Reading Summary
Essential Qualities in Adversities
“I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure.”
——Robinson
This is also the dilemma many young people face nowadays——staying in the comfort zone or not. Just like Robinson, we have been produced a comfortable live by our parents and society. What’s more, our parents always try their best to prevent us from being hurt. Obviously, it is easier for us to slack of compared with being involved in the rat race. Which kind of life will you choose? Robinson’s choice is to try something new and stick to his dream even though he will face unknown dangerous.
However, it is impossible that everything goes smoothly. Robinson met with terrible dangers during his travel. What kinds of qualities help him overcome difficulties?
Staying calm in danger “My next work was to view the country, and seek a proper place for my habitation and where to stow my goods to secure them from whatever might happen” Being stuck in an island, he was desperate and in an upset mood for a period of time. After that, he calmed down, analyze the situation thoughtfully then decide what should be done. The ability of staying come in danger is a fairly precious personality of Robinson.
Thinking and summarizing “having had experience of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy, nor loaded it so hard” Robinson have no experience of living in wilderness before. He must gain the relevant living skills by himself. It is unavoidable to make mistakes. But what he did was not giving up or making the same mistake again and again. He always learned something from previous experience and correct it next time which helped him a lot.
Positive attitude “ Looking more upon the bright side of my condition and less upon the dark side and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted” Your mood and mind depend on how you look at things. The other key of surviving in danger--- being positive. Thinking about what you have instead of what you have lost.
Self-comfort Mental health has strong connection with physic health. Sometimes our body becomes ill just due to our bad mood. “I began to comfort myself as well as I could and to set the good against the evil” Robinson tried a lot to became a psychologist and cure himself. He adjusted his attitude towards live and his condition by self-comfort.
Critical thinking “we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from and to set in the description of good and evil on the credit side of the account” Every coin has two sides. We can look at problems in two totally opposite ways. We can use this method when we meet with tough problem or even lose hope of life.
Patience and Insistence “I had no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time and labor which it took me up to make a plank or board” Lack of effective tools, Robinson had to do everything by very limited resources and his two hands. Patience and insistence are two reasons of his success. When we feel upset because we can’t move forward any more, stop and ask ourselves, are we patient enough?
There are also some others actions of Robinson which deserve us to imitate. For example, Robinson would ask himself some questions and communicate with his deep heart just like Confucianism conception---"Zi Xing”. In digital age, people are dazzled by various sorts of information and lack of the ability of thinking deeply and self-reflection. Day by day, we are easy to lose ourselves. That’s sorrow. Furthermore, Robinson is also a practitioner of “Duansheli”, which means cutting off and abandoning meaningless things. People's desire of good are extending day by day. Sometimes we are crazy for things we don't need. But “all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use” . We should learn to Robinson and live a simplified life. In this case, Robinson is quite a model of modern people.
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