Wake Up Your Life　唤醒自己的生活

Wake Up Your Life　唤醒自己的生活

◎ Russell

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.” How right they were. Enthusiastic people can turn a boring drive into an adventure, extra work into opportunity and strangers into friends.

多年以前，当我开始寻找我的第一份工作时，不少明智之士强烈向我建议：“巴巴拉，要有热情！热情比任何经验都更为有益！”这话多么正确，热情的人可以把沉闷的车程变成探险，把加班变成机会，把陌生人变成朋友。

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste 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.”

“缺少热情就不会有任何伟大的成就”，拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生写道。当事情进展不顺利时，热情将帮助你更顽强地坚持下去。当别人喊道“不，你不行”时，热情是你内心发出的声音，低声说：“我能行！”

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.

1983年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖的获得者遗传学家巴巴拉·麦克林托克，她早期的工作直到很多年后才被公众所承认。但她并没有放弃过她的实验。工作对她来说是一种如此巨大的快乐，她从未想过要停止。

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. It is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such a youthful air, whatever their age.

我们所有人生来都睁大眼睛，满怀热情——每一个看到过婴儿听到钥匙叮当声的喜悦，或看见乱爬的甲虫就兴奋不已的人，都会明白这一点。正是这种孩子气的探索心理赋予了热情的人们一种青春的气息，无论他们的年龄有多大。

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 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.”

大提琴家帕布罗·卡萨尔斯在90岁时，还坚持以拉巴赫的作品开始他的每一天。音乐从他的手指间蜿蜒流出，他弯下去的背会挺直起来，欢乐再度在他的眼眸间重现。音乐对卡萨尔斯来说，是一剂使人生的探索之旅永不落幕的灵丹妙药。就像作家兼诗人塞缪尔·厄尔曼曾写过的：“岁月在皮肤上繁衍出皱纹，而热情的丧失却会给灵魂刻下皱纹。”

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 God within is but an abiding sense of love—proper love of self (self-acceptance) and, from that, love of others.

你如何才能找回孩提时代的热情呢？我相信答案就在“热情”这个词本身。“热情”一词源于希腊语，原意是“内在的上帝”。这里所说的“内在的上帝”不是别的，而是一种持久不变的爱——恰当的自爱（自我接受），并推而及于爱他人。

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.

热情的人们同样热爱他们所做的事，而不是考虑钱、地位或权力。如果我们不能把热爱的事作为正式职业，我们也可把它当做业余爱好：比如有国家元首喜欢画画的，有修女参加马拉松长跑的，有行政官员手工制作家具的。

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.

堪萨斯州韦尔斯维尔市的伊丽莎白·莱顿到68岁才开始画画。这一爱好消除了曾困扰她至少三十年之久的忧郁症，而她的作品水准之高使得一个评论家说：“我忍不住要称莱顿为天才。”伊丽莎白又找回了她的热情。

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”.

我们不应该把眼泪浪费在“早该”之类的后悔上。我们需要把眼泪化为汗水，去追求“可能”。

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.

我们需要全心全意度过生命中的每一时刻——在后花园的芬芳中，在六岁小孩的蜡笔画中，在妖娆美丽的彩虹中，找到我们所有的喜悦。正是这种对生活的热爱，这种对人生的热情，让我们的双眼焕发出迷人光彩，让我们的步履迈出轻快的旋律，让我们灵魂的皱纹得以抚平。

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