Chapter 17 a sunny window

There is a story circulating in Taiwan's mountaineering circles, a beautiful and sad story. Legend has it that a young mountaineer accidentally fell into a glacier while climbing a mountain; decades later, his wife went to climb there and accidentally found her husband who had been frozen in the glacier for decades.This young man who was buried in the ice and snow still maintained his youthful appearance, while his wife was already aging because of being in the mortal world. When I heard this story for the first time, my whole chest vibrated. It is so brief and powerful that it speaks to the insignificance of human beings in time and space. The couple who met in the glacier years later.

Many years ago, there was a movie called "Lost Horizon", where there is no time and space, people live a carefree and happy life.One day, a young man lost his way while climbing a mountain, broke into the lost horizon, and fell in love with a beautiful girl there; the girl yearned for love in the world, and the young man was eager to take the girl back to his hometown. Regardless of everyone's objections, she crossed the Taniguchi on the horizon, walked through the frozen land, and returned to the world after going through untold hardships. Unexpectedly, the girl was already full of silver hair, wrinkled and dying at the moment when the young man turned his head.The story reveals a sad ending in the elegant music and pure white snow.

Originally, the couple living in the lost horizon, their love is sincere, and they both have the courage to create the future, why can't they have a happy ending?The problem occurs in time and space, one is in the flowing time and space, and the other is in the unchanging time and space. The moment they meet, the time and space are far apart, and they will inevitably fall into the mist of sorrow. Recently, a stage play adapted from Bai Xianyong's novel "A Dream in the Garden" was staged in Taipei recently. When I was a teenager, I read "A Dream in a Garden" several times, and I only thought it was an ordinary love story. Taste a deep sense of helplessness.After decades of changes, it is not just a woman's memories of her glamorous girlhood, but also the sadness of what human beings can't do after the passage of time and space.Time and space flow in an irresistible place, and in the end, it makes the beautiful girl grow old, and the flower falls and the person dies.

"Time" and "space", the two shuttles that weave the tapestry of life, they shuttle back and forth so ruthlessly. In Greek mythology, there is a mountain where immortal gods live. There is a big checkpoint at the mountain pass. The guard of this checkpoint is the "God of Time". You can stay young forever, you can be as immortal as the mountains and the sun and the moon. As mortals, we don’t have the luck of gods. When we look up every day, we can see the clock ticking on the wall and the hasty footsteps. Even if we sit on the balcony and meditate, we can still see the sun rising, the moon setting, and the wind passing by. , Star sinking, flowing from far outside the sky.One day, we met our young playmate by chance, and found that he had a few gray hairs, and our mood was also slightly approaching middle age.One day, we suddenly found that the lilacs in the yard were blooming, but after returning from a trip, the petals fell all over the ground.One day, we saw that the old house in front of our house was demolished, but after a while, a brand new building was built.One day... We finally realized that the passage of time and the transfer of space are ruthless and domineering, and there is no room for negotiation at all.

Chinese folk fairy tales often describe such a scene. A person descends to the sky by chance, or swims in the Dragon Palace. One year", he has played more than a dozen major games, more than ten years have passed in the world, how much has changed in the past ten years?It can be so big that when you go back to your hometown, you can't find your own gate or recognize your relatives.He Zhizhang's "Homecoming Illustrated Book" can express this kind of mood well: "The young and old leave home, and the elders return, the local accent remains unchanged; the children meet each other, and they laugh and ask where they come from?" Decades of Leaving home can even make the host and guest change positions!

The Buddhist saying that "forms are illusions, and the world is impermanent" really penetrates the reality of time and space, allowing us to see clearly that a bud will soon bloom, and soon it will fade again. Shi Naian, the author of "Shuiyou Zhuan", has a short passage in the preface of the book: "Every strange person says, how old is X. A. If you have a number of husbands, you have accumulated them. It is said that the accumulation of years is the same. Where is it? Is it possible to count it? It can be seen that all of me in the past have disappeared. I am not satisfied with this. I have written this sentence. This sentence has already disappeared before, so it is painful." (I often say to others, "A certain How old is A now? I feel strange, how many, it means that it can be saved by accumulating, but where is his age accumulated now? Can it be taken out and counted? It can be seen that I have completely changed and disappeared in the past. Not only that, I When I write this sentence, the time before this sentence has quickly changed and disappeared, which is the most heartbreaking.) It expresses the sorrow of a great novelist for time and space.The great Chinese novels from ancient times, as long as we pay attention, almost all of them talk about a profound problem of time and space. ;The main theme of the book is "the great power of the world must be united for a long time, and it must be divided for a long time"; it is the dream of color and appearance; it is the moon in the water and the flower in the mirror; It is more obvious: "Seeing him build a tall building, seeing his building collapse."

Almost without exception, our literary works express the insignificance of human beings in time and space. Unfortunately, no one has explored it from this angle, otherwise we will definitely find that Chinese folk thought is very sensitive to the gradation of time and space.There is a proverb in the West: "If you want to be happy forever, you can only find it in pain." It just points out the contradiction between time and space and life. When we feel happy, we can't be forever. That's what time and space play with us from time to time on the fringes of life. Plato wrote a short poem in two lines:

Do you look at the stars, my stars? I would like to be the sky, to be able to see you with countless eyes People can use such beautiful sentences and novels to write life, but unfortunately we cannot be the sky or the eternal stars, we can only look at the disappearing stars and feel sad. Many people recall the happiness of the past, wishing to reunite with old people, wishing to stay in the past, but in fact, the world is far away, time flies, even if one day they meet the old people, the mood is like being in a frozen polar region , I can't help but be saddened by being shot by the arrow of time and space!There is a famous short poem by Izumi Shikibe, a modern Japanese poet:

Missing people in my heart, Seeing the fireflies on the lake, It is also suspected that it is a sleepwalking soul that came out of his body. I like the artistic conception of this poem, especially the metaphor of "firefly". The people we miss are not the fireflies on summer nights that flicker on and off, or turn around in the dark sky and then go away, even our own sleepwalking soul I can't keep up, I am really deeply saddened by the ruthlessness of time and space. Speaking of the boundless and endless ruthlessness of time and space, it will eventually wash away all good and evil, beauty and ugliness, elegance and vulgarity, good and evil, good and bad, and no matter how sentimental people are, they will be powerless to save them.So, are we depressed and weak because of this?

Are you just sitting and waiting for the changes in time and space? I don't think it is necessary. Although human life is small and short, it is like a clear window, from which one's own small heart can see the big world. A clear window, facing the change of time and space, when spring flowers fly in, there will be spring flowers; if fireflies float in, there will be fireflies;When love comes in, there is love, and when sorrow comes in, there is sorrow. Anything that comes to our clear window can make us experience the deep taste of life more clearly. But since it is a clear window, there must be in and out. The happiness once owned is still clear when the window is lost; The flying of birds is flying around in front of your eyes, and you can also feel at ease without being distracted.Some people grow flowers for profit, and some people grow flowers for boredom. We should not be such people. We only grow flowers if we really love flowers. Only those who have a clear window have true love, and only those who love flowers can grow the most beautiful flowers.

— August 25, 1982