精美英文欣赏:生活的两条真理（在线收听）

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.”

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 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 beauty 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 and 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 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.

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 pole 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.

生活的两条真理

生活的艺术就是知道何时坚持不放与何时松手放弃。因为生活是一条悖论：它甚至指示我们牢牢抓住许多到头来注定要放弃的东西。古代的犹太学者们这样表达生活：人紧握着拳头来到这个世界上，可是松开手辞世而去。

我们确实应该抓紧生活，因为生活很奇妙，上帝创造的这个世界每个小孔都充满了美。我们知道生活确实如此，可是往往回首往事时才意识到这个道理，并突然醒悟美好的往事已不再。

我们记得褪色了的美，消逝了的爱。可是我们更痛苦地记得当美绽放时我们却没有看到，也没有以爱回报我们得到的爱。

最近的一次经历让我再次明白这个道理。心脏病严重发作后我被送到医院，被精心护理了几天。医院是一个令人心情不愉快的地方。

一天早上，我得做些附加检查，做检查的机器在医院尽头对面的一栋楼里，因此我不得不躺到带轮子的小床上被推着穿过医院庭院。

当我们从我的住院单元出来时，阳光照到了我身上。我的体验就全来自那里。只是阳光。然而它多么美丽——多么温暖，多么生气勃勃，多么灿烂啊！

我看看是否还有其他人也欣赏这金色的阳光，可是每个人都来去匆匆，多数人的目光盯在地面上。于是记起我多么经常，也，漠视了这每天的壮观，也专注在各种琐事上，有时甚至是些卑劣的事情上来回应阳光的壮丽。

对那次经历的洞悉就跟经历本身一样平凡无奇。生活赠予我们的礼物是珍贵的——可是我们对此太不以为意了。

因而这就是生活悖论的第一个极点：不要过于忙碌而忽略了生活的奇妙，不敬畏生活。要虔诚地迎接每个黎明的到来，要抓住每个小时，不浪费珍贵的每一分钟。

抓紧生活……可是不要太紧而不能松手放弃。这是生活硬币的第二面，生活悖论的对立面：必须接受失败，并且学会如何放弃。