034: John F. Kennedy – When Written In Chinese

“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” – John F. Kennedy

This was drawn by Jason Liw. Take a look at his Behance profile.

Just to make it clear about the semantics, this phrase is only half true. The word for Crisis in Chinese is 危机. The first half of the word, 危, really does mean danger. The second half, 机, actually doesn’t mean opportunity. At least, not on it’s own. By itself, 机 actually means something more like ‘critical point’. But when written as 机会, then it would mean opportunity. Although 机会 would be considered another word. Still, I would prefer to believe in this quote. It still makes sense in a way, and is greatly motivating.

John F Kennedy, or JFK, was the 35th President of America. He needs no introduction, so I will just say what I admire most about him. JFK was the one who push for American’s space programme. That was during the time when space exploration was just beginning to be a reality. And in his “why we choose to go to the moon” speech, he said: “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. This quote moved me. It made me realise that even though things are hard, and even though we may have the occasional crisis, we need to face up to these difficult events in order to grow. It is an idea I still hold in my mind. That is why I do things outside of my comfort zone, because if I don’t then how will I grow?

All this talk reminds me of yet another quote: “Tough times don’t last, tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller

If you have a story to share about encountering a crisis and lived to tell the tale, please do so in the comments below. And if you like what you see, hit subscribe.

Update

After a new people coming up to tell me that 机 can mean opportunity on its own, I went research this a second time.

This time I consulted a friend who studies Chinese. Our conclusion is that it is possible for 机 to mean opportunity on its own in the strict definition sense. However,  in a sentence or conversation, 机 can’t be used alone to mean opportunity. It’s just the intricacies of language. To quote my friend, “the problem is that a lot of Chinese words have no real meaning alone; these words are never actaully used alone, they need to be used with another word to make meaning”.