the art of living i to know when to hold fat and when to let go. for life i a parado: it enjoin u to cling to it many gift even while it ordain their eventual relinquihment. the rabbi of old put it thi way: a man come to thi world with hi fit clenched, but when he die, hi hand i open.
urely we ought to hold fat to life, for it i wondrou, and full of a beauty that break through every pore of god own earth. we know that thi i o, but all too often we recognize thi truth only in our backward glance when we remember what wa and then uddenly realize that it i no more.
we remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. but we remember with far greater pain that we did not ee that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to repond with love when it wa tendered.
a recent eperience re-taught me thi truth. i wa hopitalized following a evere heart attack and had been in intenive care for everal day. it wa not a pleaant place.
one morning, i had to have ome additional tet. the required machine were located in a building at the oppoite end of the hopital, o i had to be wheeled acro the courtyard on a gurney.
a we emerged from our unit, the unlight hit me. that all there wa to my eperience. jut the light of the un. and yet how beautiful it wa -- how warming, how parking, how brilliant! i looked to ee whether anyone ele relihed the un golden glow, but everyone wa hurrying to and fro, mot with eye fied on the ground. then i remembered how often i, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and ometime even mean concern to repond from that eperience i really a commonplace a wa the eperience itelf: life gift are preciou -- but we are too heedle of them.[由www.hAozuowEn.com整理]
here then i the firt pole of life paradoical demand on u : never too buy for the wonder and the awe of life. be reverent before each dawning day. embrace each hour. eize each golden minute.
hold fat to life...but not o fat that you cannot let go. thi i the econd ide of life coin, the oppoite pole of it parado: we mut accept our loe, and learn how to let go.
thi i not an eay leon to learn, epecially when we are young and think that the world i our to command, that whatever we deire with the full force of our paionate being can, nay, will, be our. but then life move along to confront u with realitie, and lowly but urely thi truth dawn upon u.
at every tage of life we utain loe -- and grow in the proce. we begin our independent live only when we emerge from the womb and loe it protective helter. we enter a progreion of chool, then we leave our mother and father and our childhood home. we get married and have children and then have to let them go. we confront the death of our parent and our poue. we face the gradual or not o gradual waning of our trength. and ultimately, a the parable of the open and cloed hand ugget, we mut confront the inevitability of our own demie, loing ourelve a it were, all that we were or dreamed to be.