What I Have Lived For 吾之三愿

**Admin** · by **Admin** on 5/18/2009, 14:33

吾之三愿

在我的生命中，有三样虽说平常，却如排山倒海般强烈的情感左右着我的人生：对爱情的渴望，对知识的追寻，以及对人类苦难的无尽怜悯。它们像是飓风，粗暴地卷我升空，不知要带我去向何方。直到深沉的苦难，置我于濒临绝望之际。
我渴望爱情，因为它给于我无限喜悦——为了那样的喜悦，我甚至愿意牺牲生命中的所有，只为谋求那短暂的欢愉；我渴望爱情，因为它驱散我落寞孤独——在那孤独之中，一个战栗的灵魂正孤立于世界之沿俯看那了无生机的万丈深渊；我渴望爱情，因为它示以我天堂之景——那天堂之景由相爱之人创造，为圣者与诗人所向往。我便渴望如此的爱情，那人世之佳境，且有幸得偿所愿。
我追寻知识，正如我渴望爱情。我希望能了解人类的思想感情的奥秘；我希望能探询繁星闪耀其芒的原理；我还希望能领会毕达哥拉斯“万物皆数”的理论。对于知识，我虽历经努力，却也只是略懂皮毛。
爱情与知识，它们带我直飞云霄，体验天堂之美景。然而每每使我心再度降落地面的，却是那因世间苦难者而生的怜悯：骨瘦如柴的孩子，饱受镇压的受难者，被儿女嫌恶为负担的老人，以及这充满孤独、贫穷、痛苦的世界，无一不是在嘲弄着人类那可笑的生命。悲痛的哭喊在我的心中共鸣回响，不肯消散。我希望能带走这些不幸，可惜我自己也只是一名受害者，无力回天。
这便是我的人生，并自以为未曾虚度。若上帝垂怜，我愿再赴一次人生之路，且喜不自胜。

What I Have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.