双语有声阅读：雷雨中的醒悟

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暴风雨不会永不停息，任何不适也并非难以容忍。只要勇敢地面对困难、失望而不沮丧，成功而不骄傲，那我们的人生之战便取得了一半的胜利。

 

Discovery in a Thunderstorm

Dr. Nelson Glueck

 

 

Many years ago I was on a bicycle trip through some exceedingly picturesque¹ countryside. Suddenly, dark clouds piled up overhead and rain began to fall, but strange to relate, several hundred yards ahead of me the sun shone brilliantly. Pedaling, however, as rapidly as I could, I found it impossible to get into the clear. The clouds with their rain kept advancing faster than I could race forward. I continued this unequal contest for an exhausting half hour, before realizing that I could not win my way to the bright area ahead of me.

 

Then it dawned upon me that I was wasting my strength in unimportant hurry, while paying no attention whatsoever² to the landscape for the sake of which I was making the trip.

 

The storm could not last forever and the discomfort³ was not unendurable. Indeed, there was much to look at which might otherwise have escaped me. As I gazed about with sharpened appreciation⁴, I saw colors and lines and contours that would have appeared differently under brilliant light. The rain mists which now crowned the wooded hills and the fresh clearness of the different greens were entrancing. My annoyance⁵ at the rain was gone and my eagerness to escape it vanished. It had provided me with a new view and helped me understand that the sources of beauty and satisfaction may be found close at hand within the range of one’s own sensibilities.

 

It made me think, then and later, about other matters to which this incident was related. It helped me realize that there is no sense in my attempting ever to flee from circumstances and conditions which cannot be avoided but which I might bravely meet and frequently mend and often turn to good account. I know that half the battle is won if I can face trouble with courage, disappointment with spirit, and triumph with humility⁶. It has become ever clearer to me that danger is far from disaster, that defeat may be the forerunner⁷ of final victory, and that, in the last analysis, all achievement is perilously⁸ fragile unless based on enduring principles of moral conduct.

 

I have learned that trying to find a carefree world somewhere far off involves me in an endless chase in the course of which the opportunity for happiness and the happiness of attainment⁹ are all too I often lost in the chase itself. It has become apparent to me that I cannot wipe out the pains of existence by denying them, blaming them largely or completely on others, or running away from them.

 

The elements of weakness which mark every person cannot absolve¹⁰ me from the burdens and blessings¹¹ of responsibility for myself and to others. I can magnify but never lessen¹² my problems by ignoring, evading¹³ or exorcising them. I believe that my perplexities and difficulties can be considerably¹⁴ resolved, if not completely overcome, by my own attitudes and actions. I am convinced that there can be no guarantee of my happiness except that I help evoke¹⁵ and enhance it by the work of my hands and the dictates¹⁶ of my heart and the direction of my striving. I believe that deep faith in God is necessary to keep me and hold mankind uncowed and confident under the vagaries¹⁷ and ordeals¹⁸ of mortal experience, and particularly so in this period of revolutionary storm and travail¹⁹. If my values receive their sanction and strength from relationship to divine law and acceptance of its ethical²⁰ imperatives²¹, then nothing can really harm me. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

 

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