The Old Monk Story关于老和尚的故事

上个月和 Alex 一起吃午餐的时候，我说要给她讲个故事。

我的故事里，主人公总是老和尚。

可能是因为小时候奶奶哄我睡觉，几乎每次都是和尚挑水的故事，一想到故事的开头，脑子里就会自动出现那句话：

“很久很久以前，有一座山，山里有座庙，庙里有个老和尚……”

其实我也没有想好故事会往哪里走，只是像抖包袱一样一点一点往下讲。讲着讲着，反倒慢慢靠近了自己的真实内心，一层层剖开。

人多数时候其实并不了解自己，所以才会不停地寻找，不停地求证。

这未必是坏事，因为探索本身就是认识自己的过程。

至于最终是否能抵达想要的答案，而那个答案又是否令人满意，大概只能见仁见智。

Last month, while having lunch with Alex, I told her I would tell her a story.

In my stories, the main character is almost always an old monk.

Perhaps it’s because when I was little, my grandmother used to lull me to sleep with the story of monks carrying water. Even now, whenever I think about the beginning of a story, the same line automatically appears in my mind:

“Once upon a time, there was a mountain. In the mountain there was a temple, and in the temple lived an old monk…”

To be honest, I hadn’t really planned where the story would go. I simply kept adding to it, bit by bit, like slowly revealing a punchline. And as I went on, I found myself gradually getting closer to my own true inner thoughts, peeling them open layer by layer.

Most of the time, people don’t really understand themselves. So they keep searching, keep looking for proof.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the act of exploring is itself a process of self-understanding.

As for whether we will eventually arrive at the answers we want—and whether those answers will truly satisfy us—that is something everyone will see differently.

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