书城教材教辅用美国小学课本学英语
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第44章 Literature文学艺术(9)

穷人是非常了不起的人。一天晚上,我们外出,从街上带回了四个人,其中一个生命岌岌可危。于是我告诉修女们说:“你们照料其他三个,这个濒危的人就由我来照顾了。”就这样,我为她做了我的爱所能做的一切。我将她放在床上,看到她的脸上绽露出如此美丽的微笑。她握着我的手,只说了句“谢谢您”就死了。我情不自禁地在她面前审视起自己的良知来。我问自己,如果我是她的话,会说些什么呢?答案很简单,我会尽量引起旁人对我的关注,我会说我饥饿难忍,冷得发抖,奄奄一息,痛苦不堪,诸如此类的话。但是她给我的却更多更多——她给了我她的感激之情。她死时脸上却带着微笑。我们从排水道带回的那个男子也是如此。当时,他几乎全身都快被虫子吃掉了,我们把他带回了家。“在街上,我一直像个动物一样地活着,但我将像个天使一样地死去,有人爱,有人关心。”真是太好了,我看到了他的伟大之处,他竟能说出那样的话。他那样地死去,不责怪任何人,不诅咒任何人,无欲无求。像天使一样——这便是我们人民的伟大之所在。因此我们相信耶稣所说的话——我饥肠辘辘——我衣不蔽体——我无家可归——我不为人所要,不为人所爱,也不为人所关心——然而,你却为我做了这一切。

我想,我们算不上真正的社会工作者。在人们眼中,或许我们是在做社会工作,但实际上,我们真的只是世界中心的修行者。因为,一天24小时,我们都在触摸基督的圣体。我想,在我们的大家庭里,我们不需要枪支和炮弹来破坏和平,或带来和平——我们只需要团结起来,彼此相爱,将和平、欢乐以及每一个家庭成员灵魂的活力都带回世界。这样,我们就能战胜世界上现存的一切邪恶。

我准备以我所获得的诺贝尔和平奖奖金为那些无家可归的人们建立自己的家园。因为我相信,爱源自家庭,如果我们能为穷人建立家园,我想爱便会传播得更广。而且,我们将通过这种宽容博大的爱而带来和平,成为穷人的福音。首先为我们自己家里的穷人,其次为我们国家,为全世界的穷人。为了做到这一点,姐妹们,我们的生活就必须与祷告紧紧相连,必须同基督结为一体才能互相体谅,共同分享,因为同基督结合一体就意味着互相体谅,共同分享。因为,今天的世界上仍有如此多的苦难存在……当我从街上带回一个饥肠辘辘的人时,给他一盘饭,一片面包,我就能使他心满意足了,我就能驱除他的饥饿。但是,如果一个人露宿街头,感到不为人所要,不为人所爱,惶恐不安,被社会抛弃——这样的贫困让人心痛,令人无法忍受。因此,让我们总是微笑相见,因为微笑就是爱的开端,一旦我们开始彼此自然地相爱,我们就会想着为对方做点什么了。

练习

阅读关于特雷莎修女的故事。

15 Do I Need To Like Myself? 非得喜欢自己吗?

Yes! People who don’t like themselves are a pain in the neck!

Usually, people with a poor self-image use one of two irritating strategies. They either:

a) criticize you a lot or

b) they criticize themselves a lot.

STRATEGY A: They criticize you a lot. They figure that by criticizing other people they can feel better about themselves.

Let’s take Fred, who feels inferior. Fred thinks he has a big nose and piggy eyes. He also secretly feels a bit stupid.

So what’s his strategy to feel better about himself? He criticizes all his friends. He has names for them like “Flathead”, “Chicken Legs” and “Dogbrain”. Whenever someone else makes a mistake, he announces it to the whole class. (He probably doesn’t even realize he criticizes people—or why he does it.)

If you have parents, friends or brothers and sisters who don’t like themselves—they might criticize you and everyone around them. Just remember that they criticize you because they have a problem. If you remember that they are actually hurting inside, you won’t get so upset by their behaviour.

STRATEGY B: Some people who don’t like themselves criticize themselves a lot. They use reverse psychology...

Take Mary who doesn’t like herself. She’s always telling you “You are prettier than me. You are smarter. Nobody likes me.” She’s hoping that you will reply: “No Mary! You are clever. You are beautiful.” After a while, people like Mary get on your nerves!

In a nutshell, When we don’t like ourselves, we irritate other people. We also put ourselves through a lot of stress. When we accept ourselves a little better, we don’t play these games.

How Can I Like Myself﹖

In our hearts, most of us believe we should be doing better. We think that we should have gotten higher grades. We want to be popular and hang out with the “in” crowd. We feel we don’t measure up to our parents’ expectations. Our parents help to confirm this idea when they ask: “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

Whenever you are feeling low, be your own best friend. Accept that, up to now, you have lived your life the best way you know how. No one sets out to screw up their life! Like anyone, you’ve done the odd stupid thing. With more information you’ll likely do better in the future.

