爱华网系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
Sadly, like many flares burning brightly, hers was not made to last. Shortly after her nineteenth birthday, without warning, she died. It struck me then as absurd that, of the two of us, she should be the one who perished, while I was the one who was spared. I had always regarded her as the one who was privileged; myself as the one deprived. I thought of my former envy and realised that, since we don’t know what’s in store for any of us, envy is never justified. A friend of mine had been tyrannised by a formidable mother since the day she was born. She lived under an emotional terror-reign, where guilt was the main offensive weapon. It seemed she couldn’t blink an eye without causing her mother to be hurt, upset, annoyed, distressed or worse. “I can’t take any more,” she told me in despair. “My whole life is spent apologising to my mother.”
“It has to stop,” I agreed. “You are an adult independent woman. It’s time you told her once and for all that her emotions are her own responsibility. No one has a right to blame others for what they feel.” She heeded my advice. The message, apparently, was received with ice-cold equanimity. Some time later, my friend gave a recital – she is a very talented musician. Her mother, as usual, attended, and afterwards, with relish, pulled her daughter’s performance to pieces, adding, for good measure, quotes from the audience: scathing, humiliating remarks that she purported to have overheard in the ladies’ room. Her sweet, gentle daughter burst into tears. “Mummy, don’t say any more,” she pleaded. “Surely you realise how much it hurts.” Her mother turned a beady eye on her: “Don’t blame me, dear, for your emotions. You said it yourself: they are your responsibility.” “No,” said my friend, reached by a sudden insight – perhaps the most important one she’d had. “That rule does not apply when someone hurts you intentionally.” I was every bully’s dream. They were drawn to me like bees to honey. Such easy game: I must have been irresistible.
