Learn to Live
——my thoughts after reading Joan of Arc

Sunshine shines over the statue in Orleans. The ordinary but famous girl named Joan is riding on her horse, smiling and looking down at the land that she has loved and fought on. She is the heroine of France, the saint from heaven. Her influences shine over every person’s heart, and I am deeply impressed by her story.

    When Louis XIII was the king, the British and the Burundians invaded France and wanted to have the northern part of France. Joan helped French people coronate their new king, Louis XIV, getting almost all the invaded land back with the help of three saints. But after that, she was caught by the Burundians and was burnt on a cross by her enemy. This is the famous story about Joan, the saint. From a village girl to a national heroine, she only used a few years. How could Joan of Arc do that? I wonder.

    Someone says the saints have chosen her and the God has given her power. But actually the real virgin doesn’t exist, From the birth of Jesus Christ in the first century, people have controlled the Christianity. I think the religion has become a tool between people. This kind of opinion about the success of Joan must be wrong.

    Someone said, Joan had this wonderful success because of her confidence and will. I quite agree with this opinion. Because there aren’t any virgins in the world, so I think the appearance of the saints was only in Joan’s mind, actually nothing special happened to Joan. I think the things which really mattered were Joan’s thoughts. In my opinion, Joan must have some military ability to lead the whole army, because of her unusual image, Joan became more confident to the success. It let Joan had the will to be successful. So the success before did not happen by accident,. After some battles, Joan said that she had lost her support from the saints, but actually this didn’t mind. The more important thing was that she had lost her confidence and will, so she lost the battle at last.

    So I think confidence and will are just like the foundation of success. All the success depends on them.

    In the real world, confidence and will is always very important. During the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Li Ting and Sun Tiantian have won the gold medal for the women’s double in the tennis game. It was the first time our anthem playing on the tennis court. Some medium says that they have won by chance. It was only a fairy tale. But I don’t think so. Actually they have won because of their believing in themselves, because they have confidence and will, so they have created a fairy tale in Greece. Their confidence and will have made the success, not by accident.

    In our daily life, we must have confidence and will as well. Before the test we need to be confident to our actual strength or we’ll not give full play to our initiative. We need to be confident when we are speaking in public or others will not remember you among all the speakers. We need to have will in studying or we’ll not learn things solidly. We need to have will in our daily life or we’ll give up the things we are doing now. If we have confidence and will in our daily life, then I believe you’ll live brighter.

    In this story, I also have some other opinions about some other scenes. For instance, I don’t like the way the saints treated Joan when Joan forgot the birthday of Virgin Mary. I think they have to give some time for her to explain herself. I like the way that Joan proved herself bravely as a female. I think the most important thing is not the differences in ***, but your views to this really matter.

    So learn from this story, learn Joan’s braveness and her pureness, and learn to believe yourself, and get rid of all the bad habits and personalities of the characters in this story. We can avoid to be a coward, to be selfish and fatuous. Then every good personality we learn will be a blooming flower in our garden of heart and we’ll live with a life full of fragrantce!