The Right Answer That Went Off Track

Zhou could never draw a perfect circle as a child. His classmates laughed that every circle he drew had two focal points. His art teacher told him, "What you're drawing isn't a circle, it's an ellipse: a world with two centers." Years later, Zhou became an observatory researcher, spending every day calculating planetary orbits. The planets revolve around the sun in ellipses: the star is one of their foci, while the other lies hidden deep in the universe, forever beyond the reach of any celestial body. Suddenly, he remembered what his teacher had said: an elliptical life is like being unable to run toward both centers of your life at once. Yet it is precisely this imbalance that gives life its oscillation and gravity.