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 "Don't pull out the stake!" |
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芦笛
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加入时间: 2004/02/14
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作者：芦笛 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
"Don't pull out the stake!"
芦笛
This is my wife's pet phrase. Ever since we got to know each other, she has used this word most frequently. For all my life, I have never heard her say "I love you", not even once. Instead, she always tells me: "Don't pull out the stake!" According to her, this is the worst sin that a living soul could ever commit. Therefore, I am a miserable failure, not because I am not smart enough, but because I am the worst sinner.
Well, if you do not understand what she means, let me tell you a story.
Before the reform, back in China, there were lots of peasants who made their livings by selling their blood. I got to know those guys when my father fell ill and needed blood transfusion very badly. Unlike other peasants, those guys did not have to work. They lived in a hotel, having parties frequently.
At first I held them in disdain. In my view, they were just parasites sucking their own blood. But to my surprise, I found they were tremendously proud of themselves. The reason for this was pretty simple: They believed they were miracle workers. A youngster with a remarkably good education (given his background) once proudly told me: "We have broken through the forbidden zone set up by those so-called academic authorities. They claim that once a man has lost certain amount of blood, he is bound to die. But look at me, I have sold liters of blood and yet I am still very much alive and kicking!"
From them, I started to understand a simple fact, that is, to live in this dreadful world, one has to find something to adhere to. That thing is an anchor to which the person attaches all his value. It distinguishes him from others, gives him the reason to live on, signifies his existence, and makes him proud of his life. Whether this thing is reality or just a delusion, it does not matter, as long as he firmly believes in it.
This fundamental belief is what my wife calls "the stake" (zhuang1). In the peasants' case, their "stake" was their professional pride that they had an extraordinary ability to survive the loss of a huge amount of blood.
I had been aware of this even before I married my wife. Also, I agree with her that pulling out the stake is indeed the worst sin, Still, her warning is always sound, as I do tend to pull out the stake. By nature, I am just like the child in Anderson's fairy tale, shouting: "Look, the emperor is completely naked!" To the very end of my life, I may well never grow up.
This tendency grew worse after I had started writing for BBS. Yesterday I said I had chopped off so many heads that I myself could not remember their number. Actually, it was not like that. To be more precise, I have pulled out many "stakes".
The irony here is that I did NOT mean to do it, but, believe it or not, people had come from all sorts of places, only to beg me to pull out their stakes.
The tragedy is that those people were too dull to comprehend what I tried to say in my articles. Like the frog in the well as described in Zhuangzi's famous fable, their horizons were incredibly narrow. Unfortunately for them, their arrogance was proportional to their thickness. So when they saw the ocean displayed in my articles, they were bound to cry out: "This is absurd! Come back to the well! Your real destiny lies here, not there!"
At first I tried to turn a deaf ear to them, but they did not leave me alone. After long pestering, I lost my patience and started to pull out the stakes one by one. It was dead easy for me, as effortlessly as a chess master beats a boy who has just learned the basic rules.
In the end, everyone is happy: me without the torture by the noise but with a bad conscience, them without the stakes but with deep hatred for me.
This world is really maddening.
作者：芦笛 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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