英语标准美文100篇 066（在线收听）

Hold fast, and let go

Hold fast, and let go .Understand this paradox, and you stand At the very gate of wisdom.

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.”

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 is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when 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 great 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 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 warning, how sparking, how brilliant!

I looked to see whether anyone else realized that sun’s golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often, 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 pole 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 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 surely 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 confront the death of our parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our own strength. And ultimately, as the open and closed hand suggests, 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 be 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 though our lives are finite, our deeds on earth weave a timeless pattern.

Life is never just being. It’s a becoming, a relentless flowing on. Our parents live on thought us, and we will live on though our children. The institutions we build endure, and we will endure though 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 brick and you have 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 colors of hope.
该抓就抓，该放就放

该抓就抓，该放就放, 明白这个道理，你就打开了智慧之门

人生的艺术就是，要知道何时该紧紧把握以及何时该放弃。因为人生就是一对矛盾，它既让我们要抓住人生的多种赐予，同时又迫使我们到头来不得不放弃。正如前辈们所言：人出生时双拳紧握而来，去世时却是松手而去。

我们当然应该抓紧这神奇而美妙的生命，因为它的美，充满了我们这片神圣土地的每一个角落。其实，这个道理我们都懂，可是我们却常常只有在回首往事时，才突然觉醒意识到其中之美，可为时已晚，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给出积极的回应。

最近我自己的一个经历又令我悟出了这其中的道理。我因为严重的心脏病发作而住进了加护病房，那可不是个好呆的地方。

一天上午时分，我要接受几项辅助检查。因为检查的器械在医院对面的一幢建筑中，所以我就要穿过庭院，躺在轮床上被推到那里。

就在从病房出来的那一瞬，迎面的阳光一下子洒在我的身上。我所感受的就只有这阳光，但它却是如此美丽，如此温暖，如此璀璨和辉煌！

我看看周围是否有人也沉醉在这金色的阳光中，而事实是大家都来去匆匆，大都目不斜视，双眼只顾盯着地面。继而我就想到我平常也太过于沉湎于日常的琐碎俗物中，而对身边的美景漠然，甚至是视而不见。

从这次的经历中我所获得的感悟，就像这个经历本身一样并无什么奇特之处：生活的恩赐是珍贵的――只是我们对此留心甚少。

于是人生的第一个方面就是：不要太过于忙碌而忽视了人生的美好，和失去对生命的敬畏。虔诚地迎接每个黎明的到来。把握每个小时，抓住宝贵的分分秒秒。

紧紧地把握人生，但是又不能抓得过死，松不开手。这正是人生的另外一面，也就是矛盾的另外一面：我们要接受失去的一切，懂得如何放手。

其实这个并不是容易做到的，尤其当我们尚年轻时，自以为世界在我们的掌控之中，而不论什么，只要我们以满腔热情、全力以赴，就会心想事成！但是现实往往事与愿违，然后渐渐地这第二条真理接踵而来。

在人生的每个阶段，我们都会承受失去――也因此成长起来。我们出生的同时也失去母体的保护，从那一刻我们开始了独立的生命。而后我们上学，一级一级地升上去，接着又得离开父母和儿时的家。我们结婚生子，然后又眼睁睁地看着他们离去；我们遭遇父母及爱人的离逝。我们也要面临自己逐渐，或者突然的衰老。而最终，就像握手和松手的比喻那样，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，包括我们已经所拥有的和尚未实现的。

但是我们为什么要服从于这种人生中矛盾的要求呢？为什么明知美是短暂的还要去创造美好？为何明知自己所爱的人会最终离我们而去，却还要投入全身心地去爱？

要解开这个矛盾我们就必须把眼光放开，像透过可以通向永恒的窗户那样来审视我们的生活。一旦这样做，我们就会知道我们的生命虽然有限，可我们在地球上的作为却在造就永恒。

人生不仅仅是静止的一生而已。它是在不断变幻的，是一股不屈不挠的奔流。我们的父母通过我们得到生命的延续，然后我们通过我们的子女得到生命的延续。我们所创立的社会会保留下来，我们也与之长存；我们所崇尚的美不会因为我们的死亡就失去颜色。我们的身体会腐朽，我们的双手会枯萎，但是我们所创造的美、善和真却可以永存而不朽。

不要将你的生命浪费在聚财敛物，他们只会变为尘埃，化为虚无。与其追求物质，不如追求理想，因为只有理想才会赋予生命以意义，也只有理想才会有长存的价值。

房子有了爱便成为了家。城市有了道义就成为社会。一堆红砖碧瓦，一旦有了真理就成了学校。陋室有了宗教就成了圣堂。人类全方面的努力，有了正义就成为了文明。把这一切全放在一处，完善他们，使之精益求精；而这一切，有了在人类获得救赎后那永远无欲无求的远景，便成就了一个充满希望的绚烂未来。