Based on those tweets, feeling kind of like peeping others through a window, it seems that our lives are mostly influenced by teleological time. Everybody seems busy with their work, study, family, and other colorful things which are expected from us to have particular satisfactions, usually for a better life in light of individual’s needs and wants. I do not think I have been affected by others’ tweets so far; maybe the time is not long enough, or I’m too stubborn:).

We do everything purposely, more or less, to get an anticipated result. However, if my understanding to the three types of time is correct, the influence of teleological time is often interrupted by the affect of the stellar time when something unexpected comes. Our lives usually takes other path, the forking path, like the scenarios in the movie named “Crash”. Just like in Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, the relationship among people sometimes are transforming as they enter to another path. According to Borges, “you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend”. Life is full of conflicts and temptations pushing us to change our paths as people are greedy and have endless desires. For my example, marrying my wife and moving to the United States are two significant path changes in my life.

Are we changing our life paths by random, are those paths already designed for us when we were born? Atheists and theists have opposite answers. If God is the creator of the earth and all creatures on it, then it is reasonable to believe that everything we do is under control. Educated by a communist government, I used to be an atheist. However, when I see the people in that society having less and less sense of guilt when doing something immoral, I think a theist society is better for human beings, though I’m still not convinced that God created everything. Now I think since law can’t stop all the immoral activities, believing in God, or gods, at least makes people hold something in awe. With this idea in mind, when our lives are facing a forking path, we can probably choose the way of not harming others or at least making the harm minimum if there is no better choice. However, on the other hand, the world is full of significant conflicts because of the various religions people believe in. It is a crucial problem if there are conflicts among Gods themselves. Whom indeed should we believe in?

Though I’m sure that I do not completely understand the underlying meaning of this story(the spy kills the researcher, dedicating himself in researching the spy's ancestor's noval and labyrinth for decades, for just informing Germany, called by himself as "a barbarous country which imposed upon me the abjection of being a spy", the city, which has the same name as the researcher, that German must attack, to just prove to the Chief that "a yellow man could save his armies"? Too crazy for me to understand), it makes me think of the meaning of life in a new way. Yes, I often find myself running in circles, though I cannot describe it clearly and theoretically, that feeling comes back to me again and again. The words which attract me to this story are just “forking path”. What path should we choose on earth?