两条生活的真理 Two Truths to Live By

两条生活的真理

Two Truths to Live By

抓紧，放松：明白了这对矛盾，你就踏进了智慧的大门

Hold fast, and let go: understand this paradox, and you stand at the very

gate of wisdom

亚力山大•M•欣德勒

Alexander M. Schindler

生活的秘诀在于懂得何时抓紧，何时放松。因为人生就是一对矛盾：它既令我们抓紧人生的多种赐与，同时它又要我们到头来把这些赐与放弃。老一辈犹太学者是这样说的：“一个人握紧拳头来到这个世界，但他却是松开手掌离开这世界的。”

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 rabbis of old put it this way: "A man comes to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open."

毫无疑问，我们应该牢牢抓住生命，因为它奇妙，它有一种在上帝创造的世界里无孔不入、无处不在的美。我们大家都知道这一点。可我们却常常是在回首往事想起它时，才能认识这一真理。此时我们会突然发觉它已不复存在了。

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.

我们能记起已经凋谢的美、已经消逝的爱。可是，我们更痛苦的回忆是：我们没有看见顶峰时的美，没有在别人以爱对我之时也以爱回报。

We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.

最近一次经历又使我领悟到了这个真理。一场剧烈的心脏病发作后，我被送进医院，接受了几天精心护理。医院可不是一个使人愉快的地方。

A recent experience re-taught me this truth. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.

一天上午，我得加做几项检查。我要用的医疗器械安装在医院另一端的大楼里。所以我只有坐轮椅穿过院子才能到达那里。

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.

当我们走出病房时，阳光正照在我身上。就我实际的经历而言，当时也没有什么别的。只不过就是阳光。而这时的阳光是多么美丽、

多么温暖、多么耀眼、多么辉煌!

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!

我打量着别人是否也在欣赏着这太阳的金色光芒。可是，人人都来去匆匆，大多数人的目光只盯在地上。这时我想到自己过去又何尝不是往往对每天的壮观景象视而不见，一头埋在细小的，有时甚至是卑鄙、自私的事务中，而对日常的奇观麻木不仁呢?

I looked 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.

从这次经历所获得的顿悟确如经历本身一样的平凡。生命的赐予是宝贵的，可惜我们对它们太掉以轻心了。

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.

这就是人生向我们提出的矛盾要求的第一个方面：不要因为太忙就忽视了生活中令人惊奇、令人敬畏的东西。每天黎明开始就要恭谨从事。抓紧每个小时，捉住宝贵的每一分钟。

Here then is the first pole of life's paradoxical demands on us: Never