Chapel Highlight: Mingda '26

Fall 2025

So earlier this week, when I was looking for inspiration for this chapel, my eyes landed on this old tea set I brought with me the day I got to Midland.
It’s been sitting on my shelf ever since — a little dusty, a little forgotten. The last time I used it was actually sophomore year, with my old prefect, Kevin.
He’d come by my room after soccer sometimes, and we’d make tea, talk about school, complain about life — mostly complaining about life.
At home, tea’s kind of a big deal in my family. My parents use it for everything — greeting guests, catching up with neighbors, inviting our gardener over for a quick drink, celebrating holidays. It’s this quiet ritual that brings everyone together.
But for me, it was never that serious.
If you asked me to sit down for tea when I was younger, I’d last maybe ten minutes before pretending I had something urgent to do.
I didn’t get how they could just sit there and yap for hours while I was bouncing my leg under the table, waiting for my mom to unlock her phone so I could play Temple Run.
Even when I first brought the tea set here, I thought that I could imitate them — you know, be that cool kid who brews and drinks tea in his cabin.
In reality, it’s been used maybe four times.
So yeah, that’s where all this started: a tea set that’s seen more dust than tea, and a kid who didn’t really know how to sit still — physically or mentally.
Then COVID hit. Lockdowns from schools to districts to entire neighborhoods.
The abrupt transition from crowded hallways and early bus rides weaving through skyscrapers to complete stillness felt strange. Just me, my bedroom, and my computer.
Well, I adapted quickly — maybe a little too quick. With barely any monitoring and way too much free time, I slipped into an endless loop of eat, game, sleep, repeat.

While some people were out there baking brownies or learning guitar, I was clocking twelve-hour shifts on Counter-Strike — for the ones who don’t know, it’s basically a first-person shooting game where half the game is missing every shot and the other half is blaming your teammates.
Breakfast became a stealth mission. I’d creep into the kitchen, grab food, and retreat back into my cave.
My parents called it “hibernation.”

But slowly, everything outside that screen started fading.
The sound of my parents debating over the most trivial things.
The smell of my mom’s tea.
Even the sun.
It’s funny, when you stare at pixels long enough, the real world starts to feel like background noise.
And after a while, I stopped missing things. I stopped noticing anything at all.
Later that same year, still during COVID, my grandfather — my dad’s dad — passed away in California. I hadn’t seen him in years.
I realized I’d spent so much time avoiding stillness that I’d missed the people who lived in it.
There were so many moments I thought I’d get back — conversations, walks, even just sitting at the dinner table with him — but in reality, they weren’t coming back.
After weeks of searching for a boarding school in California — my family and I all agreed that I needed to be somewhere far from the city and its chaos — and while my dad was handling his funeral and caring for my grandma, I came to Midland.

A place I would’ve never imagined myself attending even a few months earlier.
At Midland, clarity came disguised as work.
Sweeping floors, going on hikes, practicing basketball.
Nothing special — just repetition.

I started to get what my parents were doing at that tea table all those years.
They weren’t just sitting still — they were taking time and appreciating what’s right in front of them.
And Midland has this magic that hides in everyday dust — through late-night porch rants with seniors my sophomore year: David, Darien, Orin, and Weston; through the “crazy” but loving dishhouse crew with George, Trace, Avery, and Quinby; through hours of weeding at the farm with Michael and Aiden.
Somewhere in all that, something in me shifted.
Around that time, my dad’s got me a comic about Daoism.
It was the first philosophy book I enjoyed reading.
In one scene, 老子(laozi) is just sitting on a weathered rock while waves splatter beneath him, completely unbothered.
Underneath it was the line that reads:

“The sage doesn’t chase stillness; he just sees it clearly.”

Now both my parents take care of their mothers — different cities, different countries.
When I’m home, I stay with my dad and grandma while my mom’s in southern China.
We talk through screens. Sometimes we don’t talk at all — we just leave the call on and go about our own things in quiet.”
I used to think silence meant we’d run out of things to say.
Now, I think silence is a form of conversation.
It’s the space that holds everything we can’t say
That’s the thing Midland taught me — or maybe Daoism, or maybe just the act of time.
That peace isn’t found; it’s practiced.
It’s showing up for your own life.
So if I’m ending with any advice — and this is coming from someone who used to spend twelve hours in front of a screen — it’s this:
Go outside and touch some grass.
Like literally. Go chase some sunsets, climb some hills, dip your feet in the creek.
Call your family. Even if you don’t know what to say, say something.
Tell people you love them before life reminds you that you should have.
It doesn’t have to be deep.
Just don’t miss the good times while they’re still here.