The third question is about to how to rise to the challenges of life, how to face one's inner aspiration of living a more meaningful and fulfilling life and bringing out one's better self, the frailties of man as man, frustrations, and temptations of reality. I interchangeably identify myself as an individualist, nihilist, existentialist, or realist-idealist (one striving to accomplish his ideals by standing firmly on the ground of reality, making the least necessary sacrifice for reality and taking advantages of its rules). But despite my aspiration for a better and higher existence, I remain a miserable nobody, a lone wolf walking in his own darkness without the slightest comfort from the outside. I do not have a single friend. Not that I cannot have one or more, but that, essentially, I do not feel the need for so-called friendship, which, as I understand it, is an empty term void of real meaning and full of lies. Even in the direst moment of loneliness or boredom, I will not wish for the companion of a friend. What I cherish first and above all is love, love in its narrow sense, that is, that between a man and a woman, something that makes you less lonely and makes your life complete. As I thought to myself one day, love is about being hugged and less lonely. This reminds me of a small essay by Russell, in which he narrates the three passions that have governed his whole life, and his first passion is the yearning for love, something that gives him a peep into the eternal, that relieves him of the dire loneliness of the limited individual existence in this awesome universe. His point is much echoed by me, as it will be by everyone who has thought seriously about life and death and life's loneliness. Every time I think about love, - in fact, I do not live a day without thinking about it for one hundred times - I feel poignant and profoundly melancholic and helpless. I love girls who are nice, angel-like, clean, pure, tender, lively, full of a passion characteristic to their age, and women who are charming, mature, womanly, motherly, of a passion of a different nature from that of young girls but of larger degrees of depth. Despite my worship for them and yearning for their attentions and caresses and despite my age of 25, mine is still a virgin land yet to be tilled by the one meant to me by God. But I do not know what will she be like, where she is, and how far she is from me. I feel I have nothing, be it appearance, knowledge, or wealth. What saddens me the most is that my youth is leaving me as well. At the age of 25, it suddenly occurs to me, and to the great stirring of my heart, that I can no longer tell myself assuredly that I am still young. Actually I am no longer young. And I no longer have the time to waste on wishful thinking about such things as nice girls or women or alpha guys. I see the lapse of every second with tremble. I am living and I am dying -- it is horrible to think about this. To live is to die, is not this horrible. For every living being, sooner or later, will reach its ultimate destination. On the one hand I feel the fleeting of life's lapse, but on the other hand I cannot enjoy my present life, constantly besieged by all kinds of inadequacies on my part, such as charm as a man, knowledge, wealth, social status, etc... though in the bottom of my heart I am not foolish enough to fail to say that, essentially, what man seeks is neither wealth nor social status, but happiness, happiness coming from the conviction that he is loved and of importance to the one he cares about, from being accepted as a whole and loved with heart by his significant other. But when such a person is still not available, I feel I have the need of wealth and social status. And therefore I should devote more of my productive energies and time to equipping myself with all the weapons required by the reality to win in the battle of life for happiness.

Dear Mr. Zhang, with your keen observation and sharp understanding, I do not know what a person you see in all that I write above. Any perspective and suggestions will be genuinely appreciated. I described myself as a lost sheep when I was still a high school student, but today, five or six years after that, I find that I remains a lost sheep drifting lonesomely in the broad wilderness of life to seek a direction.