I am 17 years old,
I will be forever grateful that NM is with me for the next ten years,
The most formative time of my life.
What inspires a youngster to make a decade-long commitment, you ask.
It is simply because of what NM is -
A place to cope with the cruelty and the restlessness of the world,
A comfort on sleepless nights，
A guardian of love and passion,
A treatment for a wound,
A place that we can belong to,
An outlet for untold stories and hidden emotions,
A relationship with the world,
A piece of evidence for existence,
A cave with a bonfire.
Most importantly,
A haven of 108 searching souls,
To see and to be seen.
When we gather,
We morph into a small oasis.
Losing ourselves,
In the things buried deep in our hearts.
Even though each story is a distortion of memories,
It still is better than forgetting.
Write our own life,
Read the lives of others,
Express and receive ideas,
And experience the collision of the two.
We set out to transcend the chaos of daily mundanity，
To enter a more profound spiritual world,
Expelling boredom,
Immersing in unceasing nostalgia,
Pondering eternity and nothingness,
Most importantly,
Reckoning,
And making reconciliations,
With the world and with oneself,
Which we call growth.
In this land of Southern Branches,
Food for thoughts is the only nourishment.
And thoughts vibrating on different frequencies,
Still resonate.
And the company that we provide to each other,
Is like the warm light from the struck match in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales,
Shedding light on both the loneliness and the lushness of one’s spiritual world.
By serendipity we meet,
Again pure,
Again honest
Always authentic,
Often interesting and critical,
Never cold.
