By Alexander M. Schindler(美国犹太人联合会主席辛德勒)
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.
人生的艺术就是要懂得适时地收与放．而人生其实就是这样的一个矛盾：尽管到头来注定一切都不能长久，它还是令我们依恋于它所赋予的各种恩赐。正如前辈们所言：人出生时双拳紧握而来，过世时却是松手而去。
我们当然要抓紧这神奇而美妙的生命，它的美孕育在我们这片神圣土地的每个角落。我们其实都懂得这个道理，可是我们却常常在回顾往昔时才突然觉醒意识到其中之美，可为时已晚，一切都时过境迁。
我们深深铭记的是褪色的美，消逝的爱。但是这种记忆中却饱含了苦涩，我们痛惜没有在美丽绽放的时候注意到它，没有在爱情到来的时候给出回应。
最近自己的一个经历又令我悟出了这其中的道理。我因为严重的心脏病发作而住进了加护病房。那地方可不是好呆的。
一天上午时分，我要接受几项辅助检查。因为检查的器械在医院对面的一幢建筑中，所以我就要穿过庭院，躺在轮床上被推到那里。
就在从病房出来的一瞬，迎面的阳光一下子洒在我的身上。我所感受的就只有这阳光，它是如此美丽，如此温暖，如此璀璨和辉煌！
我看看周围是否有人也沉醉在这金色的阳光中，而事实是大家都来去匆匆，大都目不斜视，双眼只顾盯着地面。继而我就想到我平常也太过于沉湎于日常的琐碎俗物中，而对身边的美景漠然甚至视而不见。
从这次的经历中我所洞悉的实际就像这个经历本身一样并无什么奇特之处：生活的恩赐是珍贵的——只有我们对此留心甚少。
那么人生给予我们的第一个矛盾的真理就是：不要太过于忙碌而错过了人生的美好和庄严。虔诚地迎接每个黎明的到来。把握每个小时，抓住宝贵的每分每秒。
紧紧地把握人生，但是又不能抓得过死，松不开手。这正是人生的另外一面，也就是矛盾的另外一面：我们要接受失去的一切，懂得如何放手。
这个其实并不是容易做到的，尤其当我们尚年轻时，自以为世界在我们的掌控之中，而不论什么，只要是心想就会事成，而且一定能事成！但是现实往往事与愿违，然后渐渐地这第二条真理必然显现在我们面前。
在人生的每个阶段我们都会承受失去——也因而成长起来。当我们出生时失去母体的保护，从那一刻我们开始了独立的生命。而后我们上学了，一级一级地升上去，离开了父母和儿时的家庭。我们结婚生子然后又只能看着他们离去。我们遭遇父母及爱人的离逝。我们也要面临自己逐渐或者突然的衰老。而最终，就像握手和松手的比喻那样，我们必须面对自己不可避免的死亡。就这样我们失去了一切，其中包括我们自己人生已经所有的以及尚未实现的。
但是我们为什么要服从于这种人生中矛盾的要求呢？为什么明知美是短暂的还要去创造美好？为何明知自己所爱的人会最终离我们而去却还要全心全意去爱？
要解开这个矛盾我们就必须把眼光放开，像透过可以通向永恒的窗户那样来审视我们的生活。一旦这样做，我们就会知道我们的生命虽然有限，可我们在地球上的作为却在造就永恒。
人生不仅仅是静止的一生而已。它是在不断变幻的，是一股不屈不挠的奔流。我们的父母通过我们得到生命的延续，然后我们通过我们的子女得到生命的延续。而我们也随之长存，我们所崇尚的美不会因为我们的死亡就失去颜色。我们的身体会腐朽，我们的双手会枯萎，但是我们所创造的美、善和真是永存而不朽的。
不要浪费你的生命去聚敛财物，他们只会变为尘埃，化为虚无。追求理想而不是物质的东西，因为只有理想赋予生命意义，也只有理想才会有恒久的价值。
房子有了爱便成为了家。城市有了道义就成为社会。红砖有了真理就成了学堂。陋室有了宗教就成了圣殿。人类全方面的努力有了正义就成为了文明。把这一切全放在一处，完善他们，使之精益求精。而这一切有了在人类获得救赎后那永远无欲无求的远景，便成就了一个充满希望的绚烂未来。
————本文是美国犹太人联合会主席辛德勒于1987年5月在南卡罗来纳大学毕业典礼上致辞的节选。
要做到无欲无求的境界对于我们而言还太遥远，但适时地收与放，却是我们的生活的真理，抚慰那些在城市欲望中挣扎的生命。 |