What has been the most challenging aspects of the current Coronavirus foryou?  For some, it has been thedevastating losses that they’ve endured. Is there any meaning to their suffering and loss?  This is eternal question that bedevils usall.  For the majority of us, thechallenge has been how to live our lives during this crisis?  If we broaden the scope of our reflection,the challenge and opportunity has always been, how to live out this precious gift of life that we’ve been given?  It’sjust that this current crisis has brought this challenge into a more immediate focus.

对于当下冠状病毒疫情，你觉得最为挑战的有哪些呢？

对于一些人来说，最为挑战之处就在于，他们经受着此次疫情带来的毁灭性的损失，那这些人的苦痛和损失又意味着什么呢？

这是一个问题，一直困扰着世间众人。而对于我们大部分人来说，最为挑战的就是如何在这次疫情中生存下来。若是我们将反思范围不断扩大，就会想到一直以来，我们的机遇挑战就是：怎样将上天赐予的宝贵生命活出精彩来。当下，这次疫情让这个挑战变成了大家都关心的问题。

For many, myself included, the living out our lives during this currentcrisis has been compared to a jail house experience.  Though if we are honest, the experience ismore like that of a house arrest as opposed to a full-on prison experience.  But don’t tell that to the thousands of individuals confined to the Diamond Princess, currently docked in Yokohama,Japan.  Many of them are going out oftheir minds and regard their cruise ship as a floating prison.  For a fortunate few, they have a balcony totake in fresh air.  Others paid more fora small window sea view for which I imagine they are now quite gratefulfor.  Then there are those who are locked in internal cabins without a view.  How intolerable.  And all of them are residing in rooms that are slightly larger than a jail cell.  But even so, they are living in more comfort than the vast crew who are living below the waterline in quarters that are much more compact.  It is my sincere hope that the people stuck in Wuhan and the Diamond Princess will be able to end their confinement soon!

对于大多数人来说，当然也包括我自己，应对疫情时的生活可谓是“家中蹲牢”。不过凭心而论，这更像是一种居家憩息，而非全天候坐牢。

但是对于钻石公主号船上被困住的一千人来说，可千万别用这样的说辞。目前，钻石公主号停靠在日本的横滨港。船上的大多数人们都已经疯了，并把他们乘坐的邮轮看作一个漂浮着的监狱。

对于少数幸运的乘客来说，他们在船上的房间还配有阳台，可以呼吸新鲜空气。还有一些乘客，当时加钱要了一个配有观海景小窗子的房间，估计他们现在很庆幸当时选了这样房间。当然，还有一些乘客住在没有任何窗户的房间中。

无论如何，这样的日子总归是难熬的，因为所有乘客所住的房间其实比那一方囹圄大不了多少。即使如此，船上职员们还是只有挤在水平面下的更为密集小房间里，与这些人相比，乘客们的住宿环境要舒适的多了。我诚挚的希望，被困在武汉和钻石公主号的人们都能早日结束这样的闭关时日！

As for the rest of us, we can now empathize more with those who are incarcerated.  Even though to varying degrees, we are freeto leave our residences to go outside, doing so is not without risk.  So for the majority of us, we are confined to our homes with lots of time on our hands. Is this a good thing or not?  How will we look back upon this experience? How have you been passing your time? Another one of these basic existential questions if we slow down to think about it.

至于我们其他人，我们现在可以更多的同理那些被禁锢的人。虽然在不同程度上，我们可以自由地离开住所外出，但这样做并不意味着没有风险。所以我们大多数人，只能呆在家，这时我们有大量的空闲时间。

这是好事还是坏事？我们将如何回顾这段经历？你是如何度过这段时光的？如果我们尽可能的去思考它，这是另一个关于基本存在主义的问题。

Shawshank Redemption is a movie that I’ve shown often to help educatepeople to the concept of freedom, understood from an existential perspective.  The movie is my manypeople’s all-time favorite list.  Themovie takes place in Shawshank prison where the prisoners have the same dilemma that all of us are facing now, namely how to pass their time.  Consider the following dialogue from the movie narrated by Red, the character played by the Morgan Freedman: “Prisontime is slow time. Sometimes it feels like stop-time. So you do what you can tokeep going...”  “In prison, a man will domost anything to keep his mind occupied.” “Some fellas collect stamps. Others build matchstick houses. Andy builta library.”  How are you passing yourtime?

