第11章
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep…you are richer than 75% of this world.
如果你冰箱里有食物，身上有衣服可穿，有屋篷遮蔽，有地方睡觉……那么，比起世界上７５％的人来，你真是富足多了。
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in dish someplace…you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealth.
如果你银行中有存款，钱包中也有钱，还能到某处消费习菜……你便跻身在世界上最富有的８％人口当中了。
If your parents are still alive and still married…you are very rare, even in the United Stated and Canada.
如果你的父母依然健在，而且还在一起生活的话……这可是非常难得的事，即使是在美国与加拿大。
Someone once said: What goes around comes around.
有人说过：我所付出的终将会回归。
So…
Work live you don’t need the money.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching.
Sing like nobody’s listening.
Live like it’s Heaven on Earth.
所以……
去工作时，犹如你不执迷于金钱。
去爱他人，犹如你从未曾被伤害。
去舞蹈吧，犹如无人在一旁观看。
去歌唱吧，犹如无人在一边谛听。
好好地生活，犹如这里是人间乐土。
第二十三篇：
Three Days to See
假如拥有三天光明
Helen Keller/海伦.凯勒
All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year; sometimes as short as twenty-four hours, but always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed man chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited.
Such stories set up thinking, wondering what we should do under similar circumstances. What associations should we crowd into those last hours as mortal beings? What happiness should we find in reviewing the past, what regrets?
Sometimes I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the values of life. We should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would adopt the epicurean motto of “Eat, drink, and be merry,” most people would be chastened by the certainty of impending death.
我们都读过这样一些动人的故事，故事里主人公将不久于人世。长则一年，短则２４小时。但是我们总是很想知道这个即将离开人世的人是决定怎样度过他最后的日子的。当然，我所指的是有权作出选择的自由人，不是那些活动范围受到严格限制的死囚。
这一类故事会使我们思考在类似的处境下，我们自己该做些什么？在那临终前的几个小时里我们会产生哪些联想？会有多少欣慰和遗憾呢？
有时我想，把每天都当作生命的最后一天来度过也不失为一个很好的生命法则。这种人生态度使人非常重视人生的价值。每一天我们都应该以和善的态度、充沛的精力和热情的欣赏来度过，而这些恰恰是在来日方长时往往被我们忽视的东西。当然，有这样一些人奉行享乐主义的座右铭——吃喝玩乐，但是大多数人却不能摆脱死亡来临的恐惧。
Most of us take life for granted. We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture that day as far in the future, when we are in buoyant health, death is all but unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out in an endless vista. So we go about our petty task, hardly aware of our listless attitude towards life.
The same lethargy, I am afraid, characterizes the use of our faculties and senses. Only the deaf appreciate hearing, only the blind realize the manifold blessings that lie in sight. Particularly does this observation apply to those who have lost sight and hearing in adult life. But those who have never suffered impairment of sight or hearing seldom make the fullest use of these blessed faculties. Their eyes and ears take in all sights and sound hazily, without concentration, and with little appreciation. It is the same old story of not being grateful for what we conscious of health until we are ill.
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound. Now and then I have tested my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently I was
visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.
我们大多数人认为生命理所当然，我们明白总有一天我们会死去，但是我们常常把这一天看得非常遥远。