Camus said: "The meaning of life lies in the courage to bear the meaninglessness of life." If you're always looking for meaning in life, you'll never live. " Mutual encouragement.
After fifty years, stable and plain, without waves, in his smooth life, he suddenly met a Portuguese woman, carrying an unknown Portuguese book, and began to "escape" the rapid turn of life.
What is the courage and opportunity to "escape"?
Is all he going to escape from is his own step-by-step life?
The Lisbon Night Train, by The Swiss novelist Pascal Messier, a professor of philosophy at the Free University of Berlin, tells a story about "escape" to re-examine the loneliness of life.
The protagonist, 57-year-old middle school teacher Gregorys, on an ordinary afternoon, suddenly said that he would go away and began to set out to find his own adventure and his own romance.
He tries to break order and reason and rush out of the cage, to the world of passion and sensibility, and to find a free life in the outer world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 silence</h1>
"Abuse yourself. Abuse yourself, my soul, and violence against yourself. After that, you don't have time to value yourself and respect yourself. Everyone's life is only once, only once. Your life is coming to an end, and you have not cared for yourself in this life, but have placed your happiness on others... Those who do not care about their mood will be unhappy. ”
—Meditations, Aurelius
Goriegris, holding the Copy of the Alchemist of Words, felt the same feelings for Prado on the train to the west:
In order to relieve his father's illness, Prado became a doctor and lived an ordinary and fulfilling life like all ordinary people.
In fact, the truly touching experiences of life are often incredibly calm, neither roaring, sparking, nor volcanic eruptions, and the moments in which the experiences occur are often unobtrusive. When its revolutionary effect comes into play, it brings life to a new page and brings a new melody of life, and this is all quietly carried out. Otherworldly nobility is in this magical silence.
"We are always unable to see our lives, we can't see the front, and we don't understand the past. It's all a fluke. ”
No one around Prado knows the other side of him, such as the excessive love and expectation of his parents, which was once a huge pressure and hurt to the young him.
He chose obedience, forbearance and silence.
Therefore, he only has and can only use words to express his true, unknown self through his identity as a "word alchemist".
He does not easily believe in religion, does not believe that an illusory and distant promise can carry the weight of life, but he has his own firm faith;
He firmly believes that everyone does not show their full true selves, so we can never get to know each other;
He longs for intimacy, and the death of his wife makes him miserable, but he really does not believe in love, and thinks that excessive intimacy is "overbearing".
He didn't believe in passion, but because he was a girl in his twenties, he could give up what he regarded as life's loyalty to his friends.
He opposes all oppression, but saves the life of a secret police leader equivalent to the ruler symbol.
He fantasized about traveling elsewhere, spending most of his time here, still carrying nostalgia for Lisbon.
He was filled with fear of death and at the same time felt that death was the best gift God could give to mankind.
All human actions, in a very imperfect, even rather ridiculous, helpless expression, present an unfathomable inner life hidden in the heart, even if they struggle to squeeze to the surface, they can never reach.
Seeing this, there will definitely be people who feel that this is the disease-free groaning and sentimental entanglement of the "literary and artistic youth".
As the book suggests, at that moment, Golegris saw himself in Prado's story:
If we can only rely on a small part of our inner life, what should we do with the rest?
The peace and transparency that we comfort ourselves are actually cloaked in the cloak of "calm" confusion, and more are still entanglements, wandering, loneliness and struggle.
Many people don't really understand what literary youth is, in this definition of "new high homeless",
One layer is our stereotype: what is rich is not money but time, the pursuit of not materialism but the heart, dressed in rags but like a splendid heart,
The more important kernel is to always be curious about knowledge and have the freedom to be free from any constraints.
Freedom is at its core.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 outbreak</h1>
Pascal Messi described prado this way in Lisbon's Night Train:
"His derailment stemmed from his tormented soul, like hot lava, burning and sweeping away the enslavement and excessive expectations of others in his heart with unparalleled strength.
He lived up to all expectations, broke all taboos, and that was where his joy came from, and finally he found peace in the presence of his hunchbacked judge father, his ambitious, gentle dictator mother, and his sister, who had been grateful to him all his life. ”
For example, Prado, who finally faced himself and escaped from the constraints of the outside world, was influenced by him, had the courage to say goodbye to a stable life, and face the original heart of Golegris, facing most of the demands in life, powerless, in fact, I will have a lot of self-doubt moments.
For example, before encountering the midlife crisis, I was first baptized by the "one-quarter life crisis", and since entering the 25-year-old mark, I have a sense of unclear urgency and a desperate desire to mature.
"A quarter of life crisis" refers specifically to the summary of anxieties in youth about units, objects, poverty alleviation and other aspects, describing a sense of life crisis of "am I like this in my life" or "how can I achieve nothing like this".
For example, I am still used to avoiding, and if I don't make a choice, I will never make a wrong choice. In the face of the "invisible" life, the high and low, selective turn a blind eye, get by and get by.
