英文欣赏:舒展你心灵的皱纹

我们需要用激情去拥抱生命里的每一分种,用我们所有的感官去感受生活——在花园的芬芳中,在6岁孩童的蜡笔画中,在美丽迷人的彩虹中去寻找快乐,正是这种对生活的热爱,使得我们神采飞扬、步履矫健,并让我们的灵魂永远年轻。

Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers urged, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience.”

How right they were. Enthusiastic people can turn a boring drive into an adventure, extra work into opportunity and strangers into friends.

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste that helps you hang in there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” when others shout, “No, you can’t.”

It took years and years for the early work of Barbara McClintock, a geneticist who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in medicine, to be generally accepted. Yet she didn’t let up on her experiments. Work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping.

We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder as anyone knows who has ever seen an infant’s delight at the jingle of keys or the scurrying of a beetle.

It is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such a youthful air, whatever their age.

At 90, cellist Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, his stooped shoulders would straighten and joy would reappear in his eyes. Music, for Casals, was an elixir that made life a never ending adventure. As author and poet Samuel Ullman once wrote, “Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

How do you rediscover the enthusiasm of your childhood? The answer, I believe, lies in the word itself. “Enthusiasm” comes from the Greek and means “God within.” And what is God within is but an abiding sense of love — proper love of self (self-acceptance) and, from that, love of others.

Enthusiastic people also love what they do, regardless of money or title or power. If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we can as a part-time avocation, like the head of state who paints, the nun who runs marathons, the executive who handcrafts furniture.

Elizabeth Layton of Wellsville, Kan, was 68 before she began to draw. This activity ended bouts of depression that had plagued her for at least 30 years, and the quality of her work led one critic to say, “I am tempted to call Layton a genius.” Elizabeth has rediscovered her enthusiasm.

We can’t afford to waste tears on “might-have-beens.” We need to turn the tears into sweat as we go after “what-can-be.”

We need to live each moment wholeheartedly, with all our senses — finding pleasure in the fragrance of a back-yard garden, the crayoned picture of a six-year-old, the enchanting beauty of a rainbow. It is such enthusiastic love of life that puts a sparkle in our eyes, a lilt in our steps and smooths the wrinkles from our souls.

舒展你心灵的皱纹

很多年前,当我初次找工作的时候,有位博学的顾问曾对我说:“巴巴拉,要有激情!激情对你来说会比任何经验都更有益。”

这些话真是至理名言啊!充满激情的人可把一次沉闷的汽车旅行变成探险,把额外的工作变成机会,把陌生人变成朋友。爱默生说:“没有激情就不会有任何伟大的成就,”遇到挫折时,激情是帮助你坚持下去的黏合剂,当别人叫器“你不行”时,激情是发自内心的声音—“我能行”!

1983年诺贝尔医学奖的获得者、遗传学家巴巴拉·梅克林托克早期的工作过了多年才得到广泛的承认。当时,她并没有因为得不到承认而放弃自己的试验。对她来说,工作即是一种巨大的快乐,她从未想过要停止工作。

人生下来就是张大眼睛、充满激情的天才—婴儿一听到钥匙叮当作响或看到甲虫胡蹿乱跳,就会兴奋不已。

正是这种“孩子气“的神奇,赋予了那些激情满怀的人们(无论年龄大小)以青春和活力。大提琴家帕布罗·卡萨斯在通常情况下90岁时还坚持以演奏巴赫的曲子开始他每一天。音乐从他的指尖流淌,他弯曲的背脊挺了起来,欢乐也重新爬上了他的眉梢。对卡萨斯莱特来说,音乐是一种灵丹妙药,它使生活变成了永不停息的探索。正如著名的作家兼诗人塞缪·厄尔曼所言:”岁月让人衰老,但如果失去激情,灵魂也会苍老。

怎样才能使你重新发现孩提时代的激情呢?我相信答案就在激情这两个字里面。激情源于希腊语,原意是“上帝本色”,这里的上帝本色不是别的,而是指一种持久不变的爱心——恰当的自爱(自我接受)和由此延伸出的对别人的爱。

富有激情的人热爱的是他们所做的事情本身,他们并不顾及金钱、职位或权力。曾经有人问现已退休的堪萨斯城密苏里宝库剧院的导演怕特里多·麦基雷思,她的激情来自何方,她回答说:“来自我的父亲。他是一个律师,在很久有前他告诉我,为金钱而工作时,我根本就没赚到过一分钱。”

我们不应把眼泪浪费在无可挽回令人后悔的事情上,而要化眼泪为汗水,把精力放在那些将来有可能成功的事情上。我们需要用激情去拥抱生命里的每一分种,用我们所有的感官去感受生活——在花园的芬芳中,在6岁孩童的蜡笔画中,在美丽迷人的彩虹中去寻找快乐,正是这种对生活的热爱,使得我们神采飞扬、步履矫健,并让我们的灵魂永远年轻。


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