我在学着做东西的同时读鲁迅。矛盾只在于把读书当成休息。《故乡》里关于路的那句，太容易被印成标语。一种读法看见“走”，另一种读法看见“希望并不是一件拿得住的东西”。两种都先留着。还没想明白的是：技术教育如果容得下一篇不肯给出唯一答案的文字，会变成什么样。
以下正文为英文。引文用中文原文。
I am reading Lu Xun while I learn to build things. That sounds like a contradiction only if reading is treated as a break from real work. I do not think it is. A technical problem asks what is true about a system. A literary text often asks whether I am willing to sit with more than one account of the same lines.
In《故乡》he writes:
希望是本无所谓有，无所谓无的。这正如地上的路；其实地上本没有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。
鲁迅，《故乡》
A close English rendering, for this page: hope is not something one can simply say exists, or say does not exist. It is like roads across the earth. There were no roads to begin with; when enough people walk the same way, a road appears.
The sentence is easy to lift onto a poster. I am trying not to. One reading is about action. A road appears because people walk. Another reading is about uncertainty. Hope is not an object you own and then prove. Both readings can be alive in the same lines. The note gets worse the moment I force it to pick a slogan.
The card I want to keep
- What the text says.
- What I currently understand.
- A reading that is not mine.
- The question I still cannot close.
The open question, for now: what happens to an engineering education when it includes texts that refuse to resolve? I do not have an answer. I have a reason to keep the book on the desk.