buried, a story about hope

When I wake up with a dizzy spell and body aches, I can feel nothing but breathless. Even worse, my body can hardly move and I can see nothing around me. Instinctively, I scrabble around, searching for something useful. Unexpectedly, I find nothing but a mobile phone lying silently next to me. No signal, no contacts, and the power was low as well. As I lighten up with the mobile phone screen, my heart sank. I realize I am buried alive inside a coffin, with no food and water, just the mobile phone and I. why am I here? Where am I? Who did this to me? How can I get out of this damn coffin? I am just a U.S. contractor working here in Iraq. Why me? Why! The last memory of mine was when I was driving my car across the endless desert, a bomb fiercely exploded in front of my car and when I opened my eyes again, I have already lain helplessly here. Desperation occupies the whole coffin. I can smell the death. Maybe essentially, it is my coffin. I release my rest power to confirm whether there is still an opportunity for me to escape or ask for help. However, nothing works. I am now waiting for the king of terrors while the mobile phone is flickering. It is strange but it doesn’t matter. The army is coming to rescue me, I think, hopefully. It’s a SMS. With my hand trembling open it, there is just few words; I’m waiting for you.

　Actually, this story is adapted from a movie called “buried” and I have simplified it a lot, which can have a good expression and leave my audiences some suspense when I was telling the story. It worked.

The ending of the original movie is told like this. The man who was buried alive inside the coffin do received a rescue call. The team leader told him they had already located the position of his coffin and within few minutes they could dig the coffin out and saved him in time. How excited he was after the call. After few minutes, there was another call. Desperately, he was told that the skeleton inside the coffin, which had been dug out, was the one who had the same situation as him 5 years ago. With the screen light faded away, the movie was over.

The man can be rescued or not? We don’t know. The thing we are sure is that, people’s hopes can be raised much easily when they are in trouble. Meanwhile, it can be easily dashed also and when the hopes are dashed, the result is so serious than we can imagine, even ruin one’s life.

Life is all about this. On the one hand, expectation can raise people’s hope and motivate them to stick on their lives. On the other hand, increasing expectation can be the potential of people’s failure. In a conclusion, keep a balance in expectation is the wise choice, neither under-expect nor over- expect.