陽光下的時光

“...I was rich， if not in money， in sunny hours and summer days.”

——Henry David Thoreau

When Thoreau wrote that line， he was thinking of the Walden Pond he knew as a boy.

Woodchoppers and the Iron Horse had not yet greatly damaged the beauty of its setting. A boy could go to the pond and lie on his back against the seat of a boat， lazily drifting from shore to shore while the 1)loons dived and the swallows dipped around him. Thoreau loved to recall such sunny hours and summer days “when 2)idleness was the most attractive and productive business.”

I too was a boy in love with a pond， rich in sunny hours and summer days. Sun and summer are still what they always were， but the boy and the pond changed. The boy， who is now a man， no longer finds much time for idle drifting. The pond has been 3)annexed by a great city. The 4)swamps where 5)herons once hunted are now drained and filled with houses. The bay where water lilies quietly floated is now a harbor for motor boats. In short， everything that the boy loved no longer exists—except in the man’s memory of it.

Some people insist that only today and tomorrow matter. But how much poorer would we be if we really lived by that rule? So much of what we do today is 6)frivolous and 7)futile and soon forgotten. So much of what we hope to do tomorrow never happens.

The past is the bank in which we store our most valuable possession: the memories that give meaning and depth to our lives.

Those who truly treasure the past will not8)bemoan the passing of the 9)good old days， because days 10)enshrined in memory are never lost. Death itself is powerless to 11)still a remembered voice or erase a remembered smile. And for one boy who is now a man， there is a pond which neither time nor tide can change， where he can still spend a quiet hour in the sun.

“……雖然我不富甲天下，卻擁有無數個艷陽天和夏日。”

——亨利·大衛·梭羅

寫這句話時，梭羅想起的是孩提時代的瓦爾登湖。

當時，伐木者和火車尚未嚴重破壞湖塘的美麗景致。小男孩可以到湖塘那兒去，仰臥小舟中，自一岸緩緩飄向另一岸，周遭有潛鳥戲水，燕子輕盈地掠過湖面。梭羅喜歡回憶這樣的艷陽天和夏日。“這時，慵懶是最迷人也是最具生產力的事務!”

我也曾經是熱愛湖塘的小男孩，擁有無數艷陽天和夏日。如今陽光、夏日依舊，男孩和湖塘卻已改變。那男孩已長大成人，不再有那么多時間泛舟湖上;而湖塘也為大城市所并。曾有蒼鷲覓食的沼澤，如今已枯竭殆盡，上面蓋滿了房舍。往日睡蓮靜靜漂浮的湖灣，現已成了汽艇的停泊之地。總之，男孩所愛的一切都已不復存在——只留在男人的記憶中。

有些人堅持認為只有今日和明日是最重要的，可是如果真的照此生活，我們將是何其可憐?許多今日我們做的事是輕浮妄動、徒勞無用的，很快就會被忘記。許多我們期待明天要做的事情卻從來沒有發生過。

過去是一所銀行。我們將最可貴的財產——那些賜予我們生命的意義與內涵的記憶——珍藏其中。

真正珍惜過去的人，不會悲嘆舊日美好時光的逝去，因為藏于記憶中的時光永不流失。死亡本身無力止住一個記憶中的聲音，或擦除一個記憶中的微笑。對現已長大的那個男孩來說，總會有一個池塘不會因時間和潮汐而改變，可以讓他繼續在陽光下享受靜謐的時光。