By Alexander M. Schindler(美國猶太人聯合會主席辛德勒)
The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbits of old put it this way: "A man comes to this world with his first clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open."
Surely we ought to hold fast to life. for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of God's own earth. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what it was and then suddenly realize that it is no more.
We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beaty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.
A recent experience re-taught me this truth. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack that had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.
One morning, I had to have some additional tests. The required machines were located in a building at the opposite end of the hospital, so I had to be wheeled across the courtyard on a gurney.
As we emerged from our unit, the sunlight hit me. That's all there was to my experience. Just the light of the sun, and yet how beautiful it was - how warming, how sparkling, how brilliant!
I looken to see whether anyone else relished the sun's golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean concerns to respond to the splendor of it all.
The insight gleaned from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life's gifts are precious-but we are too heedless of them.
Here then is the first pile of life's paradoxical demands on us: Never too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.
Hold fast to life... but not so fast that you cannot let go. This is the second side of life's coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.
This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of or passionate being can, nay, will, be ours. But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surly this second truth dawns upon us.
At every stage of life we sustain losses- and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools, then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married and have children and then have to let them go. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our own strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we must confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves, as it were, all that we were or dreamed to be.
But why should we be reconciled to life's contradictory demands? Why fashion things of beauty when beauty is evanescent? Why give our heart in love when those we love will ultimately betorn from our grasp?
In order to resolve this paradox, we must seek a wider perspective, viewing our lives as through windows that open on eternity. Once we do that, we realize that though our lives are finite, our deeds on earth weave a timeless pattern.
Life is never just being. It is a becoming, a relentless flowing on. Our parents live on through us, and we will live on through our children. The institutions we build endure, and we will endure through them. The beauty we fashion cannot be dimmed by death. Our flesh may perish, our hands will wither, but that which they create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come.
Don't spend and waste your lives accumulating objects that will only turn to dust and ashes. Pursue not so much the material as the ideal, for ideals alone invest life with meaning and are of enduring worth.
Add love to a house and you have a home. Add righteousness to a city and you have a community. Add truth to a pile of red brick and you have a school. Add religion to the humblest of edifices and you have a sanctuary. Add justice to the far-flung round of human endeavor and you have civilization. Put them all together, exalt them above their present imperfections, add to them the vision of humankind redeemed, forever free of need and strife and you have a future lighted with the radiant colors of hope.
人生的藝術就是要懂得適時地收與放．而人生其實就是這樣的一個矛盾：盡管到頭來注定一切都不能長久，它還是令我們依戀于它所賦予的各種恩賜。正如前輩們所言：人出生時雙拳緊握而來，過世時卻是松手而去。
我們當然要抓緊這神奇而美妙的生命，它的美孕育在我們這片神圣土地的每個角落。我們其實都懂得這個道理，可是我們卻常常在回顧往昔時才突然覺醒意識到其中之美，可為時已晚，一切都時過境遷。
我們深深銘記的是褪色的美，消逝的愛。但是這種記憶中卻飽含了苦澀，我們痛惜沒有在美麗綻放的時候注意到它，沒有在愛情到來的時候給出回應。
最近自己的一個經歷又令我悟出了這其中的道理。我因為嚴重的心臟病發作而住進了加護病房。那地方可不是好呆的。
一天上午時分，我要接受幾項輔助檢查。因為檢查的器械在醫院對面的一幢建筑中，所以我就要穿過庭院，躺在輪床上被推到那里。
就在從病房出來的一瞬，迎面的陽光一下子灑在我的身上。我所感受的就只有這陽光，它是如此美麗，如此溫暖，如此璀璨和輝煌！
我看看周圍是否有人也沉醉在這金色的陽光中，而事實是大家都來去匆匆，大都目不斜視，雙眼只顧盯著地面。繼而我就想到我平常也太過于沉湎于日常的瑣碎俗物中，而對身邊的美景漠然甚至視而不見。
從這次的經歷中我所洞悉的實際就像這個經歷本身一樣并無什么奇特之處：生活的恩賜是珍貴的——只有我們對此留心甚少。
那么人生給予我們的第一個矛盾的真理就是：不要太過于忙碌而錯過了人生的美好和莊嚴。虔誠地迎接每個黎明的到來。把握每個小時，抓住寶貴的每分每秒。
緊緊地把握人生，但是又不能抓得過死，松不開手。這正是人生的另外一面，也就是矛盾的另外一面：我們要接受失去的一切，懂得如何放手。
這個其實并不是容易做到的，尤其當我們尚年輕時，自以為世界在我們的掌控之中，而不論什么，只要是心想就會事成，而且一定能事成！但是現實往往事與愿違，然后漸漸地這第二條真理必然顯現在我們面前。
在人生的每個階段我們都會承受失去——也因而成長起來。當我們出生時失去母體的保護，從那一刻我們開始了獨立的生命。而后我們上學了，一級一級地升上去，離開了父母和兒時的家庭。我們結婚生子然后又只能看著他們離去。我們遭遇父母及愛人的離逝。我們也要面臨自己逐漸或者突然的衰老。而最終，就像握手和松手的比喻那樣，我們必須面對自己不可避免的死亡。就這樣我們失去了一切，其中包括我們自己人生已經所有的以及尚未實現的。
但是我們為什么要服從于這種人生中矛盾的要求呢？為什么明知美是短暫的還要去創造美好？為何明知自己所愛的人會最終離我們而去卻還要全心全意去愛？
要解開這個矛盾我們就必須把眼光放開，像透過可以通向永恒的窗戶那樣來審視我們的生活。一旦這樣做，我們就會知道我們的生命雖然有限，可我們在地球上的作為卻在造就永恒。
人生不僅僅是靜止的一生而已。它是在不斷變幻的，是一股不屈不撓的奔流。我們的父母通過我們得到生命的延續，然后我們通過我們的子女得到生命的延續。而我們也隨之長存，我們所崇尚的美不會因為我們的死亡就失去顏色。我們的身體會腐朽，我們的雙手會枯萎，但是我們所創造的美、善和真是永存而不朽的。
不要浪費你的生命去聚斂財物，他們只會變為塵埃，化為虛無。追求理想而不是物質的東西，因為只有理想賦予生命意義，也只有理想才會有恒久的價值。
房子有了愛便成為了家。城市有了道義就成為社會。紅磚有了真理就成了學堂。陋室有了宗教就成了圣殿。人類全方面的努力有了正義就成為了文明。把這一切全放在一處，完善他們，使之精益求精。而這一切有了在人類獲得救贖后那永遠無欲無求的遠景，便成就了一個充滿希望的絢爛未來。
————本文是美國猶太人聯合會主席辛德勒于1987年5月在南卡羅來納大學畢業典禮上致辭的節選。
要做到無欲無求的境界對于我們而言還太遙遠，但適時地收與放，卻是我們的生活的真理，撫慰那些在城市欲望中掙扎的生命。 |