16
The Fear of Happiness
惧怕幸福
1. One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us seriously happy.爱情最大的缺点之一就在于，至少在一段时间里，它具有使我们幸福的危险性。
2. Chloe and I chose to travel to Spain in the final week of August - travel (like love) an attempt to follow a dream into reality. In London, we had read the brochures of Utopia Travel, specialists in the Spanish rental market, and had settled for a converted farmhouse in the village of Aras de Alpuente, in the mountains behind Valencia. The house looked better in reality than it had in the photographs. The rooms were simply but comfortably furnished, the bathroom worked, there was a terrace shaded by vine leaves, a lake nearby to swim in, and a farmer next door who kept a goat and welcomed us with a gift of olive oil and cheese.在八月的最后一个星期，我们选择去西班牙旅行——旅游（如同爱一样）是跟随梦走进现实的举动。在伦敦时，我们为了这乌托邦的旅行已经读过一些专门介绍西班牙租房市场的手册，并且已经租下了巴伦西亚后面山区的一套改装过的农舍。农舍位于阿拉斯-德阿尔蓬特村，看起来要比照片里的好，装修得很简单，但非常舒适，浴室也可以用，有一个覆盖着葡萄藤的平台，旁边还有一个湖可以游泳。住在隔壁的一位农民养着一只山羊，他用橄榄油和奶酪欢迎我们的到来。
3. We had arrived in the late afternoon, having hired a car at the airport and driven up the narrow mountain roads. We immediately went for a swim, diving into the clear blue waters and drying off in the dying sun. Then we had returned to the house and sat on the terrace with a bottle of wine and olives to watch the sun set behind the hills.我们在飞机场租了一辆车沿着窄窄的山路开到傍晚时分才到达。一到那儿，我们就跳进碧蓝清。澈的湖水里游泳了，而后又在夕阳中晒干身上的水珠。接着我们回到屋里，拿出一瓶酒和一些橄榄坐在平台上，观看着太阳落下山去。
'Isn't it wonderful,' I remarked lyrically.“多么美丽啊，”我用诗一般的语言说。
'Isn't it?' echoed Chloe.“确实如此，”克洛艾回应我的话。
'But is it?' I joked.“真是这样吗？”我开玩笑说。
'Shush, you're ruining the scene.'“嘘，你把这景色都毁了。”
'No, I'm serious, it really is wonderful. I could never have imagined a place like this existing. It seems so cut off from everything, like a paradise no one's bothered to ruin.'“没有，我是认真的。这景色确实很美。我从未想到世界上还会有这样的地方。它似乎与世隔绝，就像一个没有人忍心破坏的乐园。”
'I could spend the rest of my life here,' sighed Chloe.“我可以在这儿过我的后半生，”克洛艾叹息道。
'So could I.'“我也一样。”
'We could live here together, I'd tend the goats, you'd handle the olives, we'd write books, paint, and fa...'“我匀可以一同生活在这儿，我照料山羊，你种橄榄，我们还可以写书、画画……”
'Are you all right?' I asked, seeing Chloe suddenly wince with pain.“你没事吧？”看到克洛艾面部的肌肉因为疼痛而抽搐，我问她。
'Yeah, I am now. I don't know what happened. I just got this terrible pain in my head, like an awful throbbing or something. It's probably nothing. Ah, no, shit, there it comes again.'“嗯，好了。不晓得刚才是怎么回事，只是头部有些剧疼，就像抽痛一样。可能没事。哎哟，不行，见鬼，又疼起来了。”
'Let me feel.'“让我来摸一下。”
'You won't be able to feel anything, it's inside.'“你摸不到的，是脑袋里面疼。”
'I know, but I'll empathize.'“我知道，不过我可以分散一下你的疼痛感。”
'God, I'd better lie down. It's probably just the travelling, or the height, or something. But I'd better go inside. You stay out here, I'll be fine.'“天啊，我最好还是躺下来吧。可能只是因为旅行，或高原反应什么的。不过我还是进屋里去。你就待在这儿，我一会儿就好了。”
4. Chloe's pains did not get better. She took an aspirin and went to bed, but she was unable to sleep. Unsure of how seriously to take her suffering, but worried that her natural tendency to play everything down meant it was probably extremely serious, I decided to get a doctor. The farmer and his wife were in their cottage eating dinner when I knocked and asked in fragments of Spanish where the nearest doctor could be found. It turned out he lived in Villar del Arzobispo, a village some twenty kilometres away.克洛艾的疼痛并没有好转。她吃了一粒阿司匹林后，就上了床，但是又无法入睡。我不能确定她到底有多严重，但又担心她这样轻描淡写表明实际情况要糟糕得多，我决定去请一个医生。当我敲开隔壁那一家的门时，那位农夫和他妻子正在吃晚饭。我用结结巴巴的西班牙语询问最近的医生住在哪里。后来得知医生住在离这儿近二十公里的阿索维斯波村。
