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Wen | Jiang Xu
Love and time are often natural enemies. Many loves have failed to time, just like the poet lamented that "life is like the first acquaintance". Some love stories are deeply moving because they overcome time.
For example, Wang Baojun guarded the cold kiln alone, the autumn rain and green lanterns, and waited for Xue Pinggui for eighteen years, waiting for his lover to return to his hometown, take her back to the palace, and make her empress.
For example, Zhang Ailing's aunt Zhang Maoyuan waited for fifty-two years in order to be with her crush Li Kaidi, and finally exchanged for twelve years of interdependence until she was old.
For example, in the literary masterpiece "Love in the Time of Cholera", Florentino has experienced war and plague, and after half a century of waiting, he and Fermina have come to the end of their lives in love.
The novel "The Wife of the Time Traveler" by American writer Audrey Nyfinger also tells a love that overcomes time and space. The main story line is clear and clear, and the constant switching of time and space may make the content slightly confusing.
The heroine's insistence on love and marriage is touching, and the novel layout of the novel is refreshing. Writer Bi Feiyu commented on this work: "Incredible love, incredible novel." The writer Mao Jian also praised this: "Compared with time and love, the latter is the ultimate truth, so that you are entitled to swear in this era: eternal life and eternal life." ”
Many years ago, I read this book on the recommendation of wenyou and was quite shocked. After many years, revisiting the film of the same name based on the original work, I was touched by the power of love and had a new understanding.
The title of the film is "Time Traveler's Wife", and the first thing to notice is that nature is a time traveler.
His name was Henry, and when he was six years old, he was in a car accident, and his fate changed course from then on—his mother was killed in the car accident, and his own constitution as a time traveler was revealed.
In other words, Henry was born with chronic time dislocation due to genetic problems, and in his daily life, he would be subjected to any form of stimulation or stress.
Sometimes he felt like he was getting up too quickly, his hands and feet were tingling, sometimes it was like walking away from God, and then he stood naked in a corner of another time and space. This space-time may or may not have been there before. He didn't know how long he would stay in this place, and the only thing he could do was find a way to find clothes to put on, and then walk down the street, looking no different from the crowd around him.
In fact, Henry was helpless, isolated, and passed by people who might have seen them before, but they lived in the past and did not know Henry from the future. Henry walked the streets of the past, aimlessly, passively waiting for himself to disappear and return to the present. He knows that whether you go back to the past or the future, everywhere you go, you are a place that makes a deep impression or makes a knot.
From the symbolic point of view of the film, Henry's crossing is like our life; the crossing of Henry is like our inner demons.
Henry claims to be a man lost in time, how can we not?
The German philosopher Heidegger called man "this being," which is the being that is being created, who is transcending himself at every moment. Man can only have the present moment, and it is the moment that changes in the blink of an eye.
We often say that we should live in the moment. In fact, we are always obsessed with what has passed, and we are worried about what has not yet happened. While we regret yesterday and worry about tomorrow, we lose the only present we can have.
Henry couldn't control his own crossing, just as we couldn't overcome our own demons. Only by eliminating the demons of the heart and getting out of the labyrinth of time can we live in the present, just like Zeng Guofan said: "The future is not welcome, the time is not complicated, and the past is not in love." ”
During the crossing, Henry meets the artist Claire.
In Claire's mind, Henry was perfect, and she was obsessed with him.
What kind of pain would it be for a friend to advise her to marry a man who could disappear at any moment? Claire knows exactly what it means for a fellow traveler to marry, but she still enters the marriage hall with Henry. Claire's determination was: "I have been waiting for him all my life, and he is by my side now, the wood is in a boat, I can't change it." ”
From the perspective of love, this belongs to the daughter's affection; from the perspective of life, is this not the recognition and acceptance of impermanence?
Before the wedding ceremony, the passion of the cave night is about to take place, when the bath is taking a shower, when cooking... Anytime, anywhere, Henry would disappear uncontrollably. Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes days, sometimes up to several months, up to two years at a time. In such a married life, Claire inevitably has emotions, fundamentally speaking, she still does not escape, does not resist, and accepts it calmly.
This fact of not knowing when the lover will disappear, nor how long the disappearance will last, is like the unknown and uncertainty of life. Henry's disappearance again and again meant loss after loss for Claire.
I think of the Greek Stoic School, whose representative Seneca said: "Anyone who cannot tolerate the idea that his child may die for no reason should have a child." In this regard, ordinary people probably feel absurd and incomprehensible.
Life is impermanent, and it accompanies it like a shadow. Shouldn't we face life with a mood of loss at any time? Seemingly pessimistic, in fact, is nothing less than pessimistic optimism. From birth to death, what have we really had?
Defeat the waiting of time, which is love in itself. From the perspective of the essence of life, Claire personally understands the impermanence of life, she may not understand the Stoic school, but her attitude towards life coincides with this school of thought.
Because of the impermanence of understanding, Claire does not fall into the pain of loss. You come, I am full of love, you disappear, I continue my daily routine. Overcoming time is transcendence.
This transcendent power is love.
Before reading the book "Time Traveler", I was only impressed by the incredible love of the male and female protagonists in the book. Watching a movie recently, I noticed a previously overlooked character— Alba, the child of Henry and Claire.
Alba inherited Henry's genes, and she was also a time traveler. This heredity seems to be a metaphor for the unconscious inheritance of the collective unconscious and secular culture from generation to generation.
From a certain point of view, man is the product of the culture of his time and other constructs. Because of the forced construction, it is difficult to surpass. And we are born with a spiritual spirit that leads us to transcend.
Until his death, Henry was unable to escape the control of the sudden disappearance of the disease, which left his life chaotic and uncontrolled. As a descendant of time travelers, Albabi's father had a place of improvement. She can control the disappearance to a certain extent. When she doesn't want to disappear, she can do it without disappearing by singing to herself.
Once, Henry, who had a leg injury, was in a wheelchair, staring out the window, and he had a premonition that he was about to disappear again. Alba guides him to sing, allowing himself to stay by singing. Henry began to hum, but eventually he disappeared.
Alba's self-control is overcoming, overcoming time and demons, but also transcendence, transcendence of life and impermanence.
This personal overcoming and transcendence, this progress and transcendence in the inheritance from generation to generation, still stems from love. This kind of love is like a letter Henry wrote to Claire in the original book:
My love for you, more tightly gripping the world than myself: as if after me, my love can still stay, surround you, follow you, hold you tight. ......
Love the world, love yourself living in this world, please move freely, as if there is no resistance, as if the world and you are originally one...
I love you forever and ever. There's nothing remarkable about time.
[Author's profile: Jiang Xu, a post-80s woman, is a signed author of Ten Point Reading. Cook words to cure hunger, borrow a pen to draw the heart. Has published "Li Qingzhao: Wine poetry who shares". Click "Follow" in the top right corner to watch more related content. 】