, it was more like a traditional dwelling without a central heating system than a house. So he came back from high school at 1pm, fired the chimney, did his homework, went 2 kilometers to the well to get water, and went to bed at 10 pm. Not realizing why he had to memorize these functions, theorems, and much more, he did it every day because he had to. Actually, this boy was me and these plain and monotonous days cycled like a spinning wheel. I used to do these things like I was under orders, but one man changed these plain days into joyful, enthusiastic days and even made clear the reason why I was studying. The man was my uncle Lkhagva, who came originally from the countryside to get a high school education in Ulaanbaatar City, the capital of Mongolia.

As soon as he came, he started helping family members to do some jobs at home like any Mongolian would do. Several days after he arrived, we went to the spring and started to talk. He asked me questions about myself. Of course, I recounted my typical life and asked him back. His eyes were shining and he said, “I think everything is amazing. You need to just see it from the right angle. For example, if you see through a prism at the right angle, you will see a hypnotizing seven different lights of the sun, even though this prism is just a triangle of glass.”  At this moment, I felt like I had just been seeing the outside of the prism, instead of seeing through it. So he continued: “At least academic classes are examples of wonder. Physics explains how the fire in a chimney provides heat, mathematics recognizes logical systems of almost everything, history studies our ancestors, biology teaches how plants grow, and much more.” While he talked, I was wandering through the world: He was explaining how interesting it is. Interestingly, I hadn’t recognized these things before; maybe I was not old enough to recognize it. It was the first time I wondered why a fire generates heat, what people do in boring offices, and what numbers express, since I was very young and just wondering why the sky is blue. I was just a silly boy, but I was really astounded at his explanations and examples which connected my boring lessons to real life. We just couldn’t stop talking, all the way to the well. Actually, I couldn’t stop asking about numbers, plants, physics and everything, even though I hadn’t wondered like that in my classes before. Now I still can’t forget an explanation that if you study physics, you will know how to slide this sled a long with the least energy. In fact, he showed me by pulling his sled from different angles and I was really happy to learn I would not get tired even after a long distance, if I pulled my sled at the right angle. For example, if you pull your sled from too high an angle, you will expend almost half your effort just lifting the point of your sled instead of sliding it forward. Although if you pull you sled really down, you will get tired because you will be walking like a duck. Maybe this was the reason that I hated how heavy this water was, every time I went to the well. So now I was kind of able to pull a sled by easily, at least with minimal effort.

Before my uncle Lkhagva came, I had just been memorizing parts of laws for my monotonous “law for life” class, which mainly studied the core national laws, maybe just to get good grades. Even though I wasn’t in a grade yet to study physics and other sciences, I really wanted to take these classes and study more about this wonderful world which was so interesting when Lkhagva explained it. The morning after our trip to the well, for the first time I walked to school enthusiastic, about learning and exploring our wonderful world. Instead of just multiplying or adding numbers, I thought about what these numbers represent or how these things might affect our social lives. I started to think that every time I fired up the chimney, if there is no oxygen, the fire will not take hold. I started to think if we didn’t have laws, how our world would be. Thus, my boring daily life became a collaboration of wonder, enthusiasm and desire to learn – not just work to get good grades.

Even though he was not a great scientist or lecturer, Lkhagva opened the door of “the wonderful world” for me. We had to go to the well every single night after we came home from school, but to me it was a great trip. During the early days of the fall semester, we had enough time to talk, but as time went on, our time was getting short. However, our path to the well became a little trip of wandering through the “wonderland,” as from different angles. So, when we went to the well and my myriad questions or his explanations started, my holding of an ordinary and typical water canister became the product of a great scientist’s work, we debated about which angle was the best for pulling our sleds, and I understood how my recent-studied enigmatic math formulas became the reason for how our social system works. For example, I was able to use quadratic equation on most of the concepts of economics. Supply and demand curves are the core ideas of economics, and both of them are defined by quadratic equations.

Lkhagva was not only the person who made me understand why we study these boring formulas, but he was also the person who inspired me to set and get to my own goals without disappointment. One night I told him about my loneliness, about unlucky things that had happened to me and that my grades were not enough because by this time we had become more like brothers than just ordinary relations. Then he asked, can you see the sun, right now? I said of course not, because it is night. But he said, “Even though you can’t see the sun, the sun is still somewhere, and you just need to be patient and indefatigable until the sun starts to illuminate you again. Surely you don’t want to give up just before the sunrise.” These words totally haunted my mind and became one of my mottos. Every time I am disappointed or sad, I remember that the sun is just behind the clouds, or it is just night time. So I need to be patient, and I should work harder until the sun rises.

Although uncle Lkhagva’s explanations were simple and direct, these speeches influenced how I study and the angle from which I see the world. His simple but true words were strong enough to change my thoughts about life. Of course I could have lived without his influence, but I am not sure that I would see the world with such opened eyes. Today I still wonder how all these things were made, how these math formulas change our lives, how plants grow, how people express themselves in beautiful ways and sometimes I just stupidly wonder what people do in their offices. This stupid wonder is actually why I am studying. I don’t study for grades, or just to get a job, I study to explain and resolve my wonder at the world.