5.Dr Saavedra was immensely dignified for a country doctor. He wore a white linen suit, had spent a term at Imperial College in the 1950s, was a lover of the English theatrical tradition, and seemed delighted to accompany me back to assist the maiden who had fallen ill so early in her Spanish sojourn. When we arrived back in Aras de Alpuente, Chloe's condition was no better. I left the doctor alone with her and waited nervously in the next room. Ten minutes later, the doctor emerged.萨夫特拉医生是一位颇爱尊敬的乡村医生。他穿着一套白色的亚麻套装，五十年代曾在英国皇家学院念过一段时间的书，而且钟情于英国戏剧传统。看来他非常乐意陪我回去照料那位刚到西班牙就病例的千金小姐。等我们回到阿拉斯-德阿尔蓬特村，克洛艾仍然没有好转。我让医生单独和她待在一直，自己焦躁不安地等在隔壁的屋子里。十分钟后，医生出来了。
'Ess nutting to worry about.'“不用担心。”
'She'll be OK?'“她很快就会好的吧？”
'Yes, my friend, she'll be OK in the mornin'.'“是的，朋友，她明天早上就会好。”
'What was wrong with her?'“到底是什么毛病？”
'Nutting much, a leetle stomach, a leetle head, ees very common among dee 'oliday makres. I give her peels. Really just a little anchedonia in de head, wha you espect?'“没什么，胃有点儿疼，头也不舒服，不过，出外旅行，这种情况很常见。我给她开了些药片。真的，只是脑袋有些快感缺乏症，你怎么想？”
6.Dr Saavedra had diagnosed a case of anhedonia, a disease defined by the British Medical Association as a reaction remarkably close to mountain sickness resulting from the sudden terror brought on by the threat of happiness. It was a common disease among tourists in this region of Spain, faced in these idyllic surroundings with the sudden realization that earthly happiness might be within their grasp, and prey therefore to a violent physiological reaction designed to counteract such a daunting possibility.萨夫特拉医生诊断克洛艾患快感缺乏症，这种病症被英国医疗协会解释为幸福的威胁带来的突如其来的恐惧感，非常近似于高山反应。对那些来西班牙这个地区观光的游客们来说，这是一种很常见的病症，因为面对这如诗如画的景色，突然意识到尘世的幸福触手可及，所以无法承受这强烈的心理反应。
7. Because happiness is so terrifying and anxiety-inducing to accept, somewhat unconsciously, Chloe and I had always tended to locate hedonia either in memory or in anticipation. Though the pursuit of happiness was our avowed goal, it was accompanied by an implicit belief that it would be realized somewhere in the very distant future - a belief challenged by the felicity we had found in Aras de Alpuente and, to a lesser extent, in each other's arms.伴随幸福而来的问题源自幸福的罕见、稀有，使人一旦接受，就会焦虑，害怕幸福短暂。因此，克洛艾和我（虽然我没有生病）潜意识里总希望在我们的记忆里或期望中找到幸福。虽然追求幸福是人生公开的中心目标，但是这种目标却伴随着一个怀疑，怀疑幸福在遥不可及的将来才会实现。而今这个怀疑受到我们从阿拉斯-德阿尔蓬特村发现的田园风光的挑战，范围说得更小一点，受到彼此臂弯里发现的田园风光的挑战。
8. Why did we live this way? Perhaps because to enjoy ourselves in the present would have meant engaging ourselves in an imperfect or dangerously ephemeral reality, rather than hiding behind a comfortable belief in an afterlife. Living in the future perfect tense involved holding up an ideal life to contrast with the present, one that would save us from the need to commit ourselves to our situation. It was a pattern akin to that found in certain religions, in which life on earth is only a prelude to an ever-lasting and far more pleasant heavenly existence. Our attitude towards holidays, parties, work, and perhaps love had something immortal to it, as though we would be on the earth for long enough not to have to stoop so low as to think these occasions finite in number - and hence be forced to draw proper value from them.为什么我们这样活着？大概是因为享受现世的快乐意味着我们把自己投进一个并不完美或者有些危险的短暂现实中，而不是掩身于对来世的令人舒适的信念里。生活在将来完成时使人想象有一种比现世更理想的生活，一种让我们不必把自己融入身边世界的理想生活。这与一些宗教的模式很相似。在那些宗教看来，凡尘生活只是天长地久、更为快乐的天堂生活的序曲。对于假期、晚会、工作，可能还包括爱情，我们的态度都有些不朽的味道，好像我们可以在这世界上活得长久，以至于我们不需自我贬低地想到这些都是有限的，从而被迫从中寻找价值。生活在将来完成时中有一个令人轻松之处：我们无须认为现世就是真实的，也没有必要知道我们必须和谐社会爱恋，我们必然死去。
