雙語美文欣賞人生的兩條真理
人的一生說長不長，有多少的人生大道理呢?接下來，小編給大家準備了雙語美文欣賞人生的兩條真理,歡迎大家參考與借鑑。
Two Truths to Live by
Hold fast, and let go: Understand this paradox, and you stand at the very gate of wisdom
Alexander M. Schindler
Commencement speech at the University of South Carolina in 1987
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 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 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 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 the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, nay, will, be ours.
But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this second truth dawns upon us.
At every stage of life we sustain losses--and grow in the process 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 confront the death of our parents and our spouses. 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 be torn 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.
人生的兩條真理
抓緊與放鬆：理解了這一悖論，你便立於智慧之門
亞歷山大·辛德勒
1987年在南卡羅來那大學畢業典禮上的演講
生活的藝術就是要懂得適時地收與放，因爲生活本身即是一種悖論：一方面，它讓我們依戀於它所賦予的各種饋贈;另一方面，又註定了我們對這些禮物最終的棄絕。正如老一輩猶太學者所說，人出生時雙拳緊握而來，而離開這個世界時卻是鬆手而去。
毫無疑問，我們應該牢牢抓住生命，因爲它是如此神奇，充滿着美麗，這種美麗從神靈的每一寸土地中噴涌而出。我們明白了這個道理，然而我們常常只是在驀然回首憶及往事時才突然覺醒，可是一旦覺醒，那樣的美景已不復存在了。
我們銘記的是凋謝的美，逝去的愛。可尤爲痛苦的回憶是，當美麗綻放之時，我們不曾注意;當愛情到來之際，我們不曾予以迴應。
最近一次經歷又使我領悟到這個真理。一次嚴重的心臟病發後，我被送進醫院，在特護區住了幾天。那兒可不是什麼令人愉快的地方。
一天上午，我得接受幾項附助檢查。因爲檢查所用的器械在醫院盡頭對面的一棟大樓裏，所以我必須躺在輪牀上被人推着穿過院子。
就在我們從病房出來的那一刻，迎面的陽光一下子灑在我身上。這就是我當時所感受到的一切。只不過就是陽光，然而它又是如此美麗，如此溫暖，如此璀璨，如此輝煌!
我環顧四周，想看一看是否也有人在欣賞這金燦燦的陽光。可是人人都來去匆匆，大多數人的目光只盯在地上。繼而我回想到我也常常如此，對於每天的輝煌熟視無睹，只是一味沉湎於瑣碎甚至是微不足道的事情之中，而對身邊的勝景無動於衷。
這次經歷所獲得的感悟的確和經歷本身一樣平凡，這就是：生活的饋贈是珍貴的，只是我們對此留心甚少。
這就是人生向我們提出的矛盾要求的第一個方面：不要太過忙碌而錯過了人生的美好和莊嚴。虔誠地恭候每一個黎明的到來。把握每一個小時，抓住寶貴的每一分鐘。
緊緊地把握人生，但又不能抓得過死，鬆不開手。這正是人生這枚硬幣的另外一面，也正是那悖論的另一面：我們必須接受失去，學會如何放手。
這一課並不容易學好。特別是當我們年輕的時候，總認爲世界是由我們掌控的。只要我們滿腔熱情、全力以赴地去追求，不管什麼東西都可能得到——不，是一定會得到。
但是，隨着生活繼續前進，我們不斷面臨各種現實，開始慢慢地並真切地明白第二條真理。
在生命的每個階段上，我們都在承受失去——卻也在這個過程中得以成長。我們只有在脫離孃胎、失去其庇護時，才能開始獨立生活。
我們向上求學，繼而告別父母，告別童年的家。我們結婚生育，繼而又送走子女。我們經受父母、配偶的離世，也面臨自身體力或快或慢的衰退。
最終，正如鬆手與握拳的比喻所言：我們自己也得走向不可抗拒的死亡，失去自身，可以說是失去了自己擁有的或夢想過的一切。
但是，爲什麼我們甘願順從於這些生活的矛盾要求呢?既然美轉瞬即逝，爲什麼我們還要去創造美的東西呢?既然所愛終將離去，爲什麼我們還要傾心相愛呢?
解決這個矛盾必須尋找一個較爲廣闊的視角，透過通向永恆的窗口來審視我們的生命。這樣一來，我們就會發覺，雖然生命有限，但其間所做的一切可以無限延展。
生命從來不曾停滯不前。它瞬息萬變，奔騰不息。父母的生命在我們身上延續，而我們的生命又將在我們的子女身上延續。我們建立的制度保存了下來，而我們的生命也因此長存。我們創造的美麗不會因爲我們死去而暗淡無光。
我們的肉體會消亡，我們的雙手也會枯萎，但它們所創造的真善美將永存後世。不要耗費你的精力去積累那些終將化爲塵燼的東西。追求物質不如追求理想，因爲只有理想才能賦予生命以意義，纔有永恆的價值。
一所房屋有了愛心，就成了一個家;一個城市有了正氣，就成了一個社區。一堆紅磚加上了真理，就成了一所學校;最簡陋的建築，有了宗教，就成了一座聖殿;人類不懈的努力有了正義，就產生了文明。
如果你能將這一切集合起來，加以提高，使之超越現存的不完美，並賦予其人類得以救贖的憧憬，永遠無爭無求，那麼你的未來將絢爛多彩、充滿希望。
