充实人生

今早在报纸看到了一片专栏，讲的就是人们是否想过怎样个充实的人生。它有三个要点，其中两个指出的是很多人都提过的。而倒是第三点，值得花点时间思考。

[quote]
The third principle comes from the sub-text in a recent movie, A Beautiful Mind. Throughout much of the movie about the life of Nobel Prize winner in economics, Professor John Nash, one is led to believe that his code-breaking work was for real, and it was perhaps the secrecy surrounding it that was part cause of his mental condition.

This is before he meets his psychiatrist. The depths of his delusions are dramatically revealed only when his wife barges into his office to see magazine snippings and scribblings all over the walls, clearly the work of a man out of touch with reality. In that poignant moment, she asks: 'Is this all he's been doing every day - cutting up magazines?'

The utter worthlessness and futility of his life's work, which had hitherto seemed so impressive, hits us hard because we had been drawn into Prof Nash's world. Until the moment of revelation, we, too, assessed his work through his eyes, using his standards. We were, like him, deceived. When truth was unveiled, we were shocked because what had seemed like gold was but dross.

Albeit unintended, this is a powerful metaphor for a life that is lived unexamined, without a standard for a guide, or with a standard that one finds to be false at the end of one's life. Will one then find that life has been spent just 'cutting up magazines'?

So the third principle is this: The possibility of a different standard at our deathbeds, morbid as it may sound, ought to compel us to realise those things that truly matter to us.

The alternative? Hugh Grant's character in the movie, About A Boy, spends his time on leisure and nothing else. In one moment of angst-filled revelation, he remarks that all in all, he leads a very full life: It's just that it doesn't mean anything.
[unquote]

其实，在追求人生的路上，我们做的决定都是双面的。你既要做出一些成绩让世人看，这样才不算荒废自己的时间。又得明白一味追求成就并且消耗了一生的时间，不一定代表了充实的人生。你努力的原因，在别人眼里或许只是无聊的消遣。

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有时，自己写啊写啊，写到最后却发现不太明白自己要写些什么。现在，就是个很好的例子。