-This article is reproduced from the official account: New Reading and Writing-
There is a question on Zhihu that sparked a discussion: Which is better to spend time reading or traveling?
In fact, the ancients have already given the answer: read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles. This is not a sequential relationship, but a parallel relationship. Reading and traveling should be equally important.
It’s a holiday, let’s read a book, let’s go on a trip~~
Mr. Qian Zhongshu once said: If you don’t study and travel thousands of miles, you are just a postman. Xi’an, Nanjing, Luoyang and Beijing, without the infiltration of knowledge, without swords and swords, loyalty and history, they are just place names that are familiar to the ears but unfamiliar to the eyes. Shining, they are not specimens weathered by time, but lives that have lived for hundreds of thousands of years.
If you don’t study, you are just a postman. If you forget the scenery after a while, what is the use of breaking through your iron shoes?
Reading will not only enrich the real travel, but more importantly, it will allow the spirit to break through the shackles of reality and the body, and have a long journey of soul.
There are two poems in “Little Window Youji”: Closed doors are deep mountains, and reading is a pure land everywhere.
Even if you are in a deep mountain, reading can give your spirit wings, and you will have a spiritual journey that spans thousands of miles and thousands of years.
During reading, you can go to the ancient Roman Colosseum to watch a hearty gladiatorial fight, you can go to ancient Greece to listen to the exciting speeches of the wise men, you can go to the Three Kingdoms period to visit the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and drink with them, and you can also go to Song Dynasty Bian Feel the bustling and bustling streets of Beijing. The writings of predecessors all open the door to a spiritual journey. Here, you can go anywhere and meet anyone.
This is the great charm of reading, but if you don’t travel and just read blindly, you will just trap yourself in the cage of words and imagine alone.
Zhuangzi said in “Knowing the North Journey”: There is great beauty in heaven and earth without saying it.
There is great beauty in the world, but they don’t show it off, and naturally they don’t speak in silence, like an open book, waiting for people to read it with their feet and real senses. These are things that cannot be understood in words, and cannot be conveyed by other people’s words and words.
Just like if you don’t go to Shaoxing, don’t taste the hard fennel beans, drink the spicy realgar wine, don’t look at the white walls and black tiles, benches and four-corner tables, even if Lu Xun’s “Kong Yiji” is well written It’s true, even when you imagine it, you feel that it lacks a sense of reality and fireworks.
If you don’t go to Dunhuang, see the Great Wall of Han Dynasty damaged by time, stay in the desolate and magnificent Yadan landform, and appreciate the profound Buddhist culture of Mogao Grottoes, you will have no way to know the feeling of being both a homeland and a foreign land. , you will not be able to understand what a great feat the ancient Silk Road was, and you will not think of what Yu Qiuyu wrote in “Yangguan Snow”: “This is the wasteland of Chinese history: horseshoes like rain, shouts like thunder , such as pouring blood.” What a desolation and depth.
If you don’t go to the Forbidden City, if you don’t measure the thickness of the blue bricks with your feet, and if you don’t look at the majesty and magnificence of the palace, you won’t be able to appreciate the power and wealth that ancient emperors possessed, and you won’t be able to understand how they were ruled. Trapped in such a great loneliness, it is even more impossible to understand the hard work of some emperors in order to keep their rights and wealth, and the indulgence and madness of some emperors in order to get rid of this loneliness.
Zhang Chao, a literati in the Qing Dynasty, wrote that “articles are mountains and rivers on the desk, and mountains and rivers are articles on the ground.”
Life has always been reading, “For those who are good at reading, they have nothing but books: landscapes are also books, chess and wine are also books, flowers and moons are also books. Those who are good at traveling in mountains and rivers have nothing but mountains and rivers: the history of books is also landscapes Yes, poetry and wine are also landscapes, and flowers and moons are also landscapes.”
Reading is a spiritual journey, and traveling is a physical reading.
Both are carried out at the same time, and the other is indispensable. As someone summed it up, “Reading is to travel inwards to the spiritual world. To travel is to read outwards and explore the world.”
In such an era of seeking speed, reading is slow, and travel is also slow. Some people don’t think about which is better to spend time on reading or traveling, because reading and traveling are not among their options.
They think that reading is inefficient, and no matter how many books they read, it will not benefit the money and status they pursue.
But as the German writer Hermann Hesse once said, “No books in the world can bring you good luck, but they can make you quietly be yourself.”
Life is one’s own, no matter the wealth, rights or other pursuits of the world are just an add-on to life, the real core is only oneself, just imagine, what can be better than knowing yourself, becoming yourself, and pursuing the pursuit of not going against your will? What better thing to live by yourself?
More importantly, reading can make you a better self and make yourself more temperamental. I believe that everyone knows the truth of “poetry and bookishness in the abdomen” . Difficult to change, but reading can change temperament.”
Temperament, which sounds like a mysterious thing, is actually the cultivation and talent deep in the heart, and it is also actually reflected in the conversation and behavior in daily life, making people more attractive and friendly.
Similarly, as a reading of the body, travel can also change temperament.
As Yu Guangzhong said: The meaning of travel is not to tell others “I have been here”, but a change.
Traveling will change people’s temperament and make people’s vision more long-term. During your journey, you will see that different people have different habits, and you will learn that not everyone lives the way you do.
The so-called well-informed is the truth. If you know more, you will naturally be broad-minded, open-minded and tolerant, and finally you will get a mellow charm from the inside out.
Go read a book, go on a trip, and don’t worry about whether you should go out of the house or open the book first. Reading and traveling are like human feet. You can go further by exerting force at the same time and alternately. It takes longer to keep the spirit and body on the road.
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