WPSU’s This I Believe / Personal Philosophies and Core Values

I just made it over the last hill. The hardest part is over and it’s exhilarating. My cheeks are red, but my breathing is leveling off. I can feel my bangs flying out of my headband. I try to focus on my feet hitting the ground at a consistent “step step, step step” pace.

When I was a couple of months old, I had pneumonia and I stopped breathing. My mom called for an ambulance and immediately began to pray. The ambulance arrived minutes later, and the EMT performed CPR on me. That day, I was the first baby the EMT had ever “brought back to life.”

I look down at the screen of my ringing iPhone and it clearly states that the caller is my best friend of eight years, Chelsey. I have some time to chat between classes, but as usual, instead of picking it up, I let it ring, ring, ring until it goes into voicemail.

Many people say “I’ll believe it when I see it,” But I believe touching things is what makes them real: Feeling the water soak into my shoes after I step into a puddle Makes the rain real. Brushing my fingers over the imprints of the words pressed into a friend’s letter Makes their meanings real. Compressing…

It all seems like a blur looking back on it. One minute I was throwing my graduation cap in the air and the next minute a moving van was driving away from the place I had called home for more than a decade. My parents had retired and were moving to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, a ski…

Eat better, feel less stressed, become more productive at work, have more patience, and use your credit card less!? All these things and more have happened to me. Are they the result of having a regular exercise routine as new research I've read claims? I can’t prove it, but I believe it! And believing something will…

I believe that English proficiency is important in my life. I’m from China. English is an important part of our schooling from grade school to university. Some students not only study English in school, they also attend training courses and watch English television. Others just regard it as a task and study it carelessly.

Terrible things happen in the world. But it’s easy to believe bad things only happen to other people, in other places. On December 14, 2012, I lost that naivety. When a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School, my heart broke.