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2024,让渺小生活变得伟大

2024-01-08 05:53阅读:
2024,让渺小生活变得伟大
新年计划是一种微不足道的祈祷。你是这样,但希望成为那样。你以前想要这个,但现在想要那个。
新年计划背后的假设是必须纠正和改进某些东西。一个人发誓要比前一年更好。
新年计划的一部分本质,尤其对于我们这些60岁以上的人来说,不仅与即将到来的新年有关,还与已经度过或者虚度的光阴有关。
我们回顾逝去的时光,回顾过去制订但没能完成的计划。又一个新年将至。每一次落球仪式,心就跟着沉下去。你的时间不多了,而我们最珍惜的就是时间。
历史哲学家刘易斯·芒福德认为,时钟——而不是蒸汽机——才是工业时代的主要机器,因为时间与人类能量的消耗是一种命令与被命令的关系,时间也因此与任何产品都有同样的关系。从一开始,工业的本质就是一切按时运行。时间触及生活中的一切,甚至爱情。基本的东西都适用。
因此,当我们高喊“新年快乐”时,总会有一种忧郁的绝望和紧迫。这个新年真的会比去年更好吗?我们决心让它好于去年。我们决心变得更强壮、更健康、更聪明、更富有、更成功、更受欢迎、更有效率、穿得更好、更快乐。于是,整个徒劳、愚蠢、不可避免地令人失望的循环又重新开始了。
所有这些以自我为导向的承诺的问题在于,它们处理的都是鸡毛蒜皮的小事。这大千世界会在乎你有没有减肥,或者锻炼身体,或者更努力地工作,或者戒烟戒酒吗?
戒烟或者每天抽三包烟。每天锻炼或者放任自己。这是你的选择,你的生活。你的渺小的生活。与此同时,世界——整个饱受折磨、自我毁灭、两极分化、濒临灭绝、非同寻常的世界——继续运转着。
如果我们不去规划如何锻炼,而是把目光集中在人类活动中所有不受欢迎的事情上——战争、偏执、残暴、掠夺地球——并寻求解决这些问题,那会怎样?如果我们不是畏首畏尾地制订计划,而是作出让人无法质疑的承诺,那会怎
样?
在《草叶集》中,沃尔特·惠特曼写道:“你应该这样做:热爱地球、太阳和动物,鄙视财富,救济所有求助之人,为愚蠢和疯狂的人挺身而出。”他继续写道:“重新审视你在学校、教堂或任何书籍中被告知的一切,摒弃任何侮辱你灵魂的东西,你本人将成为一首伟大的诗。”
如果你正在寻找一个有价值的计划,那么惠特曼是个不错的起点。
改善世界的任务或许看起来不可能完成,但事实并非如此。它所需要的只是按正确顺序作出正确的、互相独立的决策。决策不过是付诸实施的决心。
就我个人而言,我承诺经常去儿童医院,试着用故事转移孩子们的注意力,越有趣越好。我承诺给每一个我认识的孤独之人打电话,每周至少两次,只是聊聊天,让他们觉得自己是这个尘世的一部分。我承诺要救济每一个求助之人,也救济那些没有向我求助的人,并为愚蠢和疯狂的人挺身而出,越愚蠢、越疯狂越好。我保证会留意一切流浪者(猫、狗和人),为其提供安全和舒适。我承诺把每一次错误都视为威胁,把每一次伤害都视为机会。
现在、本周、本月,你会做些什么来创造一个更美好的世界?为纠正错误或者表达友谊而致信。(给悲伤或苦恼的朋友写一封体贴、同情的信是很有力量的举动。)伸出援手。说一句表达安慰、鼓舞、支持或爱意的话。捐钱,或者,最重要的是,捐时间。有很多方法可以改变这个世界,绝对力所能及。
当然,这一切行为中有一个伟大且美好的矛盾之处,那就是无私并不是自我改善的对立面。无私就是自我改善——最有意义和最持久的一种。
实践它,你就可能发现,新的一年实际上是比去年更上一层楼。你就可能发现,忽然之间,你看起来、感觉起来比无论多少节食或者运动之后都要好。卸去了自我负担,脚步更轻盈了。喂,你这不是变瘦了吗?
