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What I have Lived For

--Bertrand Russell

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy--ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imaged. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this but not much, I have achieved.

Loves and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I can't, and I too suffer.

回学校当天北京下起了大雪，航班延误，只好在机场多守候了两个半小时，幸好随身带本书看。到北京机场已是晚上11点多，航空大巴只剩一趟到西单的，就先乘大巴到三元桥，然后打车。到学校时都快凌晨一点，且宿舍断电，饮水机没水，只好到隔壁借水喝，下楼吵醒楼上开闸上电。赶紧收拾床铺，然后睡觉。

早晨一醒来就觉得干燥，喉咙开始不舒服，在家待了半个月，回到学校还真的有点不适应，但现在好多了，适应了北京这干燥的气候。到了office，朋友见面就惦记着蜜柚、芦柑，嗨，都怪之前话多，闲北京的水果不好，要是坐火车，就能为他们带些回学校了:P