9. If Chloe had now fallen ill, was it not perhaps because the present was catching up with her dissatisfaction? The present had, for a brief moment, ceased to lack anything the future might hold. But was I not just as guilty of the disease as Chloe? Had there not been many times when the pleasures of the present had been rudely passed over in the name of the future, love stories in which, almost imperceptibly, I had abstained from loving fully, comforting myself with the immortal thought that there would be other love affairs I would one day try to enjoy with the insouciance of men in magazines, future loves that would redeem my calamitous efforts to communicate with another whom history had set spinning on the earth at much the same time as me? 如果克洛艾病了，这难道没有可能是因为她对现实不满吗？在一个短暂的时刻，未来应该拥有的一切我们都拥有了。但是难道我不是和克洛艾生病一样心存内疚吗？难道不是有很多次，我们以不可命名的未来作为借口而粗鲁地忽视现世的幸福？在那些爱情故事中，我几乎是不可觉察地避免全身心地去爱，而用一个不朽的思想安慰自己：将来有一天我会尽量像杂志上的那些男人一样无忧无虑地享受爱情，在这未来的爱情中，我将轻松自如地与另一位心上人交流，这位心上人现在和我正同时生活在地球上。
9.The future has some of the satisfactions and safety of the past. I recalled that as a child every holiday grew perfect only when I was home again, for then the anxiety of the present would make way for stable memories. I spent whole childhood years looking forward to the winter holidays, when the family took two weeks to go skiing in the Alps. But when I was finally on top of a slope, looking at pine-covered valleys below me and a fragile blue sky above, I felt a pervasive, existential anxiety that would then evaporate from the memory of the event, a memory that would be exclusively composed of the objective conditions (the top of a mountain, a fragile blue sky) and would hence be free of everything that had made the actual moment trying. The present was unpleasant not because I might have had a runny nose, or been thirsty, or forgotten a scarf, but because of my reluctance to accept that I was finally going to live out a possibility that had all year resided in the comforting folds of the future. Yet as soon as I had reached the bottom of the slope, I would look back up the mountain and declare that it had been a perfect run. And so the skiing holiday (and much of my life generally) proceeded: anticipation in the morning, anxiety in the actuality, and pleasant memories in the evening.但是，对永远不会到来的未来的渴望就是对已经成为过去的时光的向往。过去常常更美好难道不是因为它已成过去？我记得小时候每个假期都是在快结束时才会越发美好，因为到那时，对现在的焦虑已经成为一些可以被容纳的记忆。已经发生的并没有那些即将发生的事情重要，它能让我愈合创伤或重温乐事。我整个童年时代都盼望寒假到来，一家人开着车从苏黎世出发，到恩加丁去滑两个星期的雪。但是当我最终到了山顶，俯视那没人动过的白色滑道，我会体验到本应从这件事情的记忆中消失的焦虑，一个仅仅由客观条件（山顶、明朗的天气）组成的记忆，这记忆与把这眼前的时刻变成地狱的一切毫不相干。不仅仅是我可能感冒了，或我渴了，或我忘了拿围巾了令我不开心，而是我不愿意接受一个事实，即我终于把一直保存在未来那舒适的褶皱中的可能性付诸实施了。滑雪、让我盼得流口水的三明治和美好的记忆飞快地随时光流逝。一滑到山底，我就会回过头看着这座山，对自己说，真是完美漂亮的一滑。于是滑雪假期（总的来说，我的大部分生命）都会是如此的过程：在早上时向往；在实现中焦虑；在晚上时变成美好的记忆。