实践它,你就会突然发现,你的渺小生活变得伟大了。
This Year, Make a Resolution About Something Bigger Than Yourself
By Roger Rosenblatt
New Year's resolutions are penny-ante prayers. You are this way, but you hope to be that way. You used to want this, but now you want that.
The assumption behind resolutions is that something must be corrected and improved. One vows to be better than one was the year before.
Part of the nature of resolutions, particularly for those of us north of 60, has to do not only with the new year before us, but also with time already spent, or misspent.
We reflect on the years we’ve lived, on the past resolutions made and broken. Another New Year’s Eve come and gone. Every time the ball drops, the heart sinks. You are running out of time, and time is what we value most.
The historian-philosopher Lewis Mumford believed that the clock, not the steam engine, was the principal machine of the industrial age because time has a commanding relationship to the expenditure of human energy, and thus to any product itself. From the start, the essence of industry has been that things run on time. Time touches everything in life, even love. The fundamental things apply.
Thus there is always a melancholic desperation and urgency when we shout, “Happy New Year!” Will this new year, in fact, be any better than the last? We resolve that it will. We resolve to be fitter, healthier, cleverer, richer, more successful, more popular, more productive, better dressed, happier. And so restarts the whole vain, foolish, inevitably disappointing cycle.
The trouble with all such self-oriented promises is that they deal in chicken feed. What does the great wide world care if you lose weight, or work out, or work harder, or quit drinking or smoking?
Quit smoking or smoke three packs a day. Work out daily or let yourself go. It’s your choice, your life. Your little life. Meanwhile, the world — the whole tortured, self-destructive, polarized, endangered, extraordinary world — spins on.
What if, instead of planning our exercise regimens, we focused our intentions on all that is undesirable in human activity — wars, bigotry, brutality, the despoiling of the earth — and sought to address it? What if instead of making a milquetoast resolution, we made airtight commitments?
In “Leaves of Grass,” Walt Whitman writes: “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy.” He continues, “Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.’’
So there. If you’re looking for a worthwhile resolution, Whitman is not a bad place to start.
The task of improving the world may seem impossible, but it isn’t. All it takes is the proper sequence of correct discrete decisions. Decisions are just resolutions with teeth.
An editor of mine told me a story from his childhood on his grandparents’ farm in Iowa. The little boy, looking out over acres and acres of corn, asked his grandfather, “How are we going to shuck all that corn?” His grandfather said, “One row at a time.”
This, too, is how to improve the world. And we can start small.
Personally, I vow that I will frequently visit a children’s hospital and try to distract kids with stories, the funnier the better. I vow that I will phone every lonely person I know — and there are plenty — at least twice a week, just to chat and make them feel part of the living world. I vow to give alms to everyone who asks, and to those who don’t, and to stand up for the stupid and crazy, the stupider and crazier, the better. I promise to keep an eye out for strays (cats, dogs and people) and bring them safety and comfort. I vow to see every wrong as a menace, every wound an opportunity.
What will you do — right now, this week, this month — to make a better world? Stage a protest. Send a letter to right a wrong, or to proffer friendship. (A thoughtful, sympathetic letter to a friend in sorrow or distress is a powerful thing.) Lend a hand. Offer a word of comfort or inspiration or support or love. Donate money or, most valuable of all, time. There are so many ways to move this world, right within reach.
The great beautiful irony of all this, of course, is that selflessness is not the opposite of self-improvement. Selflessness is self-improvement — the most meaningful and lasting kind.
Practice it, and you may just find that the new year is, in fact, a step up from the last. You may find that, all at once, you look and feel better than you would have after any amount of dieting or exercise. Unburdened of ego. Lighter on your feet. Say, haven’t you lost weight?
Practice it, and suddenly you will find that your little life has gotten big. Big life, grand life is like art. It is not done well unless the artist dreams expansively, ridiculously, by making a glorious Whitman-size fool of herself in seeking to enhance everything, cure every ill. Nothing less.
At an event a couple of months ago, someone asked me why I wrote something the way I did, and I found myself blurting out, “To save the world.” It was laughable, preposterous and true.

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