◎ Marcus Sheridan
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.”
多年前,當我開始尋找我的第一份工作時,我聰明的指導員敦促我:“芭芭拉,一定要充滿熱情!熱情帶給你的東西將遠遠勝過任何經(jīng)驗帶給你的。”
How right they were. Enthusiastic people can turn a boring drive into an adventure, extra work into opportunity and strangers into friends.
他說得很對。熱情似火的人們能把無趣的事情變成一次冒險,把額外的工作變成機會,把陌生人變成好朋友。
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste[77]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.”
“沒有熱情,再偉大的事情也無法完成?!崩瓲柗颉ね郀柖唷勰@樣寫道。當事情變得棘手時,是漿糊般的韌勁讓你堅持下來;當別人沖你高聲喊著“不,你做不到”時,是你內心的聲音輕聲對你說:“我能做到?!?
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.
這就是遺傳學家芭芭拉·麥克林托克——1983年諾貝爾醫(yī)學獎的獲得者——早年所從事的工作,她花了好幾年的時間才使大家普遍接受這個事實。至今,她仍舊一心撲在實驗上。對她來說,工作就是一種深入內心的享受。因此,她從未想過要停止工作。
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.
我們生來就有一雙大眼睛,天性激情似火。任何一個見過嬰兒聽到鑰匙聲或看見亂爬的甲蟲就興奮不已的人,都會明白這一點。
It is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such a youthful air, whatever their age.
正是這種孩子般的好奇心,讓熱情似火的人們(不論何種年齡)有一種青春的氣息。
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[78]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.”
大提琴演奏家帕布羅·卡薩爾斯90歲時還堅持以演奏巴赫開始他一天的生活。音樂從他的指尖流出,他彎著的背都挺直了,歡樂再一次溢滿他的雙眼。對卡薩爾斯來說,音樂是讓人生變成一次無止盡的冒險的靈丹妙藥。就像作家兼詩人塞繆爾·厄爾曼曾經(jīng)寫道:“悠悠歲月,老去的只是容顏;拋棄激情,衰敗的就是靈魂!”
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.
你怎樣才能重拾孩提時的那份熱情呢?我相信答案就在于“熱情”這個詞本身?!盁崆椤币辉~源于希臘,它的原意是”內心的上帝”?!皟刃牡纳系邸逼鋵嵅皇莿e的,就是一種亙古不變的愛——適度地愛自己(自我接納)以及緣于此的愛別人。
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.
熱情似火的人同樣深愛著他們所做的事,而不會考慮金錢、地位和權力。如果我們不能將自己所鐘愛的事情作為自己的正式職業(yè),那么我們可以把它當作業(yè)余愛好,就像愛好畫畫的國家元首,參加馬拉松比賽的修女和自己親手制作家具的行政官員。
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.
堪薩斯州韋爾斯維爾市的伊麗莎白·萊頓68歲時才開始畫畫。這個愛好消除了糾纏她長達30年之久的憂郁癥,而她的作品也因畫技精湛而深獲一位評論家的好評:“我忍不住要稱萊頓為天才。”伊麗莎白又找回了她的熱情。
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.”
我們不該把眼淚浪費在“早該……”這類懺悔上。我們應該把眼淚化為汗水,去追尋“可能”的東西。
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.
我們應該全心全意地度過生命中的每一分鐘——在后花園的芬芳中,在6歲小孩的蠟筆畫中,在彩虹迷人的美中尋找快樂,打開所有的感知,這才是對生活的熱愛。正是這種熱愛讓我們雙目有神,讓我們步履輕盈,讓我們靈魂的褶皺不再。
美麗語錄
Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
享受生命中的每一個細節(jié),因為當你回首往事時可能會發(fā)現(xiàn),原來那些所謂的小事是多么的重要。