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.”
Surly 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 recognized 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 pile 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 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 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 surly this second truth dawns upon us.
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 face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our own strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggest, 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 br 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 through our lives are finite, our deeds on earth, weave a timeless patten.
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 bricks 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.
人生的艺术就是要懂得适时地收与放，因为人生其实就是这样一个矛盾体：它既要让我们抓住人生的各种恩赐，同时又迫使我们最终不得不放弃所有。正如先贤们所言：“人出生时是双拳紧握而来，过世时却是撒手而去。”
我们当然要抓紧生活，因为它美妙而神奇，它的美充满了我们这片神圣土地的每个角落。我们其实都明白这一点，可是却常常在回顾往昔时才突然意识到这一真理，可惜为时已晚，一切都时过境迁。
我们深深铭记的是褪色的美，消逝的爱。但是这种记忆却饱含苦涩，我们痛惜没有在美丽绽放的时候注意到它，没有在爱情到来的时候作出回应。
最近的一次经历再次令我悟出了这条真理。我因为严重的心脏病发作而住院，在特护病房呆了些日子，那可不是个好地方。
一天上午，我要接受几项附加检查。因为检查设备在医院另一头的一栋楼中，所以我只得躺在病床上被推着穿过庭院去那里。
就在我们从病房里出来的一瞬间，阳光洒在我的身上，我所感受到的就只有这阳光，它是如此美丽，如此温暖，如此璀璨和辉煌！
我看看周围是否有人也在享受这金色的阳光，而事实是大家都来去匆匆，多数人双眼只顾盯着地面。继而我就想我也经常对身边的壮美景致漠然待之，太过沉湎于琐碎俗务，甚至有时是卑劣的行径而对此无动于衷。
我从这次经历中获得的认识实际上就像这次经历本身一样普通：生活的恩赐是珍贵的——但是我们对此关注太少。
那么，人生给予我们第一条真理就是：不要由于太过忙碌而忽略了生活的神奇和对生活的敬畏。虔诚地迎接每个黎明的到来。把握每个时刻，抓住宝贵的每分每秒。
紧紧地把握人生，但是又不能抓得过死，松不开手。这正是人生的另一面，也是矛盾的另一面：我们要接受失去的一切，学会如何放手。
感悟到这一点其实并不容易，尤其是当我们还年轻时，自以为世界在我们的掌控之中，不论我们想要什么，只要我们满腔热情，全力以赴，心想能得到，就一定能得到！但是生活的脚步在继续，并且让我们面对现实，于是这第二条真理渐渐地也是必然地显现在我们面前。
在人生的每个阶段我们都会经历失去——同时也在这个过程中成长起来。我们出生时失去了母体的保护，从那一刻起我们开始了独立的生活。而后我们上学了，并且不断升级，随后离开了父母和儿时的家。我
们结婚、生子，然后看着他们离去。我们也会看到自己生命能量的消逝，这一过程可能是渐进的，也可能是突然的。而最终，就像攥拳和松手的比喻那样，我们必须面对自己不可避免的死亡。就这样我们失去了一切，包括我们自己的人生中已经拥有的以及尚未实现的。
但是我们为什么要服从于人生中这种矛盾的要求呢？为什么明知美是短暂的还要去创造美呢？为何明知自己所爱的人最终会离我们而去却还要全心全意去爱呢？
要解开这个矛盾，我们必须把眼光放远，像透过可以通过永恒的窗户那样来审视我们的生活。一旦这样做，我们就会知道，虽然我们的生命是有限的，但是我们在地球上的作为却在造就永恒。
生活永远不仅仅是存在。它在不断变幻，是一股不间断的奔流。父母通过我们得以延续生命，然后我们的生命又通过子女得以延续。我们建立的制度将得以传承，而我们也将随之长存。我们所创造的美不会因为我们的死亡而失色。我们的肉体会死去，双手会干枯，但是我们所创造的美、善和真实永远不朽的。
不要浪费你的生命去聚敛财物，它们只会变为尘埃，化作灰烬。追求理想才能赋予生命意义，也只有理想才会有恒久的价值。
房子有了爱便成了家，城市有了正义就成了社会。一堆红砖有了真理就成了学堂。陋室有了宗教就成了圣殿。人类漫长的努力有了公正就成为了文明。把这一切全放在一起，超越当前的不完美，使之升华，加上人类获得救赎后那永远没有贫穷和争斗的远景，我们将有一个闪耀着希望的绚丽光彩的未来。
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