爱华网系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
“How is married life?” I asked a childhood friend over a cup of coffee. We were in our mid-twenties; hadn’t seen each other for years. I’d heard she’d got married shortly after leaving school. “Not all it’s cracked up to be.” There was no mistaking the disillusion in her voice. As she busied herself stirring her coffee, a tear fell from her eye, straight into the cup. “He doesn’t make me happy,” she revealed despondently, surprising me, who had girlish illusions of marriage as a state of eternal bliss. “What about him?” I inquired. “How does he feel?” Her reply was a blank look. I probed further: “Is he unhappy, too?” She shrugged. “Haven’t you talked to him about it?” “There’s no point,” she said dismissively. “He’s not what I had hoped for.” The girl may have been young and spoilt, but I’ve thought of her often in terms of relationships thwarted as a gap opens up between the expectations of one party and the failure to deliver of the other. Who of the parties is to blame? The one making excessive, unrealistic demands, or the one who won’t – or can’t – measure up? Probably both, for failing to make the necessary compromises to meet halfway. Waiting on the quay in Roundstone, I spotted an author whom I knew slightly. With me was a friend: an intrepid woman who had spent years of her life paddling a canoe round Papua New Guinea teaching English to the native population. We chatted with him, until the craft arrived to take us away to an off-shore island. The author stared aghast from us to the rib. “You’re going off – in that?”
“Why ever not?” we asked, disconcerted. He shook his head incredulously. “I can’t see either of you getting into a boat like that.” We leapt in like gazelles in front of him, though our morale was at an all-time low. “How did this happen?” we asked ourselves dejectedly. “How did we become so dull, middle-aged and frumpish, that other people can’t imagine us having a bit of fun?”
