A letter from Nov 17, 2025

Greetings, future me - Hua Bao on the last day of 11th grade. I speak to you from a distant past, half year ago, where the shape of my life ahead is still cloaked in uncertainty. I know little of what awaits myself, of what joys or sorrows time may have woven into my days. Yet in this moment, I strive with the utmost diligence, gathering whatever strength I possess to move forward with grace. Should you find yourself reading this in a season of heaviness or despair, I ask that you hold fast to the following words, for they once steadied me and may yet steady you: "Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main." - Arthur Hugh Clough (1862)