partIV
在人际关系问题上不要太浪漫主义。人是很有趣的,往往在接触一个人时首先看到的都是他或她的优点,这一点颇像是在餐馆里用餐的经验,开始吃头盘或名冷碟的时候,印象很好,吃头两个主菜时,也是赞不绝口,愈吃愈趋于冷静,吃完了这顿筵席,缺点就都找出来了,于是转喜为怨,转赞美为责备挑剔,转首肯为摇头。这是因为,第一,开始吃的时候你正处于饥饿状态,而饿了吃糠甜如蜜,饱了吃蜜也不甜。
partv
For me the most interesting thing about a solitary life, and mine has been that for the last twenty years, is that it becomes increasingly rewarding. When I can wake up and watch the sun rise over the ocean, as I do most days, and know that I have an entire day ahead, uninterrupted, in which to write a few pages, take a walk with my dog, lie down in the afternoon for a long think (why does one think better in a horizontal position?), read and listen to music, I am flooded with happiness.
(I am lonely only when I am overtired, when I have worked too long without a break, when for the time being I feel empty and need filling up. And I am lonely sometimes when I come back home after a lecture trip, when I have seen a lot of people and talked a lot, and am full to the brim with experience that needs to be sorted out.
Then for a little while the house feels huge and empty, and I wonder where my self is hiding. It has to be recaptured slowly by watering the plants, perhaps, and looking again at each one as though it were a person, by feeding the two cats, by cooking a meal.
It takes a while, as I watch the surf blowing up in fountains at the end of the field, but the moment comes when the world falls away, and the self emerges again from the deep unconscious, bringing back all I have recently experienced to be explored and slowly understood,) when I can converse again with my hidden powers, and so grow, and so be renewed, till death do us part.
()括号里的是要翻译的部分。 |