佚名/Anonymous
“To be is to be in relations.”If this is true, then the more relations a living thing has, the more it is alive. To live abundantly means simply to increase the range and intensity of our relations. Unfortunately we are so constituted that we get to love our routine. But apart from our regular occupation how much are we alive? If you are interested only in your regular occupation, you are alive only to that extent. So far as other things are concerned—poetry and prose, music, pictures, sports, unselfish friendships, politics, international affairs—you are dead.
Contrariwise, it is true that every time you acquire a new interest—even more, a new accomplishment—you increase your power of life. No one who is deeply interested in large variety of subjects can remain unhappy, the real pessimist is the person who has lost interest.
Bacon said that a man dies as often as he loses a friend. But we gain new life by contact with new friends. What is supremely true of living objects is only less true of ideas, which are also alive. Where your thoughts are, there will your life be also.
To be or not to be to live intensely and richly, or merely to exist, that depends on ourselves. Let us widen and intensify our relations. While we live, let us live.
“生活即聯係。”如果確實如此，那麽，一個人擁有的社會關係越多，他就活得越充實，活得越豐富多彩。就是說，我們要擴大交往麵，強化各種關係。遺憾的是，我們過於僵化，什麽都是按部就班。除了工作，我們的生存還有什麽意義？如果一個人隻對工作感興趣，對其他事情——詩、散文、音樂、繪畫、運動、無私的友誼、政治乃至國際事務都漠不關心，那麽，他的生命也就僅限於工作，他已經死了。
反之，每當你擁有新的興趣——甚至，新的技藝——你的生命力就增強了。一個興趣廣泛的人不可能鬱鬱寡歡，真正的悲觀者是那些沒什麽興趣愛好的人。