11. There was for a long time something of this paradox in my relationship with Chloe: I would spend all day looking forward to a meal with her, would come away from it with the best impressions, but find myself faced with a present that had never equalled its anticipation or memory. It was one evening shortly before we'd left for Spain, on Will Knott's houseboat with Chloe and other friends, when, because everything was so perfect, I first grew unavoidably aware of my lingering suspicions towards the present moment. Most of the time, the present is too flawed to remind us that the disease of living in the present imperfect tense is within us, and nothing to do with the world outside. But that evening in Chelsea, there was simply nothing I could fault the moment on and hence had to realize that the problem lay within me: the food was delicious, friends were there, Chloe was looking beautiful, sitting next to me and holding my hand. And yet something was wrong all the same, the fact that I could not wait till the event had slipped into history.有很长一段时间我和克洛艾之间的关系也存在这种时态的自相矛盾：我会一整天都盼望和克洛艾一直用餐，而且会在离开时留下美好的印象，但是我却发现事情在进行时的感觉与我事前的期盼及事后的记忆永远不能一致。在我们即将去西班牙之前的一个晚上，我和克洛艾以及其他几个朋友在威尔·诺特的船屋里玩。因为一切都太美好，我第一次不可避免地意识到自己对现在挥之不去的怀疑。多数时候，现在过于不完美，以至无法让我们明白生活在现在不完美时态中的病根在我们自己，与我们外部的世界无关。但是那天晚上在切尔西，实在找不出现在有什么不好的地方，吃的非常可口，朋友团聚一起，克洛艾看上去漂亮迷人，拉着我的手坐在我身边。然而从头到尾一直有点什么不太对劲，这不对劲在于我迫不及待地想让一切成为历史。
12. The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live. If commitment is seen as a group of eggs, then to commit oneself to the present is to risk putting all one's eggs in the present basket, rather than distributing them between the baskets of past and future. And to shift the analogy to love, to finally accept that I was happy with Chloe would have meant accepting that, despite the danger, all of my eggs were firmly in her basket.没有勇气生活在现世也许在于害怕意识到眼前的一切就是自己一生都在盼望的东西，害怕离开相对受到庇护的期盼或记忆空间，从而默认现在时就是自己可能（撇开上天的介入）会过的惟一生活。如果托付被看作是一些鸡蛋，那么把自己托付给现在时就是冒险把所有的鸡蛋都放进现在时的篮子里，而不是把它们分配在过去和将来两个篮子。由此推及到爱，最终承认我和克洛艾在一起是幸福的将意味着接受这样一个事实：我所有的鸡蛋都坚定不移地放进她的篮子，尽管危机潜伏。
13. Whatever pills the good doctor had given her, Chloe seemed completely cured the next morning. We prepared a picnic and went back to the lake, where we passed the day swimming and reading by the water. We spent ten days in Spain, and I believe (as much as one can trust memory) that for the first time, we both risked living those days in the present. Living in this tense did not always mean bliss. The anxieties created by love's unstable happiness routinely exploded into argument. I remember a furious row in the village of Fuentelespino de Moya, where we had stopped for lunch. It had started with a joke about an old girlfriend, and had grown into a suspicion in Chloe's mind that I was still in love with her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, yet I had taken such suspicion to be a projection of Chloe's own declining feelings for me and accused her of as much. By the time the arguing, sulking and reconciliations were over, it was mid-afternoon, and we were both left wondering what the tears and shouting had been about. There were other arguments. I remember one near the village of Losa del Obispo about whether or not we were bored with one another, another near Sot de Chera that had started after I had accused Chloe of being an incompetent map reader and she had countered the charge by accusing me of 'road fascism'.不管那位能干的医生给克洛艾服用的是什么药片，反正克洛艾第二天早上就完全痊愈了。我们准备了一些野餐食品，又去了湖边。我们一整天都在湖里游泳，在湖边看书。我们在西班牙待了十天，我相信（就如一个人相信自己的记忆力一样）那些天是我们俩第一次冒险生活在现在时中。生活在这种时态中并不总意味着拥有极乐：由爱情不稳定的幸福产生的焦虑会重复地爆发为争吵。我记得我们在丰特莱斯皮诺-德莫亚村停下吃饭时，曾有过一次激烈的争吵。争吵起于一个关于我过去的女朋友的玩笑，这玩笑让克洛艾疑心我仍然还爱着那个女人。真实情况简单明了，然而我却把这疑心当作是克洛艾自己对我的感情在逐渐衰退，并就此指责她。从争吵、生气，又到和好，已经是下午三点左右了，我们都不明白那些眼泪、那些吼叫从何而来。此外还有几次争吵。我记得有一次在洛萨-德尔奥维斯波村，我们争论着是否对彼此感到厌烦；还有一次是在索特德切拉村附近，由于我指责克洛艾不会看地图，克洛艾反攻说我是地图绘制法西斯主义。
