Stephen Levine’s aphorism: "Love is the only rational act."
More often than not, I feel lonely, very lonely since I was a child. I seldom get what I really want from interacting with my family and friends.
"What do you actually want from others? Confidence? Power? Company?" you might ask.
"Being understood."
I believe this should be your answer as well if you still can find a path that is honest to your heart. But in brutal fact, being understood does not happen that often as people expect. Not being understood leads to years of solitude, or say, distance between hearts, even though you have your family and friends around you. However, many people living in solitude would rather disregard this problem as they are probably "too busy" to tackle it which seems to be unavoidable.
That's right. Most people are on a tight schedule: they are self-interest oriented, focusing on making money, getting promotion, buying luxuries, making more money and going on. Maybe the process of chasing something they have never owned before is painful yet fruitful -- through it, they prove their abilities and existence. They seemly need to be labelled as, for example, that kind of people doing better jobs, or that kind of people living better lives than anyone else. Our culture teaches us to create and use labels to quickly tell difference between various things in the world; these labels we have created are used to determine our own values nowadays. lronically, isn't it?
Sometimes I am so surprised and worried about how easy for us to forget that love and connectedness to each other are absolutely crucial parts of our lives. We are too afraid of being hurt to open our mind, give or accept love, or share our true feelings without fear of displeasing others. Our culture also teaches us to be good at hiding our feelings and emotions; seemingly it is much safer to talk about the weather, news, jobs, other friends but not about ourselves. However, this kind of interaction is not supposed to be called "communication". In addition, with the increasing prevalence of social networking sites usage in recent years, the ways people keep in touch have shifted from meeting in person to just getting on Facebook, Twitter, Line, and so on. People use these sites as a virtual reception room of their world -- if you want to follow their lives, you have to follow their Facebook or Twitter. But meanwhile you might find that more connectedness online leads to less offline interaction, and people hide more feelings and emotions. All these have made it more difficult to exchange our thoughts with sincerity and trust. And this makes me frustrated.
Many people who occupy their time with things of less importance are not really aware that what they are busy doing may be far away from rationality as well as spirits of love, as they can not bring real happiness and a great sense of satisfaction.
We always forget the simplest things in lives.
Stephen Levine的名言：「愛是唯一理性的行為。」
從小我常感到孤獨，非常地孤獨。我很少從與家人或朋友的互動中得到我真正想要的。
「你究竟想從別人身上得到些什麼？信心？權力？還是陪伴？」你會問。
「被理解。」
我相信，如果你仍保有一顆可以誠實面對自己的心時，這也會是你的答案。不過，殘忍的事實是，「被理解」通常不是那麼容易的。一個人如果不能被理解，即使有家人朋友在身邊，也會覺得孤獨，又或，會感嘆人心之間距離遙遠。但許多活得孤獨的人卻寧可不管這個問題，他們或許「太忙」而沒空理會，況且這似乎是個難以避免的問題。
沒錯，大部分的人都很忙，他們是自利的，專注於賺錢、升遷、買奢侈品、賺更多的錢，一直這樣下去。對某些人來說，或許追尋未曾擁有過的事物的過程是痛苦但美好的--藉此證明他們的能力與存在。他們似乎需要這樣一種標籤，例如「擁有比較好的工作的那種人」或是「過著比較好的生活的那種人」。我們的文化教我們創造、使用標籤以便能快速地辨別世間萬物，但現在，我們自身的價值卻必須由這些標籤來決定，很諷刺，不是嗎？
有時我感到驚懼不安，我們有多麼容易就忘記，愛、人與人彼此間的連結，才是我們生命中至關重要的部分。我們因為太害怕受傷，而不願敞開心胸、給予愛或接受愛、或因為擔心別人的看法而不敢說出我們真正的感覺。我們的文化也教我們要善於隱藏自己的情緒與感受，跟別人聊天氣、新聞、工作或其他朋友，不要聊自己的事好像比較安全。然而，這種程度的互動根本稱不上是「溝通」。加上這幾年來，由於社群網站的使用越來越普遍，人們聯絡彼此的方式改變了，不再像以前一樣約出來見面，而只是用用臉書、推特、Line等。人們把這些網站當作是他們世界的窗口--如果你想要了解他們的生活，你就得一直看他們的臉書或推特。但同時，你會發現網路上的聯繫越頻繁，實際上的互動反而越少，且人們隱藏更多自己的情緒與感受。這些都使我們越來越難與他人真誠、信任地交流，我覺得很沮喪。
很多忙於這些不重要事情的人們，並未認知到他們所忙的事情其實是很不理性、背離愛的，因為這些事情不能帶來真正的快樂與滿足。
我們總是忘了生命中最單純的那一面。
