Zhou Shijie, Class 7, Senior 1, Shenzhen Foreign Languages School Instructed by Liu Xin As David Hume put it, “It is impossible to imagine a continuously changing world without any real existence.” In fact, our life is built on the basic of change, and distance can measure that in a way. Distance can be visible and is closely connected to the change in my daily life. I see the sun shift from east to west, observe the trees grow inch by inch, and witness the buildings rise from ground to the sky. Shaped by nature and human beings, distance is an expression of the evolutionary order of change. Distance enables changes to become visible and to be easily found. Distance exists not only in physical space, but also in invisible social relationships. It was during the lockdown of the pandemic that I realized the importance of bridging relationship distance. While taking the online courses at home, the virus created a steep valley between people. However, by means of the Internet, I was able to communicate with my classmates and teachers about study and life, comforting each others’ pressure and pain. If there hadn’t been the convenient Internet, endless months suffering from the loss of contact with the outer world would have definitely harmed my mind, and the hard days struggling for the high school entrance examination would have been covered with blue and gray. Thanks to the technology which bridged the distance between people and eased my anxiety, I realized how important it is to preserve contact and remove distance. Technology appears to be a method for us to redefine distance and time. Though it is fast enough to remove the barrier of distance and gather us from place to place, people rarely make use of it properly. The development of technology should have tightened our bonds with others, but the truth is, many people ignore the importance of bridging distance and misuse technology, leading to a bigger relationship gap, especially between beloved ones. To sum up, we are always under the impact of distance, but we hardly consciously control it. It’s time to make good use of technology and shorten the social distance properly. Only in this way can we take control of distance, and bring about love and warmth to the world. | 