《肖申克的救赎》是一部我经常展示的电影，旨在帮助人们从存在主义的角度来理解自由的概念。这部电影是我认识的许多人向来的最爱。

这部电影描述了在肖申克监狱，囚犯们面临着和我们现在一样为难的困境，即如何打发他们的时间。思考一下下面这段在电影中由摩根弗里德曼扮演的瑞德讲述的这段话：

“监狱里的时间很漫长。有时仿佛感觉时间停止了。所以你要尽可能的做一些事情……“在监狱里，一个男人会尽可能的做一些事情来弥补心灵空虚。”“一些小伙子收集邮票。有些人用火柴搭起了房子。安迪建了一个图书馆。”

你是如何打发时间的？

What the prisoners at Shawshank Prison are facing is the same thing that we are all facing:  Existential Vacuum.  The concept of existential vacuum is advanced by Victor Frankl, the founder of Logotherapy.  Frankl was a psychiatrist who knows a thingor two about prison time.  He survivedthe concentration camps but lost his entire family to the holocaust.  Frankl believed that existential vacuum is awidespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. Another term for this phenomenon of emptiness is “Sunday Neurosis,” akind of depression which affects people who become aware of the lack of contentin their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves become manifest.  Not a fewcases of suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum.  In his best-selling book Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl wrote:

此时，我们正面临着与肖申克监狱里的犯人所面临的同样问题：“存在空虚”。这个概念最早由意义治疗法创始人维克多·弗兰克尔提出。

弗兰克尔是一名对纳粹监狱生活略知一二的精神病医生。他在纳粹集中营里幸存了下来，但他的家人都在一次大屠杀中死去了。弗兰克尔认为存在真空是二十世纪普遍存在的一种现象。

这种空虚现象又被称为是“星期天神经官能症”，这是一种抑郁症，当忙碌的一周结束时人们会变得十分空虚，并意识到自己在生活中所缺乏的东西。但这种抑郁症很少引起患者自杀。弗兰克尔在他的的畅销书《活出生命的意义》中谈道：

At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animalinstincts in which an animal’s behavior is imbedded and by which it is secured(such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices.  Think Adam and Eve and theGarden of Eden).  No instinct tells himwhat he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

在人类历史的开端，人类失去了一些动物的基本本能，而这些本能是动物行为的基础和保证（这就像天堂永远不会对活人开放；人类必须做出选择。想想亚当、夏娃以及伊甸园吧）。没有本能告诉他该做什么，也没有传统告诉他该做什么；有时他甚至不知道他自己想做什么。相反，他要么希望做别人做的事（顺应主义），要么做别人希望他做的事（极权主义）。

Both conformism and totalitarianism were powerfully portrayed in Shawshank Redemption.  Andy Dufresne, the protagonist in the movie serves as a beacon for us as to how to deal with one’sexistential vacuum.  Ironically, landing in jail set Andy free.  Shawshank prisonwas his redemption.  It awakened him tohis existence and helped him to find himself and his purpose in life.  Might it be too much to ask the same of the Coronavirus?

在《肖申克的救赎》中，因循守旧的思想和极权主义都被颠覆。电影的主人公安迪·杜弗雷恩就像一个灯塔，教会我们正确面对存在空虚。讽刺的是，监狱生活帮助安迪找到了自由。肖申克监狱就是他的救赎，它时刻提醒着安迪存在的意义，推动他寻找自我，追寻人生的方向。也许，新型冠状病毒也能成为下一个肖申克监狱？

While many here in China might not have heard of existential vacuum, many have become familiar with theterm 空心病popularized by 徐凯文，Deputy Director of the Center for PsychologyHealth Center for Psychological Health Education and Counseling at PekingUniversity.  He found that like the apparently highly successful pre-prison Andy Dufresne in the movie, many of thetop university students in China suffered from a sense of emptiness.  However, Frankl would disagree with thecharacterization of this sense of existential vacuum as a sickness.  Instead, he would characterize the struggl earising not from the psychological dimension but the Noological (from the GreekNoos meaning spirit) dimension of human existence.  Frank believed that:

许多中国人也许没有听说过“存在空虚”这个术语，但已经对徐凯文（现任北京大学副教授、临床心理学博士、精神科主治医师，北京大学心理健康教育与咨询中心副主任、总督导）提出的“空心病”一词非常熟悉，他发现，与入狱前事业成功的安迪·杜弗雷恩一样，当今中国许多顶尖大学的学生也面临着同样的空虚。

但弗兰科并不认为存在空虚是一种疾病，他反而认为，这种空虚并非源自心理层面，而是来自于人类存在的精神层面。弗兰科认为：

Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict isnormal and healthy.  In a similar sensesuffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptomof neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if thesuffering grows out of existential frustration. Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic(producing disease).  A man’s concern,even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distressbut by no means a mental disease.

