A pigeon's life

The short trip to Oxford made me think about many things, from my thesis and academia to human knowledge and books. 

The study of humanities is, in some sense, all about books. And books are believed to have human knowledge and wisdom inside. 

And those knowledge and wisdom are arranged in books in the form of sentences, words and letters. 

People love simple and short sentences and easy words. 

Many events and phenomena in society may look clear and simple. 

But actually at a deeper and more fundamental level, always another side exists under the superficial appearance and meaning.

In that sense, what historians seek after is all about another side of a fact.

  

Therefore, even a fact is not simple at all. 

Every individual person's life is likewise never simple for other people to understand. 

That's why we cannot judge a person's life. 

Indeed, we cannot even judge the life of a pigeon that keeps pecking to find something to eat on a dirty road. 

It also has its own life in this world. 

I remember I saw a pigeon waddling in an abnormal way. 

It had one of its toes missing,

but ... was trying to survive with that defect anyway. 

I believe It certainly had to try harder to survive than its peers did.  

Nothing in the world is simple. 

There is no such things like 'simple life'.. 

Even with millions of millions of books, we cannot explain a life of an old person, an old tree, an old whale... 

During my travel in Oxford, I spent a majority of my time in the Upper Reading Room of the Old Bodleian library.

The last morning of my stay, I took a shot of the window of the reading room.

It became another window of my window collections ...