英語精美散文 Love Is Not Like Merchandis

A reader in Florida, apparently bruised by some personal experience, writes in to complain, “If I steal a nickel’s worth of merchandise, I am a thief and punished; but if I steal the love of another’s wife, I am free.”

This is a prevalent misconception in many people’s minds—that love, like merchandise, can be “stolen”. Numerous states, in fact, have enacted laws allowing damages for “alienation of affections”.

But love is not a commodity; the real thing cannot be bought, sold, traded or stolen. It is an act of the will, a turning of the emotions, a change in the climate of the personality.

When a husband or wife is “stolen” by another person, that husband or wife was already ripe for the stealing, was already predisposed toward a new partner. The “love bandit” was only taking what was waiting to be taken, what wanted to be taken.

We tend to treat persons like goods. We even speak of the children “belonging” to their parents. But nobody “belongs” to anyone else. Each person belongs to himself, and to God. Children are entrusted to their parents, and if their parents do not treat them properly, the state has a right to remove them from their parents’ trusteeship.

Most of us, when young, had the experience of a sweetheart being taken from us by somebody more attractive and more appealing. At the time, we may have resented this intruder—but as we grew older, we recognized that the sweetheart had never been ours to begin with. It was not the intruder that “caused” the break, but the lack of a real relationship.

On the surface, many marriages seem to break up because of a “third party”. This is, however, a psychological illusion. The other woman or the other man merely serves as a pretext for dissolving a marriage that had already lost its essential integrity.

Nothing is more futile and more self-defeating than the bitterness of spurned love, the vengeful feeling that someone else has “come between” oneself and a beloved. This is always a distortion of reality, for people are not the captives or victims of others—they are free agents, working out their own destinies for good or for ill.

But the rejected lover or mate cannot afford to believe that his beloved has freely turned away from him— and so he ascribes sinister or magical properties to the interloper. He calls him a hypnotist or a thief or a home-breaker. In the vast majority of cases, however, when a home is broken, the breaking has begun long before any “third party” has appeared on the scene.

佛羅里達州的一位讀者顯然是在個人經歷上受過創傷, 他寫信來抱怨道: “如果我偷走了五分錢的商品, 我就是個賊, 要受到懲罰, 但是如果我偷走了他人妻子的愛情, 我沒事兒。”

這是許多人心目中普遍存在的一種錯誤觀念——愛情, 像商品一樣, 可以 “偷走”。實際上，許多州都頒佈法令，允許索取“情感轉讓”賠償金。

但是愛情並不是商品;真情實意不可能買到，賣掉，交換，或者偷走。愛情是志願的行動，是感情的轉向，是個性發揮上的變化。

當丈夫或妻子被另一個人“偷走”時，那個丈夫或妻子就已經具備了被偷走的條件，事先已經準備接受新的伴侶了。這位“愛匪”不過是取走等人取走、盼人取走的東西。

我們往往待人如物。我們甚至說孩子“屬於”父母。但是誰也不“屬於”誰。人都屬於自己和上帝。孩子是託付給父母的，如果父母不善待他們，州政府就有權取消父母對他們的託管身份。

我們多數人年輕時都有過戀人被某個更有誘惑力、更有吸引力的人奪去的經歷。在當時，我們興許怨恨這位不速之客—但是後來長大了，也就認識到了心上人本來就不屬於我們。並不是不速之客“導致了”決裂，而是缺乏真實的關係。

從表面上看，許多婚姻似乎是因爲有了“第三者”才破裂的。然而這是一種心理上的幻覺。另外那個女人，或者另外那個男人，無非是作爲藉口，用來解除早就不是完好無損的婚姻罷了。

因失戀而痛苦，因別人“插足”於自己與心上人之間而圖報復，是最沒有出息、最自作自受的樂。這種事總是歪曲了事實真相，因爲誰都不是給別人當俘虜或犧牲品——人都是自由行事的，不論命運是好是壞，都由自己來作主。

但是，遭離棄的情人或配偶無法相信她的心上人是自由地背離他的——因而他歸咎於插足者心術不正或迷人有招。他把他叫做催眠師、竊賊或破壞家庭的人。然而，從大多數事例看，一個家的破裂，是早在什麼“第三者”出現之前就開始了的。