不是所有的矛盾都肯定是神经病，有些矛盾是正常且健康的。类似意义上，痛苦并不总是一种病理现象，特别是当它源于存在的挫败感时，痛苦就不再是一种精神症状，而可能是一项人类的成就。存在的挫败感本身既不是病态的，也不会致病。一个人对生命价值的关注，哪怕是绝望，也是一种存在的痛苦，但绝不是一种精神疾病。

Furthermore, Man’ssearch for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium.  Such tension is an indispensable prerequisiteof mental health.  Frankl taught that:

除此之外，人们对意义的探寻可能会引起内心的紧张而不是平和，这种紧张是心理健康不可或缺的先决条件。弗兰克尔说：

Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.  Such tensionis inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mentalwellbeing.  We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill.

心理健康是建立在一定程度的紧张之上的，这种紧张在于一个人已经取得的成就和他应该取得的成就之间，或者在于他现在的样子和他应该成为的样子之间。这种紧张是人类固有的，因此它对心理健康来说必不可少。我们应该毫不犹豫地挑战一个具有潜在意义去实现自我的人。

What man actually needsis not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for aworthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

人真正需要的不是一种毫无紧张的状态，而是一种为一个有价值的目标，一个有自由选择的任务而奋斗的状态。

And one should not think that this holds true only for normal conditions; in neurotic individuals,it is even more valid.  If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, the increase the load which is laid uponit, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together.  So if therapist wish to foster their patient’s mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount oftension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life.

人们不应该认为这只适用于正常情况;对于神经质的人来说，这甚至更有效。如果建筑师想要加固一个破旧的拱门，就要增加施加在其上的荷载，因为这样各个部分才能更牢固地连接在一起。因此，如果治疗师希望促进他们的病人的心理健康，他们则不应该害怕通过对人生意义的重新定位来制造适量的紧张感。

According to Frankl,there is nothing in the world, that would so effectively help one to surviveeven the worse conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’slife.  There is much wisdom in the wordsof Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”  In Frankl’s Nazi concentration camp experience, he could see that those who knew that there was a task waiting forthem to fulfill were most apt to survive.

弗兰克尔认为，世界上没有什么比让一个人知道生命的意义，更能有效地帮助他在最恶劣的环境中生存下来的事了。尼采的话中有很多智慧:“一个人知道自己为什么而活,就可以忍受任何一种生活。”从弗兰克在纳粹集中营的经历中，他可以得知，那些知道有一项任务正等着他们去完成的人最容易活下来。

So as may of us arestruggling to come up with how we will pass our time, have we found the whyfor which we are struggling?  As for me,as written in the previous essay, I have tried my best to take advantage ofthis extended time of solitude to work on additional writing and video lectureprojects.  This current essay is an extension of one of my writing projects. And I’m embracing my nerdiness for in addition to catching up on moviesand videos that I’ve compiled in my “To-Watch” List, I also I enjoy producing educational videos.  Some play video games, I enjoy producing educational videos. Is this the best use of my time?

就像有相当一部分人可能总是在如何消磨时光这个问题上挣扎一样，我们并不了解人们为什么要为这个问题挣扎的原因，难道不是吗？

对我来说，像之前论文所写的一样，我总是力图充分利用独处所多出来的时间去完成更多一些的写作和视频课程项目的制作。现在这个论文就是我的写作项目中的一个部分的延伸。我的书呆子气使我不但要赶着完成“要看”的清单上堆列的电影和视频的观看，还要迫使我尽力的享受着制作教育视频的乐趣！这是最好的利用时间的方式吗？

Consider the followingthought experiment proposed by the well-known existential philosopher FredrichNietzsche.  In his first book Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche posed a challenge: What if you were to livethe identical life again and again throughout eternity – how would that changeyou?

思考和分析一下由著名的存在主义哲学家弗里德里希·威廉·尼采提出的以下思想实验。尼采在《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中提出了一个挑战：假如你一遍又一遍地生活在完全相同的生活里，直至不朽– 那会如何改变你?

What if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into yourloneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to liveonce more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, butevery pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterable small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the treesand even this moment and I myself.  The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and youwith it, speck of dust!”  Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?  Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him:  “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”  If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you.

