On the road, 50 years later

Jack Kerouac的《on the road》已经发表50年了，纽约时报撰文报道了此书依然为现在的年轻人拜读的事实。我不敢再对此书作何评论，因为残存的记忆已经不足为据。我只能说它曾经让我兴奋过。不知什么时候能再读它，不知我是否还能与它共鸣？


Jack Kerouac, right, with his friend and road companion Neal Cassady in 1952.


最近经常接触到年轻这个话题，包括听了KIDS推荐的Forever Young这首老歌；在飞机上邂逅的比我小12岁的女孩；在火车上跟我以为是同龄人（但实际上小好几岁）的攀谈。就跟一本《在路上》的书能打开另外一扇门一样，跟平时生活圈不同的人接触的结果也是触动我。自己是否被压力遮蔽了眼睛而看不到生活的色彩？是否在坦途上失去了求索的欲望？

在我以前的老主页上贴过关于年轻的一篇文章，现在老主页已经gone（惋惜！）。也许把它再贴在这儿回味一下吧。

Youth by Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty.

Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.