Liking yourself means forgiving yourself. If you have made some serious mistakes, if you have hurt some people—and yourself—feeling guilty won’t help.

If you are feeling guilty about something, you have already suffered enough. Being guilty for another six months won’t help anybody.

Forget perfection and aim for improvement. It’s a funny thing. When you forgive yourself for your own mistakes, you automatically begin to let others off the hook for the same things.

“But I’m Not Brilliant...”

You might look at yourself and say: “I’m not as beautiful as my sister, I’m not as talented as my friends and I’m not brilliant at anything! How can I feel good about me?”

Fact: Nobody is good at everything and most of us have those thoughts!

But here’s the lowdown! Talent and beauty are very useful—but there are plenty of talented and beautiful people around whom we don’t necessarily admire. And some of them are a pan in the butt!

The qualities most of us value above all others are honesty, courage, persistence, generosity and humility. Take a look at this list and you’ll find something interesting. You aren’t born with these things. You develop them. Anyone can have them! If you want self-respect, and respect from others, you don’t have to be an Einstein or a super-model.

You simply work at developing your own honesty, determination, generosity, humility and courage. It is called “character”.

In a nutshell: How you feel about yourself is in your hands.

Vocabulary 词汇

irritating ["iriteiti?] adj. 刺激的,气人的,使愤怒的;

v. 激怒,刺激

strategy ["str?tid?i] n. 策略,战略

criticize ["kriti"saiz] vt. 批评,非难,评论;

vi. 批评,苛求

nutshell ["n?t-?el] n. 坚果的外壳,小的东西,小容器;

vt. 概括

screw [skru:] vt. 旋,拧,压榨,强迫;

n. 螺丝钉,吝啬鬼,螺旋

automatically ["?:t?"m?tik?li] adv. 自动地,机械地,无意识地;

adj. 不经思索的

persistence [p?"sist?ns, -"zis-] n. 持续,存留,固执

humility [hju:"mil?ti] n. 谦卑,谦逊

Practice

1.Why Fred criticizes all his friends?

2.Why Mary always praise others?

3.What qualities that most of us value above all others?

译文

确实如此!不喜欢自己的人很讨厌!

通常,自我感觉不好的人会采用两种策略,要么老是挑剔别人,要么总是挑剔自己。

策略一:老是挑剔别人。他们以为挑别人的错就能自我感觉良好。

比如说弗雷德吧,他就觉得自己不如别人。弗雷德感到自己长了一个大鼻子、两只猪眼睛,还暗自感觉脑子有点笨。

他想要感觉好一点怎么办呢?于是就挑所有朋友的毛病,给他们起一些怪名字,什么“平头”啊,“鸡腿”啊,“狗脑”啊等等。每当有人犯错误,他就对全班同学宣布。 (他很可能压根儿就没意识到这是在批评别人,或者为什么要这么做。)

如果你的父母、朋友或兄弟姊妹不喜欢自己,他们可能会挑剔你和身边的每一个人。请记住,他们挑剔你是因为他们有问题。其实他们内心有伤痛,记住这一点,你就不会对他们的行为感到特别心烦了。

策略二:有些不喜欢自己的人老说自己不好。他们的心理正好相反。

拿玛丽来说吧,她就不喜欢自己。她总对别人说“你比我漂亮。你比我聪明。谁都不喜欢我”。她心里其实希望对方这样回答:“不对,玛丽!你很聪明,很漂亮。”不用多久,玛丽这种人就会令人生厌。

简言之,不喜欢自己,就会去烦别人,同时自身也会承受很大的压力。对自己好一点,就不会去玩那些烦人的把戏了。

怎样才能喜欢自己?

内心里,大多数人都认为自己应该比现在强。我们认为考试分数应该再高一些。我们想受人欢迎,跟那些“时髦”的人在一起。我们感到达不到父母的期望。父母也证实了这一点。他们会问:“你就不能向你哥哥多学一点?”

无论何时你感觉不良,你都要做自己最亲密的朋友。要承认到目前为止,你是在以你所知的最佳方式生活。谁都不会成心破坏自己的生活。你跟别人一样做了些奇怪而愚蠢的事。你如果知道得多一些,将来就会做得好一些。

喜欢自己意味着原谅自己。如果你犯了严重的错误,如果你伤害了别人,伤害了自己,内疚是不管用的。

如果你为某事感到内疚,你就已经受到了足够的折磨。再内疚半年,对人对己都无济于事。

忘记完善,立志改善。这是很有趣的一件事。一旦你原谅自己的过错,就会自动不再追究别人同样的错误。

“但是我不很出色……”