暖冬cool夏
這裏一年四季溫暖如春，沒有酷暑沒有嚴寒......
今日讀到這篇《讀者文摘》2017年三月刊的一篇散文， 不僅被它優美的文字所吸引， 更為之共鳴(雖然文章本身是個老調重彈的話題, 有點像現在流行的心靈雞湯啊)。化了四十分鍾欣然敲入電腦， 分享於此。在敲完後準備寫上作者名字時， 才發現這是一篇經典散文， 曾發表於1965年四月的《讀者文摘》（看來心靈雞湯上個世紀就有人在熬了，這樣的文章應該入選大學英文精讀教材。)
在你的生命中有沒有過感動歡樂的瞬間？你有沒有為一朵花，一片樹葉，一隻在池塘上低飛的蜻蜓歡喜雀躍？ 抑或是為一首歌、一句話、一個眼神感動落淚？ 或許更多時候我們因著生活的壓力和忙碌對身邊的事熟視無睹， 忘記它們的存在。其實，我們隻需有一顆心, 就會發現美， 就會尋找黑暗中的光明， 就會感覺到歡樂一直在你我的身邊(cliché, 我也是老調重彈，不過這篇英文文字真的不錯)。
P.S. 昨日(7/1) 特地推薦給女兒讀，今日(7/2) 她告訴我網上有這篇，我白白敲了。鏈接在下。(圖片也是下載的)
http://www.rd.com/health/wellness/overtaken-by-joy/
Overtaken by Joy
By Ardis Whitman
It was a day in late June, gray and depressing, with clouds hanging low. My husband and I were driving to Nova Scotia, Canada, for a much-needed vacation. We traveled glumly, hoping to reach rest and dinner before the rain came. Suddenly, on a lonely stretch of highway, the storm struck. Cascades of water shut us in, making driving impossible. We pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and stopped.
Then as though someone had turned off a celestial faucet, it ended. A thin radiance, like a spray of gold, spread from the clouds. Every blade of grass was crystalline as the sun flashed on trembling drops. The very road shone and a rainbow arched across the sky. It was as though this beam of color had been built for us alone. We could hardly speak for awe and joy.
A friend of mine has described a similar experience. She had walked out on a lonely beach at twilight. It was a time of grief for her, and loneliness was what she wanted. Offshore, across the darkening sea, she made out the image of an anchored fishing boat, and in it the figure of a man. My friend told me that after a while, she felt an intense and glowing sense of oneness with that silent figure. It was as though sea and sky and night and those two solitary human beings were united in a kind of profound identity. “I was overtaken by joy, “she said.
Most of us have experienced such lighted moments, when we seem to understand ourselves and the world and, for a single instant, know the loveliness of living beings. But these moments vanish quickly, and we are almost embarrassed to admit that they have ever been.
However, psychologist Abraham Maslow of Brandeis University embarked some years ago on a study of average individuals and found that a great many report such experiences-“moments of great awe; moments of the most intense happiness or even rapture, ecstasy, or bliss.”
In his files, for example, is the story of a young mother. Getting breakfast for her family, she hurried about the kitchen pouring orange juice and coffee, spreading jam on toast. The children were chattering; the sum streamed in on their faces; her husband was playing with the littlest one. All was usual. But as she looked at them, she was suddenly so overcome by how much she loved them that she could scarcely speak for joy.
Here, too, is the story of a man who remembers a day when he went swimming alone and recalls “the crazy, childish joy with which she cavorted in the water like a fish.” He was so overwhelmed by his great happiness at being “so perfectly physical” that he shouted again and again with joy.
Apparently almost anything may serve as the impetus of such a feeling—starshine on new snow; a sudden field of daffodils, a moment in marriage when hand reaches out to hand in the realization this other person speaks as you speak, feels as you feel. Joy may wait, too, just beyond danger when you have enough to face a situation and live it out. Whatever the source, such experience provide the most memorable moments of life.
Joy is much more than happiness. It is “exultation of spirit,” says the dictionary, “gladness; delight; a state of felicity.” Awe and a sense of mystery are part of it; so are humility and gratitude. Suddenly we are keenly aware of every living thing- every leaf, flower, cloud, the mayfly hovering over the pond, the crow cawing in the treetop. “O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!” cried the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in such a moment.
The most important thing in these peak experiences, says Maslow, is the feeling of these people that they had really glimpsed “the essence of things, the secret of life, as if veils had been pulled aside.”
We see, too, the unity of things—a dazzling vision of the kinship we all have with one another and with the universal life around us. Everyone who has ever had such a moment has noted this quality of “melting into.”
The sad thing is that it happens to most of us so rarely. As we grow older, our lives become buried under the pressure of the workaday world. Joy is not likely to come to us when we are going round and round the tormenting circle of our own busyness.
Instead, it seems that when life’s transiency and frailty are omnipresent, what we have grows sweeter. I remember finding myself seated beside an old gentleman on a train some years ago. He sat quietly looking out the window. His eyes searched each life, each cloud, the lines of passing houses, the upturned faces of children watching the train go by.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” I ventured at last, intrigued by his absorption.
“Yes,” he said. Then he smiled and waved a hand at a passing hay wagon.
“See,” he said. “Hay going to the barn.” And he made it sound as though there could be no greater event than a wagon-load of hay on its way to the mow.
He saw the question in my face. “You think it’s strange,” he said, “ that just a hay wagon means so much. But you see, last week the doctor told me I have three months to live. Ever since, everything has looked so beautiful, so important to me. You can’t imagine how beautiful! I feel as if I had been asleep and had only just woken up.”
Perhaps we’re more likely to experience a moment of joy if we can admit there is more to life than we have fathomed; if we can acknowledge a world greater than our own. To be sure, the experience of joy is not necessarily religious in a conventional way. But a characteristic is the feeling people have that they have touched hem of something far beyond themselves.
In my own life, there was a moment of special exaltation. En route by plane to the Mid-west, we were flying at a high altitude, and a continent of shining clouds spread beneath us. Often, before and since, I have watched these radiant towers and hillocks of cloud go by. But this time, the scene was haunted by a strange joy so penetrating that the plane seemed not to be there.
I thought of myself as living and walking a land like that, and I knew in a flash of deep illumination that there was in the universe a light, a stuff, a web, a substance in company with which one would never be lonely. The experience left the compelling certainty that we dwell safely in a universe far more personal, far more human, far more tender than we are.
What if these moments of joy are given to us to reveal that this is the way we are meant to live? What if the clarity of joy is the way we should be seeing all the time? Too many people, it seems almost wicked to feel this radiance in a world threatened as ours is. But most generations have known uncertainty and challenge and peril. The more grievous the world, the more we need to remember the luminous beauty at the center of life. Our moments of joy are proof that at the heart of darkness an unquenchable light shines.
節日快樂！
暖冬說的對極了。謝謝暖冬把這篇文章推薦給我們，謝謝暖冬用心把這文章寫下來。暖冬有這樣的心！向暖冬學習！