爱华网系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
We all love people who represent an image: who take to life as if it were a stage. Acting out impressions we can easily interpret, taking their bow from the rest of us. Some of them become cult figures: James Dean, Kennedy, Elvis, Grace, Diana – the list is long. But there are also modest examples of people pursuing symbolic lives in relative obscurity.
I’m sure you can think of a few examples of people who have successfully invented themselves: the perfect housewife ensconced in her colour-matched home; the businessman in a tailored suit taking his seat in the board-room. The bearded bohemian, the stern intellectual, the sweet-smiling bimbo, and so on. All helping us decipher the mystery of human nature by labelling themselves unequivocally. In my younger days I worshipped such people, mistaking for self-realisation masks cultivated by their owners to the point where they lost touch with their own reality. Perhaps that was the reason why they all died young? I didn’t see the connection. Mourning my lost idols, I did my best to follow in their footsteps. Until the day when a wise person told me: “Dear girl, don’t be tempted to live by an image. It’s a much too dangerous game. To survive in this world you need substance. And an image is no more substantial than a dream.” When did you last hear someone sighing: “Those were the days.” Was it a middle-aged woman in clothes too young for her, humming her favourite golden oldie, or a weathered man who still wears his hair long and speaks in the idiom of twenty years ago? Or – was it your own voice you heard? You may well be one of many who are caught in a time warp maintaining an old-fashioned style; as if, at some stage, your inner watch had stopped, and everything since passed you by. We all have traces of it, this urge to halt the passage of time; whether it is a wish for eternal youth, a nostalgic hankering for things gone by, or a vain attempt to defer the final curtain.
