十九世紀德國哲學家尼采曾經說過，“凡不能摧毀我的必將使我強大” （Out of life‘s school of war-- what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger”），乍一聽很勵誌，可事實是不是如此呢？這句話的可信度到底如何呢？在人們經曆了能改變人的一一生命運的重大不幸、苦難和打擊之後，人還能劫後重生嗎？是不是像尼采說的那樣人會越挫越勇，變得更強大呢？

 

2022年出版的書名為What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us就是通過對六位在年輕時(有些是teenages時）遭遇了重大人生不幸的人進行采訪，通過真人真事來探討這個話題。這六個人中有三位是因為車禍造成永久殘疾，雙腿高位截肢，腦部受損，脊椎重創腦部受傷而癱瘓。有兩位是監獄犯，一位因失手殺人被重判無期徒刑，服刑二十年後被州長下文釋放的，另一位是吸毒搶劫在監獄裏待了7年多釋放的；最後一位是遭人強奸，後又雙眼徹底失明的。他們的遭遇讓人唏噓不已，（這裏作者把監獄罪犯列入其中有他自己的理由），在當今崇尚強者（ableism)的社會，他們的生存是很艱難的。

 

如果你讀了他們的故事之後，一句輕描淡寫的總結“凡不能摧毀我的必將使我強大”，會給人一種站著說話不腰疼的感覺。他們遭受毀滅性的打擊後，從絕望、痛苦掙紮、到接受麵對，到劫後重生，其過程其實是非常艱辛，不是幾句勵誌話語，幾次心理疏導，幾次康複治療就能扭轉的，因為他們要麵對的是不可逆轉的殘疾，身體上的，心靈上的。他們的第一反應或許是，“為什麽是我，為什麽發生在我身上”，隨後自然而然會期望生活能回到從前。可現實是殘酷的，經過漫長的努力後，他們最後不得不無奈地選擇接受現實，選擇忘卻。他們隻有改變（transform)自我，尋求新的平衡點，才能更好地活下去。

 

誰不希望自己的人生一帆風順？我們畢竟都是血肉之軀，並非銅牆鐵壁的鋼板一塊。困境逆境本身是不會讓人更堅強，它最多就是個強心劑，因為在沒有選擇的情況下，人隻有強大了才能活下去。而這些貌似強大的人又是脆弱的（vulnerable)，因為人的極限，因為留下的創傷，留下的陰影，失去健全身體造成種種局限，讓他們的餘生像是生活在一隻風雨飄搖中的小船上，隨時都可能被襲來的浪打翻。作者在書中寫了這樣一段比喻：他們就像生長在懸崖峭壁上的鬆樹，土壤貧瘠，但是他們迎著陽光，頂著疾風頑強地生存，他們或許不會像大山中的鬆樹那麽寬大，但是他們的根須一樣紮個得很深，他們一樣活出了生命的深度。但是他們的人生又是脆弱的，某朝某日，如果岩石風化崩裂，他們的生命或許會就此戛然而止。

 

書寫到最後一兩章，作者把筆鋒一轉，提及尼采信仰的另一個哲理思想： amor fati, 翻譯過來即：愛命運，無條件接受命運的安排。在人無法掌控的命運麵前，順服命運安排可能比尼采的戰無不勝的人生哲理更現實。人大抵是抗爭不過命的。這樣的一本書結尾，是不是在一定程度上表達了作者對尼采“戰無不勝”的理念的一種質疑呢？

 

願我們都能好好活著，盡可能享受生命的寬度、長度和深度，享受健康，和健全身體帶給我們的自由。讓我們珍惜生命，遠離疾病不幸和痛苦！

 

注：相比350頁的一本書，我的讀書筆記太短。作者Mike Mariani，是英文教授，新聞自由撰稿人。他對英語文字駕馭如此高超精湛，讓讚歎不已，一邊讀一邊做筆記（手抄了30多頁，以後最好能在圖書館門口25美分的架子上買到一本，我已經很多年不給自己買新書了：），隻是這樣的文字讀起來讀到最後也會疲倦（最後懶得抄了），遂懷念起海明威的淺顯易懂的文字：）。不過，這個世界永遠會是雅俗共賞的世界。讀這本書，與其說是在讀他的內容思想，不如說是在讀他的文字。

 

Quotes:

“In one of the notebooks he carried with him, Nietzsche wrote, "We have art lest we perish from the truth." For those leading afterlives, the unadorned facts of what's happened to them can be brutish to bear on their own terms. Contextualizing that hardship through our intellects and imaginations is a critical salve, an act of transforming our perception that can guide and color how we experience our lives. We can knead our experiences into a larger arc, providing the cohesion that helps us form new narrative identities. Or we can look deeper into our afterlives until we ferret out a way of construing them that rouses our spirits or points them toward salvation. In her essay collection The White Album, Joan Didion delivered a pronouncement that was a natural descendants to Nietzsche's line, an admission of how desperately we rely on the subjective fictions we construct: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Those stories--whether they take the form of redemption narratives, personal parables, or the pearlescent beliefs we kneel before each day like shrines offering eternal grace--can elevate our lives and serve as the vessels of private deliverance.”

“Examining our behaviors and thought patterns demands sustained, uninterrupted self-work, and the fullness of our everyday lives and the finite attention spans that rove through them sometimes appear engineered to thwart personal investigations. For many, such an undertaking is undesirable in any case: Those of us content with our lives are not compelled to confront or interrogate our habits, lifestyles, or underlying beliefs. Contentment doesn't incentivize change--it does everything in its power to forestall it. But those of us learning to survive in the ill-disposed, unaccommodating terrain of afterlives--marooned on the desert islands we have little affinity for--must open ourselves up to it.”

“The Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran wrote, "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." The catastrophes that carve themselves deep inside of us also leave us with increased depth, augmenting the volume of feeling we're able to hold. And how can we measure devotion but by how much the vessels that we become for our art, faith, saviors, and crusades have the capacity to contain?”

“In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon writes, "It takes an act of will to grow from loss: the disruption provides the opportunity for growth, not the growth itself." Catastrophes do not trigger transformation; they only establish the conditions that increase the likelihood that we will pursue them. Only through our willful, persevering actions can we gradually remake our identities.”