the real Nate Clark

Several years ago I was in New York city with my mom and my sister, Jacki. While Jacki was taking forever inside H&M, I was wandering through the many street vendors who had set up shop on the sidewalk nearby. A table full of hand-drawn inspirational quotes written in Chinese caught my eye. I spotted this framed poster, and bought it immediately for about 30 bucks.

In case the image is hard to see, the quote reads:

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, and live the life you’ve imagined

I fell in love with this quote. It’s so direct. So assertive. Yet, so inspiring. And, I think Chinese writing looks cool.

When I got home, I hung it on my bathroom wall, directly above the toilet where I was sure to see it every day.

All this time I thought that this quote was some kind of well-known Chinese proverbial wisdom passed down through generations … until a few months ago when I started dating Lavinia, who’s from Taiwan and speaks Chinese natively. She assured me that Chinese to English translation is correct, but she’s never heard the saying before. After a bit of Googling, I find out that this was originally written in English by 19th century American transcendentalist author, Henry David Thoreau. Oh well, that doesn’t make it any less inspiring, and Chinese writing still looks cool.