上班途中,停下來買水。有一輛國立佳冬高農的校車就停在我旁邊。看了車身上的廣告,讓我頓時有點感動。
小時候作文課寫 "我的志願"。寫完後,大家必須在課堂上站起來告訴大家說為何我有著何種志願。
我的志願是當一名農夫,因為我喜歡看著一整片園子的大白菜長在泥土上的模樣。全班聽了哄堂大笑,連老師都笑了。老師說,農夫不是志向,不用立下志願就能當農夫。
我沒想到一個人的志向會跟他後來的實際作為有這麼大的落差。我嚮往單純,卻在極為複雜的抽象概念世界與人事悲歡裏頭打滾。
若有來生,我想走實用。實在很厭倦概念上的操弄,很蒼白,尤其分析哲學。哲學如果不是一種文學,那它什麼都不是,毫無價值。因為,除了科學和數學,沒有什麼東西是需要思索的。
我尤其厭倦了言語,厭倦了人事複雜,渴望靜靜地、日復一日地對著某個不會言語的對象做工夫,就像農夫或鐘錶匠那樣。
生活如果曾經教導了我什麼,那就是讓我明白:每個家庭,乃至於每個人的痛苦,永遠都不可能被旁人所理解。我們就像一顆顆原子,每個生命都是一座孤島。
Albert Camus 在 "鼠疫" 中約莫有這麼一段話:
"在這種極端孤獨的狀況下,沒有人會再指望鄰居的幫助,各人都是心事重重地獨處一隅。假如我們中間有個人,偶爾試圖在人前說上幾句心裡話,流露一些情緒,那麼,不管對方如何回應,其結果十之八九都反而會刺傷他的心。他會發現,他和對方之間沒有共同語言;一個講的是他恆久的思念與痛苦所凝聚的語言,他想表達的是長期等待與激情煎熬的生存困境,而人們卻認為他只是在發牢騷,講一些老生常談,講一種比比皆是的苦悶,人人都有的傷感"。--Albert Camus, The Plague.
(“Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky. This sense of being abandoned, which might in time have given characters a fine temper, began, however, by sapping them to the point of futility…. Moreover, in this extremity of solitude none could count on any help from his neighbor; each had to bear the load of his troubles alone…. For while he himself spoke from the depths of long days brooding upon his personal distress, and the image he had tried to impart had been slowly shaped and proved in the fires of passion and regret, this meant nothing to the man to whom he was speaking, who pictured a conventional emotion, a grief that is traded on the marketplace, mass-produced.”)