two truths to live by——Hold fast, and let go

Two Truths to Live by Hold fast, and let go: Understand this paradox, and you stand at the very gate of wisdom

两条生活的真理：抓紧，放松：明白了这对矛盾，你就踏进了智慧的大门

1.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. ''

 1.生活的艺术是要懂得何时紧紧抓住，何时学会放弃。因为人生就是一对矛盾，它促使我们牢牢抓住人生的很多赐予，但同时又注定了我们对这些给予最终的放弃。老一辈犹太学者是这样说的：人来到这个世界的时候拳头是紧握的，而当离开的时候，手却是松开的。

 2. 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.

2.当然，我们应该仅仅抓住生活，因为生活是神奇的，是充满着美的——上帝创造的大地的每一个空间都充斥着至美。我们都知道这点，但我们却常常在回首往事之时才明白这个道理，然后突然意识到逝去的时光已经一去不复返了。

 3.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.

3.我们追忆逝去的美丽，残缺的爱情，但是更令人 痛心的回忆是当繁花盛开之时错过了欣赏它的美丽；当爱情眷顾之时却未能做出回应。

4.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 trot 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.       

​4.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。 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。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!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?

5.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 the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace hour. Seize each golden minute.

5.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。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。

​6.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 let go.

6.紧紧抓住生活——可不要紧得使你不能松手。这就是生活的另一面——矛盾的另一方：我们必须接受损失，学会放松。

​7.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, slowly but surely this second truth dawns upon us.

7.学会（珍爱美好的事物）是不容易做到的。尤其是我们年轻时，认为世界是由我们掌握的，只要我们自己满腔热情，全力以赴的去追求，我们想要的东西就能够——不，是一定能够得到。 随着我们的成长，生活使我们不得不面对现实，而第二种真理逐渐被我们所感知，所理解。 

8.At every stage of life we sustain losses---and grow in the process. We 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 own strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves, as it were, all that we or dreamed to be.

8.在生命的每个阶段上，我们都要蒙受损失——但也是在这个过程中得到成长。我们只有在脱离娘胎、失去它的庇护时，才能开始独立生活。我们要进各级学校，继而告别父母，告别童年的家。我们要结婚生育，继而送走子女。我们要经受父母、配偶丧亡的痛苦。我们要面临体力或快或慢的逐渐消退。最终正如松手与握拳的比喻那样：我们自己也得走向不可抗拒的死亡，可以说失去原有的自身，失去我们拥有的或梦想过的一切。

​9.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 will ultimately be torn from our grasp?

9.但是，为什么我们甘愿顺从于这些生活的矛盾需求呢? 既然美转眼就会消逝，那为什么我们还要去创造那些美的东西呢? 既然我们所爱的终归要被夺走，为什么我们还要倾心相爱呢?

10.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 ourlives are finite; our deeds on earth weave a timeless pattern.​

10.为了要解决这个矛盾，我们必须寻找一个较为广阔的视角，透过通向永恒的窗口来观看我们的生命。做到了这一点，我们会发觉，虽然我们的生命是有限的，但是我们在地球上的行为却在编织着一个没有时间限制的图案。

11.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 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.

11.生命绝不只是存在。它是变动不止的，无情地流逝不息的。父母的生命在我们身上延续，而我们的生命又将在我们的子女身上延续。我们建立的习俗制度会持续下去，而我们的生命就活在其中。我们创造的美好的东西不会因为我们的死亡而暗淡无光。我们的肉体会消亡，我们的双手也会枯萎，但它们在真善美中所创造的一切将在日后长存!

12.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.

12.不要为了积聚那些只会变成尘土、化作灰烬的东西耗尽你的精力、你的生命。与其追求物质不如追求理想，因为只有理想才能使生命有意义，才有长存的价值。

​13.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.

13.一所房屋加上爱心，你就有了一个家；一个城市加上正直守法，你就有了一个社区；在一堆红砖上加上真理，你就有了一所学校；哪怕是最卑微简陋的建筑，只要有宗教，你就有了一所圣殿；把公正加在长期的人生努力奋斗中，你就有了文明教养。把这一切聚合起来，加以提高，使之超越于现存的缺点，还要有人类得到拯救的憧憬，永远无求无争，那么你将会有一个闪耀着希望的绚丽光彩的未来。