14. The reasons behind such arguments were never the surface ones: whatever Chloe's deficiencies with the Guide Michelin, or my intolerance to driving around in large circles through the Spanish countryside, what was at stake were far deeper anxieties. The strength of the accusations we made, their sheer implausibility, showed that we argued not because we hated one another, but because we loved one another too much ?or, to risk confusing things, because we hated loving one another to the extent we did. Our accusations were loaded with a complicated subtext, I hate you, because I love you. It amounted to a fundamental protest, I hate having no choice but to risk loving you like this. The pleasures of depending on someone pale next to the paralysing fears that such dependence involves. Our occasionally fierce and somewhat inexplicable arguments during our trip through Valencia were nothing but a necessary release of tension that came from realizing that each one had placed all their eggs in the other's basket ?and was helpless to aim for more sound household management. Our arguments sometimes had an almost theatrical quality to them, a joy and exuberance would manifest itself as we set about destroying the bookshelf, smashing the crockery, or slamming doors: 'It's nice being able to feel I can hate you like this,' Chloe once said to me. 'It reassures me that you can take it, that I can tell you to fuck off and you'll throw something at me but stay put.' We needed to shout at one another partly to see whether or not we could tolerate each other's shouting. We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.诸如此类争吵的原因绝不是表面上所看到的那样，什么克洛艾不会使用《米其林导游图》，什么我无法忍受开着车在西班牙的乡村兜大圈。真正的问题是更为深远的焦虑。我们指责对方时的声嘶力竭，以及这些指责的不合情理表明我们争吵不是因为彼此怨恨，而是我们彼此相爱——或者说得更难以理解一点，因为我们恨自己爱对方爱到现在这个程度。我们的指责承载着一个复杂的下文：我恨你，因为我爱你。它等同于一个根本的抗议：我恨自己别无选择，只能冒险这样来爱你。寄情于某人的快乐与这种寄情最终带来的恐惧相比黯然失色。在巴伦西亚度假期间，我们偶尔爆发的那些激烈而有点莫名其妙的争吵只是紧张状态的一个必要释放，这紧张来自于我们意识到彼此都把自己的鸡蛋全部放在对方的篮子里——不能致力于更明智的家政管理。我们的争吵本身有些带有戏剧性的格调，当我们毁掉书架、摔碎瓷器或用力掼门时，喜悦或旺盛的精力从中得以展示。“能感觉到我可以如此恨你真是太好了，”克洛艾有一次对我说，“它再次使我相信你能够这样做：我叫你滚出去，你就会朝我扔东西，但待在原地不动。”我们需要对彼此大声吼叫，部分原因在于为了弄清我们是否能够忍受对方的吼叫。我们想验证彼此忍受的限度：只有当我们徒劳地尝试过摧毁对方，我们才知道自己是安全的。
15. It is easiest to accept happiness when it is brought about through things that one can control, that one has achieved after much effort and reason. But the happiness I had reached with Chloe had not come as a result of any personal achievement or effort. It was simply the outcome of having, by a miracle of divine intervention, found a person whose company was more valuable to me than that of anyone else in the world. Such happiness was dangerous precisely because it was so lacking in self-sufficient permanence. Had I after months of steady labour produced a scientific formula that had rocked the world of molecular biology, I would have had no qualms about accepting the happiness that ensued from such a discovery. The difficulty of accepting the happiness Chloe represented came from my absence in the causal process leading to it, and hence my lack of control over the happiness-inducing element in my life. It seemed to have been arranged by the gods, and was consequently accompanied by all the primitive fear of divine retribution.