天上有繁星，有幸来过藩

亲爱的婆婆：

谢谢婆婆把妈妈从老远的唐山带来“过藩”（南洋），所以才造就今日的我。据潮州老乡说“天上有繁星，此生才有幸来过藩”。在巴金的《繁星》里这么写道：“我爱月夜，但我也爱星天。从前在家乡七、八月的夜晚在庭院里纳凉的时候，我最爱看天上密密麻麻的繁星。望着星天，我就会忘记一切，仿佛回到了母亲的怀里似的。”我现在才明白潮州老乡所谓的繁星象征着幸福，就如巴金所说仿佛回到了母亲的怀里般幸福。也许这句话对土生土长的我们并不是那么简单就体会出它的意境。 虽然未曾听过妈妈就此事向婆婆道谢，我还是代妈妈感谢婆婆这么多年来的辛苦劳碌，关爱子女，呵护子女。这完全是出自於天性，毫无保留、毫无怨言。若我们时时刻刻把感恩的心付诸行动，就不枉婆婆的一番苦心了。祝：母亲节快乐。

The Living Art

The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox; it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbis of old put it this way, “A man comes to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open.”

Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of the earth. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what was and then suddenly realize that it is no more.

We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.

Every evening, I like to jog under the sun with my wife, I like the sunlight hit me; because by this way I can get free vitamin D from natural environment. Try to imagine if the sunlight hit us during the bitterly cool of winter day at Moscow. Just the light of the sun, and yet how beautiful it was – how warming, how sparking, how brilliant! Anyone else relished the sun’s golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean concerns to respond from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life’s gifts are precious – but we are too heedless of them.

Here then is the first pole of life’s paradoxical demands on us: Never too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Size each golden minute.

Hold fast to life, but not so fast that you cannot let go. This is the second side of life’s coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.

This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, nay, will, be ours. But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this truth dawns upon us.

At every stage of life we sustain losses – and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools, then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married and have children and then have to let them go. We confront the death of our parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we must confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves as it were, all that we were or dreamed to be.

母亲节

亲爱的婆婆：

慈母手中线， 游子身上衣。

临行密密缝， 意恐迟迟归。

谁言寸草心。 报得三春晖。

五月的母亲节让我想起孟郊这首“游子吟”，同时也唤醒我记得向婆婆及妈妈祝福。
小时后，半夜梦中惊醒，发现脚拇指被老鼠咬个洞，鲜血直流；婆婆不作声为我止血敷药。婆婆您可记得这么一件事？虽然时过境迁，但这件事还是牢牢的烙印在我的脑海里。婆婆不但要养育女儿还要替女儿照顾儿子。婆婆是位伟大的母亲，您的爱如阳光般大，如海般深。
在婆婆的生命中，只有爱没有嗔恨，只有宽恕没有抱怨。虽然别人对自己不好，对女儿不好；但总不会去记恨对方，而以宽容心接纳对方。婆婆受教育不多但懂得学会放下的智慧，所以在人生旅途中的任何困境都心无挂碍，受人尊敬。婆婆的身教是我们学习的对象。最后让我借用小姨的口讯向婆婆请安，愿婆婆身体健康。祝：母亲节快乐。

Our Own Identity

In the eternal universe, every human being has a one – off chance to live – his existence is unique and irretrievable, for the mold with which he was made, as Rousseau said, was broken by God immediately afterwards.

Fame, wealth and knowledge are merely worldly possessions that are within the reach of anybody striving for them. But your experience of and feelings about life are your own and not to be shared. No one can live your life over again after your death. A full awareness of this will point out to you that the most important thing in your existence is your distinctive individuality or something special of yours. What really counts is not your worldly success but your peculiar insight into the meaning of life and your commitment to it, which add luster to your personality.

It is not easy to be what one really is. There is many a person in the world who can be identified as anything – either his job, his status or his social role – that shows no trace about his individuality. It does do him justice to say that he has no identity of his own, if he doesn’t know his own mind and all his things are either arranged by others or done on others’ suggestions; if his life, always occupied by external things, is completely void of an inner world. You won’t be able to find anything whatever, from head to heart, that truly belongs to him. He is, indeed, no more than a shadow cast by somebody else or a machine capable of doing business.

让生命在每一个当下圆满

亲爱的婆婆：

回想自己定居巴生的时间，不知不觉已经有二十六年了，还记得当初，对家有着殷切的思念，我离开家之后才深深地感受到家的美好；当父亲突然往生之后，才让我了解到感恩，生存的价值，才想到有好多的“应该做”，结果都错失了。要弥补错失，唯有把这应该做的想法转变成马上做的行动，应该好好地去珍惜还健在的婆婆，妈妈及身边所有的人，要马上告诉他们，我多么感谢他们对我们所付出的一切，让他们知道他们教育的苦心没白费。让生命在每一个当下圆满，让生活没有太大的遗憾。祝福大家在生命的旅途中，一路顺风，自在无碍。

You Are On A Journey

Wherever you are and whoever you may be, there is one thing in which you and I are just alike at this moment and in all the moments of our existence: we are not at rest; we are on a journey. Our life is a movement, a tendency, a steady, ceaseless progress towards an unseen goal. We are gaining something or losing something, everyday. Even when our position and our character seem to remain precisely the same, they are changing. For the mere advance of time is a change. It is not the same thing to have a bare field in January and in July. The season makes the difference. The limitations that are childlike in the child are childish in the man.

Everything that we do is a step in one direction or another. Even the failure to do something is in itself a deed. It sets us forward or backward. The action of the negative pole of a magnetic needle is just as real as the action of the positive pole. To decline is to accept – the other alternative.

Are you nearer to your port today than you were yesterday? Yes, -- you must be a little nearer to some port or other; for since your ship was first launched upon the sea of life, you have never been still for a single moment; the sea is too deep, you could not find an anchorage if you would; there can be no pause until you come into port.

现实生活的无奈

亲爱的婆婆：

妈妈说四姨也有阅读婆婆的信，因此让我谈些与四姨有关的往年事迹。在小学毕业时，四姨是位名列前茅的优异生，但因当时生活崎岖困苦，环境所逼，婆婆决定让四姨休学出来工作补足家用。这个晴天霹雳的消息让四姨流下生活无情的眼泪，伤心了好几天。婆婆何尝也不如此难过。婆婆向来都疼爱孩子，庇护她们，期望孩子们可以安心求学，无忧无虑的长大；但现实生活的无奈，只好下了百般不愿的痛苦抉择。假如没有四姨的牺牲小我就不能实践姐妹们爱求学的梦想，所以至今四姨深懂得珍惜求学的机会，成就孩子圆满其心愿。如果把婆婆比喻成一支蜡烛，四姨就是这支蜡烛的心，没有心的蜡烛就不能燃烧，即使有心，也要点燃才有意义，点燃了的蜡烛会有泪，但总比没有燃烧的好。
祝：幸福快乐