平安夜 Silent Night

那個晚上是平安夜。我走進共用廚房，打開燈，才發現中年男人在清洗餐具。

「Oops sorry! Sorry!」

那個晚上是平安夜，我不小心打破了他的平安。

我連忙把燈熄掉。他繼續在昏暗裡清洗他的餐具，只剩盛盤上一支小光管在發出微弱的黃光，像燭光一樣。

「這不是更浪漫點嗎？」

他說，身體也有性格。人總是違背自然去追求很多很多，身體卻本性難移，始終跟著自然的脈絡。夜裡本無光，萬物休息，安安靜靜；人發明電燈，不讓自己休息，折磨身體，還嫌太暗看不見。世界為我們制定了日與夜，真的還不夠嗎？

更多，更多，就太多了。

人發明了互聯網，交換資訊太容易，結果公司每天收到上百封郵件，怎麼也回覆不完。想個題隨便搜索一下，彈出千萬個連結，怎麼也看不完。一天工作勞碌，硬著頭皮把這些那些都做好了，然後，你還記得甚麼對你而言是真正重要的嗎？

大概是到了子夜，傳來教堂鐘聲。原來民宿附近有兩座教堂，兩邊鐘聲響遍天下，我們被夾在中間，耳膜震動呼應了基督降臨人世所帶來的無盡歡欣。

好像有點太平安了。

Silent Night

It was on Christmas Eve. I did not notice him until I turned the lights on.

“Oops sorry! Sorry!” I broke the silence and quickly switched them off again. The man was doing dishes under soft light from a little lamp - so little and gentle as a Christmas candle.

“Isn’t this more romantic?”

“I don’t ask for more when it’s time to rest,” he said. Our minds and bodies do not always own the same personality. Bodies stick with the nature when we always desire going further. The nature gives us day and night to work and rest; we complain about having not enough time, so we make use of electricity and torture our bodies. Do we really need that much time, that much light, though?

Having more and more is having too much.

Too many emails. Too much information. Too much work to do. Too many “too much” - now it becomes hard to see what’s genuinely important to us.

With the little “candle light” we had this talk until midnight. There were two churches in the neighbourhood. Church bells rang and clanged from the two sides together, showing exactly how jubilant Christmas is with the double level of volume.

“Silent night, holy night.”

Illustration by EmptyPot