We harvest hope

                                                                  By Li Qianran

Blinking my eyes hardly, profoundly, I was trying to print everything I saw in my mind. I couldn’t believe that I was standing here, on the farm in Lenox, USA. The real one, not in the postcards or brochures, I was looking at the sights which could only be seen in the paintings, creating by the most romantic artist specialized in mountains and rivers. The breeze touched my face softly and I walked on the grass land covered with golden foliage and silvery sounds. A lodge with a white chimney was standing in front of me up the hill surrounded by the golden sunlight, emitting the aroma of hope.

From the very surface, you would never know this was an asylum of people with schizophrenia and other mental disorders. It sounded weird and scared, or even ignorantly funny at first; this would be the place to spend my day working? I found it ridiculous nevertheless, as soon as I arrived there, my childish thoughts turned appositely, it was a fantastic place where natural farm looked picturesque with cows, turkeys and apple trees on the hills as far as I can see. What an ideal place for the patients to recreate and solve their mental problems.

On this peaceful morning, we went picking apples with the guests, what they called the patients with shining faces and delighted laughter. We gathered these pieces of red crystals carefully and experienced the contentment of working. The guests all seemed for from the illness in such a place where respect, relationship, work and friends are central to the healing process. It was here that I realized that love and hope, which was harvested by them through the work, is every where. Perhaps, a few years later, they’ll go back to the cities, feeling gloomy and worried sometimes. However, there is always a inner place in their heart which is filled with hope and love.

Everyday, people have various of experiences with delight, gloom and sorrow. Time is fleeting, some flits out of mind as soon as possible, some vanishes with the blowing breeze, while some, brands on memory profoundly forever. And I know exactly that working on t his farm would be one of these memories. Here, those despair people harvested hope!

The sunlight was too bright to keep my eyes open, looking directly into the eyes of the patients to the soul. Instinctly, every cell of any sense organs could smell and feel the fragrance from the hand which is called—hope.