**Friend of time**


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Sitting still in a coffee shop, seeing guests come in and out, the background music mixed with people’s speaking voice, a guy is playing guitar not far away. Interestingly, it seems many creative works were finished in such noisy but cozy environment in history, such as the Harry Potter series. Getting used to read and study in a quiet library-like environment, I have to wear my Beats earphone on to keep focus. People like going here, probably due to the environment can make people feel less stressful and meet with some people in a strange city. 

This reminds me of the coffee shop is open and closed each day, but different people from different places have ever dropped by, which makes it lives longer in people’s memories. We are people in a big world but spending each of the small life every day. There are a lot of things last longer than our day-to-day life. For example, the song we usually listened at specific of time, the music instrument played since young, the online answers helped other researchers with similar questions.

Sometimes people hope time can go fast, sometimes they hope time can go slow. Another important reason for me to select academic lifestyle is one day I asked myself: what single truth can I gasp and hang onto for the dear life when all the other truths around us seem to fade with time. Because engaging in a work that will last long after death seems to be a friend of time.


<Last updated by Xi Zhang on Aug 19th,2022> Uncommon Ground