当幸福源自人们可以控制的那些事物，源自人们经过很大的努力和推理之后才获得的那些事物，这种幸福是最容易接受的。但是我和克洛艾共同获得的幸福却不是来自深刻的哲学推理，或任何个人成就。它只是在神的介入产生的奇迹之下，找到一个对我而言最有价值的人而已。这种幸福因为非常缺乏自身的永恒而危险重重。如果经过几个月持之以恒的努力之后，我得出一个震惊分子生物学界的科学公式，那么我会毫不犹豫地接受随这个发现接踵而来的幸福。接受克洛艾所代表的幸福其困难在于，我未能参加获得这种幸福的因果过程，从而不能控制生活中那么导致幸福的因素。一切似乎都是神的安排，所以才会伴有对神圣的因果报应的恐惧。
16. 'All of man's unhappiness comes from an inability to stay in his room alone,' said Pascal, advocating a need for man to build up his own resources over and against a debilitating dependence on the social sphere. But how could this possibly be achieved in love? Proust tells the story of Mohammed II who, sensing that he was falling in love with one of the wives in his harem, at once had her killed because he did not wish to live in spiritual bondage to another. Short of this, I had long ago given up hopes of achieving self-sufficiency. I had gone out of my room, and begun to love another ?thereby taking on the risk inseparable from basing one's life around another human being.“人类的不幸源于他不能独居，”帕斯卡说。他提倡人类有必要建立自己的对策，去战胜和抑制对社会环境的依赖，一种使人受到削弱的依赖。但是在爱情中怎么可能做到这一点？普鲁斯特讲过一个关于穆罕默德二世的故事，那位穆罕默德觉得自己对一位妻妾萌生了爱情，于是就立刻把她杀死了。他不愿因为他人而让自己的精神受到束缚。我不可能有他这样的勇气，所以我很早就放弃获得这种感情的自给自足。我走出自己的屋子，而且开始陷入爱河——因此也开始了冒险：把自己的生活密不可分地建立在另一个人的周围。
17.The anxiety of loving Chloe was in part the anxiety of being in a position where the cause of my happiness might so easily vanish, where she might suddenly lose interest, die, or marry another. At the height of love, there appeared a temptation to end the relationship prematurely, so that either Chloe or I could play at being the executioner, rather than see the other partner, or habit, or familiarity end things. We were sometimes seized by an urge (manifested in our arguments about nothing) to kill our love affair before it had reached its natural end, a murder committed not out of hatred, but out of an excess of love - or rather, out of the fear that an excess of love may bring. Lovers may kill their own love story only because they are unable to tolerate the uncertainty, the sheer risk, that their experiment in happiness has delivered.爱恋克洛艾而产生的焦虑，部分源于我对幸福易逝的焦虑。克洛艾可能会突然没有了兴趣、离开人世、和别人结婚。所以当爱达到顶点时，就会现一种诱惑：让彼此之间的关系提早结束，以便使克洛艾或是我成为终结的挑起者，而不愿看到第三者、习惯，或熟悉结束一切。我们有时被一种冲动攫取（这表现在我们无事生非地争吵），想在我们的爱自然地走到结点之前就结束它。凶手谋杀不出于恨，而是出于极度的爱——或者更应该说，是出于极度的爱所带来的恐惧。也许只是因为无法忍受自己进行的幸福实验带来的不确定性和极大的冒险性，恋人们才结束自己的爱情故事。
18. Hanging over every love story is the thought, as horrible as it is unknowable, of how it will end. It is as when, in full health and vigour, we try to imagine our own death, the only difference between the end of love and the end of life being that at least in the latter, we are granted the comforting thought that we will not feel anything after death. No such comfort for the lover, who knows that the end of the relationship will not necessarily be the end of love, and almost certainly not the end of life.无法知晓爱情如何走向终点的想法威胁着每一个爱情故事，就如它的不可知一样令人害怕。这是因为当健康而又精力充沛的我们努力想象自己的死亡时，爱的终结和生命的终结惟一的区别在于，至少对于后者来说，我们获得了一种轻松的想法，即了断尘缘之后的我们将对万般事物一无所知。但对于心上人来说，却无轻松可言，他们知道关系的结束不一定是爱的终点，而且几乎可以肯定，也不是生命的尽头。