It's like a short passage in "Lisbon Night Train" reminiscing about the watery years of the student days:
"It is only now that I understand what has prompted me to return to school again and again: the moment I look forward to returning to the atrium of the school again, the moment when we are free from the past and the future has not yet begun. At that moment, time stood still and breathing stopped. Such moments never happened again. ”
Therefore, once life encounters the impact of great force majeure, the beauty of whitewashing Taiping is suddenly broken.
Prado once said,
Desire, contentment, and security are all short-lived. The shortest and fleeting thing is desire, then satisfaction, and finally even the sense of security is broken.
I could feel the weakness and panic that was gradually losing myself, and being forced out of my safe comfort zone, but I thought in a different direction:
In fact, I may just want to lose myself, and I desperately need to lose myself?
Whether it is a moment of happiness or unhappiness in life, a moment of beauty or loss, it is not absolute.
Maintaining a certain form for a long time, even if it is happy and carefree, will produce a sense of burnout; even if it is dark for a long time, it will usher in a small highlight after persistence.
In the unsustainable pre-dawn darkness, we may just need an opportunity to change, bravely wave away from the past, escape the banal routine, press the pause button, and re-examine ourselves and our lives.
When the conductor announces the name of the station, when we hear the creaking brakes of the train, and are swallowed up by the sudden shadow of the station, why is it so excited and difficult to sustain ourselves?
At the moment when the last breath of the train was completely still, why did we feel so wonderful, as if it were a silent but gripping moment?
Because as soon as we stepped on that strange but no longer unfamiliar platform, we picked up a part of life again.
At that time, as soon as we felt the first shaking of the train leaving, that time was interrupted and forgotten.
What could be more exciting than a fractured life with all expectations?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >03</h1>
"Why do we feel sorry for people who can't travel?
Because they cannot step into the outer world, the inner world cannot be extended, they cannot enrich themselves, so they are deprived of the possibility of going deep within themselves, and they have no chance to discover what kind of person they can become and what they can become. ”
I was also deeply moved by the "Lisbon Night Train" because the author borrowed a wealth of delicate psychological feelings in great detail to express how a person who had been step-by-step and put in a condom, how self-aware and self-conscious, learned to pay attention to the possibilities of the world, although painful, but bravely broke free of those shackles that should not have existed, especially the fixed rules of life that he imposed on himself, or learned the day after tomorrow, and became accustomed to it.
In fact, we all understand that it is difficult for us to escape completely and permanently, and we cannot remain free forever.
The author never says that he wants to escape forever, including the protagonist, a wayward journey, he visits many witnesses in Prado's life, although everyone can piece together only fragments of his life.
But, at least we've experienced it, we've pursued it, and we know that there's another brave and unrestricted life in this world, with all sorts of rich possibilities.
If the road in front of us cannot continue to move forward; while giving up, we at least have the courage to challenge another road that few people take.
Life, there should be no fixed routine, the only way to live.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" returns >04</h1>
I remember seeing the triple realm of life,
Look at the mountain as the mountain, see the water as the water; look at the mountain is not the mountain, see the water is not the water; in the end, look at the mountain or the mountain, look at the water or the water.
I can understand the literal meaning, but it is difficult for my young self to understand it at a deep level, read through thousands of sails, and still love life after seeing through life.
We bravely step out of our comfort zone, out of our self-limitations, not to escape permanently, but to come out of the shadows of the past, and then with a new attitude, to face the chicken feathers that once made us miserable, the trough of life that is insoluble.
As Lisbon Night Train expresses:
"We extend not only in time, but also spatially, far beyond the space visible. When we leave somewhere, something is always left behind; although the person is gone, the heart remains there. Some things can only be found again if they return to the same place.
When the monotonous sound of wheels carries us to a life of the past, no matter how short the past is, it allows us to drive to the self and back to our own world. ”
Once I was, regret not to be the beginning;
I want to go back to the past and reverse reality; I have also thought about simply going to a hundred, I don't want to face a broken hand of good cards, in short, I don't like everything I have in the moment.
However, whether it is regret, helplessness, self-abandonment, our lives must continue.
So it's too important to occasionally learn to get yourself off track and reinvigorate energy and possibilities.
If you have ever wanted to escape loneliness, want to escape from a mediocre life, and choose your own life freely, but you don't know where to start, at least you can open this "Lisbon Night Train", as the author said:
"The meaning of life is not in how to live, but in how to conceive of life."
Let's be brave and imagine!
This book made me want to repeat the movie "Daydreamer", and the illustrations are derived from online movie stills.
Author: Xiao Mao, the account of the same name "Yun Light Wind Pour", reads 110+ books a year, and two major video websites are settled in the author.
Write multi-platform 10w+ with deliberate practice, and generate electricity with love. Determined to change your life through writing, insisting on work, play, reading, writing and self-improvement.
Willing to write deep thinking drama reviews + book reviews of entertainment life miscellaneous.