书城外语用自己最爱的方式过一生
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第18章 享受生活中的每一刻Experience Life

佚名/Anonymous

我懂得什么是欲望、争斗、忧虑和绝望。我总是超负荷地工作。回望我的往昔生活,就如同战场一般,到处是梦想与希望的残垣断壁。这场不利于我的战争使我伤痕累累,甚至早衰。我将生命之水一饮而尽,包括那些沉淀物,而她们只是浅尝了杯口的泡沫而已。我知道的东西她们永远也不能得知,我看到的事物,她们永远无法目睹。女人的眼睛只有被泪水冲刷过,才会有更广阔的视野,才能在世界范围内有形同姐妹的朋友。在充满艰辛曲折的社会大学中,我悟出了一条养尊处优的女人们无从学到的哲理。我学会了生活在今天,而不无聊地透支明天的烦恼。正是那种对未来的担忧使我们胆怯。因为经验告诉我:每当我非常害怕时,上天就会赋予我力量和智慧,于是,我不再胆怯。那些小小的烦恼再也无法影响我的行为——当你亲眼目睹了整座幸福的大厦在你面前轰然坍塌后,你就不会在意那些诸如仆人忘了在洗手盆下放垫子,厨师不慎把菜汤弄洒之类的琐事。我学会了不对人们寄予过高的期望,因而,我仍能从那些并不真诚的朋友和爱搬弄是非的人那里获取快乐。另外,我还具有了幽默感,因为此前的许多事情都使我大喜大悲。如果一个女人在困难面前不再歇斯底里,仍能保持幽默,那就没有什么能伤害她了。我不会为经历过的艰辛懊悔不已,因为在经历的过程中,我触摸到生活中的方方面面。它值得我为它付出一切。

I have known want and struggle and anxiety and despair.I have always had to work beyond the limits of my strength.As I look back upon my life,I see it as a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions—a battle in which I always fought with the odds tremendously against me,and which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed and old before my time.I have drunk the cup of life down to its very dregs.They have only sipped the bubbles on top of it.I know things they will never know.I see things to which they are blind.It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires.I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreaming the tomorrow.It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.I put that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that I so fear,the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given me.Little annoyances no longer have the power to affect me.After you have seen your whole edifice of happiness topple and crash in ruins about you,it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to put the doilies under the finger bowls,or the cook spills the soup.

I have learned not to expect too much of people,and so I can still get happiness out of the friend who isn’t quite true to me or the acquaintance who gossips.Above all,I have acquired a sense of humor,because there were so many things over which I had either to cry or laugh.And when a woman can joke over her troubles instead of having hysterics,nothing can ever hurt her much again.I do not regret the hardships I have known,because through them I have touched life at every point I have lived.And it was worth the price I had to pay.