Dear Party Organization:
I was accepted as a probationary member of the Communist Party of China on April 30 last year. The probationary period is one year, and it expired on April 30, 2005. I now solemnly apply to the Party organization to be converted into a full member.
In the past year, I came from Shanghai to Beijing, transformed from a high school student into a university student, experienced many things, and also gained much growth and maturity.
Yet my faith in, and enthusiasm for, the Party have never changed.
From high school to university, one’s experience grows richer, one’s knowledge increases, one’s emotions mature, one’s learning improves… all of this is perfectly natural. But sometimes it seems that we value “progress” too much; every day our thoughts are all about “progress,” “progress,” constantly overcoming our former so-called “naivety” and “ignorance”; better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today… Is this sort of thing really so worthy of praise? We always like to talk grandly about progress, so why is it that some people, who started out as hot-blooded young men, progress and progress until they end up in prison, and in the end become corrupt elements?
Thinking back over my middle school and primary school years, even to my childhood, I have found that not everything progresses as age grows. For example, the innocence of childhood, the seriousness of youth, the passion of young adulthood… these things not only do not rise day by day, but rather fade away as we grow, gradually being forgotten.
I feel that, in many cases, compared with “progress” and “improvement,” “constancy” is far more precious, and far more worth mentioning!
In last year’s application to join the Party, I already expressed such a wish: joining the Party is a starting point on the journey of life. After walking a long stretch of road, one looks back and asks oneself: when I had just set foot on this long journey, that yearning and aspiration for the future, that devotion and steadfastness toward my goal, that surging passion as I strode forward with great steps… is all of that still there today?
After walking this year’s journey, I look back and ask myself: I can answer with full confidence that I have not forgotten that devotion and steadfastness, and my passion has not faded. I also hope that ten years from now, twenty years from now, and even when I have completed the journey of life, I will still be able to have this same confidence.
To borrow a passage from Albert Schweitzer, one of the noblest people of the twentieth century: adults are all too fond of showing off in pitiable circumstances, so as to make young people understand that one day they will regard most of what they now cherish so dearly as nothing but illusion. But deep life experience speaks a different language to young people. It earnestly asks young people to uphold throughout their lives the thoughts that inspire them; one can discern truth in youthful idealism, and thereby possess an inestimable treasure. Each of us must be prepared for this: life will seize from us our faith in the good and the true, and our enthusiasm for them. But we do not need to let it have its way with us. Ideals put into practice are usually crushed by reality, but this does not mean that ideals should, from the very beginning, yield to reality; it only means that our ideals are not steadfast enough, and the reason they are not steadfast enough is that they are not pure and firm within us.
When we now speak of “maintaining advanced character,” it is the same: the key point lies not in “advanced,” but in the two words “maintaining.”
After I become a full member of the Communist Party of China… nothing should change; what I need to strive for always is precisely “maintaining.”
Applicant: ***
April 15, 2005
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