200704291647Glittering mica
"Life is made of moments,
Small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.
It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned,
but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now,
that won't happen.
We have to teach ourselves how to live,
really live...to love the journey, not the destination."
人生的吉光片羽
像灰色水泥裡閃爍的雲母
如果可以不請自來有多好
但是在忙碌的生活步調裡
這種可能性不大
所以要敎自己努力過生活
真的過生活...愛過程甚於愛目的地
Anna Qindlen, from A Short Guide to a Happy Life
In this little gem of a book
Anna Quindlen reflects on what it takes to get a life--
to live deeply every day and from your unique self,
rather than to merely exist through your days.
She says,
"Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us,
because unless you know the clock is ticking,
it is so easy to waste our days, our lives."
Anna lost her mother to ovarian cancer when she was nineteen
(the experience was transformed into her novel, One True Thing)
and she says,
"It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white,
and in Technicolor.
The lights came on for the darkest possible reason ....
I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life.
And that was that it was glorious
and that you had no business taking it for granted."
A good friend sent me the text of "A Short Guide to a Happy Life"
which was originally a commencement address
right before I was going to go into surgery for cancer.
Anna Quindlen's wise words accompanied me through the long recuperation
and for the past five years
I have tried to follow her advice:
Get a life in which you are generous.
Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring;
look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night.
And realize that life is glorious,
and that you have no business taking it for granted.
Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around.
Take the money you would have spent on beers in a bar and give it to charity.
Work in a soup kitchen.
Tutor a seventh-grader.
All of us want to do well.
But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
Live by the words of this poem by Gwendolyn Brooks:
EXHAUST THE LITTLE MOMENT.
SOON IT DIES.
AND BE IT GASH OR GOLD
IT WILL NOT COME
AGAIN IN THIS IDENTICAL
DISGUISE.
Life is short. Remember that, too.
Learn to be happy.
And think of life as a terminal illness,
because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion,
as it ought to be lived.
Anyone can learn all those things,
out there in the world.
You just need to get a life,
a real life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too.
School never ends.
The classroom is everywhere.
The exam comes at the very end.
No man ever said on this deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.
A wise little book by a very wise woman
A Short Guide to a Happy Life
written by Anna Quindlen
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