假如恶魔在某一天或某一个晚上，闯入你最难耐的寂寞中，对你说：

“你现在的生活，和你曾经经历过的生活，你将必须再一次的经历，周而复始的经历；绝无新意，你生活中的每一样痛苦、快乐、思想、叹息，一切渺小或伟大的事情都会重返你的身上，并以同样的顺序降临 – 甚至是这只蜘蛛，这林间的月光，甚至是你我现在交谈的瞬间。存在的不朽沙漏反复的上下倒置，你仿佛一颗沙粒置身其中。”

你会不会不把自己扔入这个深渊，并咬牙切齿的咒骂这个跟你说这些话的恶魔？还是你曾经历过一个重大的时刻，所以你回答他：“你是一个神，我从来没有听到比这更神圣的了。”如果这个想法压制了你，那么它会改变你，说不定会把你碾的粉碎。

What Nietzsche proposed as a thoughexperiment is to some extent being actualized now.  Given the limitations imposed through thepractice of self-quarantine, I find that I am living pretty much the same dayover and over again without knowing when it will end.  What Nietzsche is challenging us to think about or reflect upon now is, how am I finding it such that I am living the same day over and over again?  We often hear the phrase to live everyday as if it was my last.  Nietzsche’s iteration is can I truly be happy to live the same day over a thousand times. For me, the experience has not been as divine or blissful as Nietzscheproposed.  I enjoy writing and video editing, but frankly it has gotten old and stale.  Not that I would make other choices for writing and video editing is my form of building a library in prison.  But at the same time, I yearn to go and play tennis and resume my ballroom dance lessons – pastime activities that I’ve taken for granted before.  Similarly, I’mitching to travel abroad, especially since my Spring Festival Retreat in thePhilippines was cancelled.  The funny thing is, if I were not so confined and restricted, I probably would simply choose to stay home and pass my days with the same routines that I’m basically engaged in now.  However, the limitation of an experience increases the enjoyment of that experience.  It’s more meaningful and desirable because it is limited.  The poet Rainer Maria Wilkewrote, “beauty is but the start of terror.” We all desire what we cannot have. There is an existential abyss between I Want and I Must.  Now that I “Must” stay home, my desire (Want)to get away from home is ever increased. If I had no such limitations, my experience of staying at home remain sun reflected, meaningless, and taken for granted.  This is the gift of confinement, limitationand what death awareness can bring to us. If we are willing to reflect, perhaps this is the hidden gift concealedin the current Coronavirus Crisis. Whatever the case, I know I’m going to enjoy that first pizza I have(insert your favorite thing that is being kept from you during this crisis) whenall this is over.  Until then, let’s allbuild our libraries in the midst of confinement.

尼采提出的实验在某种程度上现在正在实现着。由于自我隔离的限制，我发现自己一次又一次地过着同样的日子，却不知道它何时会结束。尼采让我们思考和反思的是，我是如何发现我一直重复着同样的日子？

我们经常听到“把每一天都当作生命的最后一天”这句话。尼采的迭代是，我能真正快乐地生活在同一天一千次以上吗？对我来说，这段经历并不像尼采所说的那样神圣或幸福。

这段时间，我享受着写作和视频编辑，但坦率地说，它已经过时了。并不是说我在写作和视频编辑之外没有其他选择，我的方式是“在监狱里建立一座图书馆”。

但与此同时，我渴望去打网球，重新开始我的交际舞课——这在以前我理所当然地认为是消磨时间的活动。同样，我也渴望出国旅游，尤其是我在菲律宾的春节休假被取消以来。有趣的是，如果我没有那么被限制和束缚，我可能只会选择呆在家里，用我现在基本上正在从事的、同样的例行公事来度过我的日子。

然而，一种体验的局限性增加了这种体验的乐趣。它更有意义，更令人向往，因为它是有限的。

诗人赖内·马利亚·里尔克（Rainer Maria Wilke）写道：“美不过是恐怖的开始。”（原句典出《杜伊诺哀歌第一首》：“美不是什么，而是我们刚好可以承受的恐怖的开始。”——译者注）我们都渴望得不到的东西。

在“我想要”和“我必须”之间有一个存在的深渊。既然我“必须”呆在家里，我想离开家的愿望就越来越强烈。如果我没有这些限制，我呆在家里的经验仍然没有反映，没有意义，被认为是理所当然的。这是禁闭、限制的礼物，也是死亡意识可以带给我们的。如果我们愿意反思，也许这就是目前冠状病毒危机中隐藏的礼物。

无论如何，我知道当这一切结束后，我将会享用我的第一个披萨（此处可改写为你最喜欢的、但在危机期间一直远离的东西）。在那之前，让我们所有人都在监禁中建造我们的图书馆。

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