I'm very saddened to know a same-class fellow of our Yale World Fellows program passed away recently due to cancer. He was still relatively young. I still remember how passionate he was about life and the world.

I won't say we were the two closest friends in our class. He was more like an artist, a very creative one with focus on multimedia and the interplay between art and technology. Frankly I can't really understand many things he talked about in class but I remember his (loud) laughters, his smile, and sometimes he tried to play some Italian jokes that we didn't get it but anyway he laughed very hard. We were just so happy at that time when we were altogether in New Haven, in the historic Betts House, our home and office.

Life is short, isn't it? You think you can control and change a lot of things. No, you can't. We are all on our destiny. There is the beginning. There is the end. So what's the meaning of life really? To make impact? To make others happy? Or to make yourself happy? But how to define "happy"?

If you read Dalai Lama's famous book "The Art of Happiness", he teaches you to focus on your mind, see things in different perspectives, and be compassionate. I'm a very ordinary person. All I know is the world is crazy and I have a lot of bulls*** to deal with everyday. Shall we pause? And pause for what? To purse your happiness? And what is "happiness"?

I don't remember I asked my Italian friend about "happiness" but he seemed to be always very happy. Even when he found he was diagnosed with cancer, he decided to make his treatment like a journey, an inspiring open-sourced journey to welcome everyone to examine his body and find the cure together. How creative.

Now I miss his loud laughters, our time together, and those Italian jokes that I didn't really get (but I still laughed too). We are always destined to meet different people during our journey, for better or for worse. And then at some point we say goodbye. We move on. Everything becomes our memory.

There is the beginning. There is the end. And the meaning of life is in between. That's why we laugh, we cry, and we keep exploring.

Goodbye, Salvatore!