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WHAT I HAVE LIVED FOR.

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 imagined. 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.

Love 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 cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

我为何而活

三种激情，简单却又无比震撼地左右了我的人生——对爱的渴望，对知识的探索，和对人类苦难的不堪承受的怜悯。这些激情，好似狂风，使我四处飘荡，它任性地变换方向，越过一片悲痛汇成的深海，吹向绝望的边缘。

我曾找寻爱。首先因为，爱带来狂喜——绝妙的狂喜。为此我常想牺牲生命中所有剩余的时间，来换取感受几小时这种喜悦。我曾找寻爱，其次因为，爱缓解孤独，这可怕的孤独，感觉如同一个颤抖的灵魂从世界的边缘俯身望进那冰冷死寂的无底深渊。我曾找寻爱，最后是因为，在爱的结合中，我看见了——一个神秘的缩影，那是圣人和诗人曾想象出的，天堂的预示美景。这就是我所找寻的，虽然，听起来可能对人类生活而言太过理想，但这就是我最终所悟到的。

带着同等程度的激情，我曾探索知识。我曾希望了解人的内心；我曾想要弄清为何星辰在闪耀；我曾试图领会毕达哥拉斯学说中，数字统治芸芸众生的“魔力”。在这方面我所成就的并不多，就这一点点。

爱与知识，至此，极尽可能地朝天堂靠近，但总是怜悯——将我拽回世间。痛苦哭喊的回音在我心中震荡。陷于饥荒的孩童；惨遭压迫折磨的受难者；无助的老人，在其子辈眼中竟是可憎的负担；再加上人间所有的孤单，贫穷和痛苦，这一切都嘲笑着人类生活本该有的样子。我渴望消减邪恶，但我办不到，为此我也饱受折磨。

这便是我的人生，我自觉值得走这一遭，并会欣然再活一遍，若机会出现在眼前。

【翻译：@MARIYA】