英语美文—情寄八荒

1. Feed Your MindSince the prehistoric times, man has had an urge to satisfy his needs.Be it hunger, shelter or search for a mate,he has always manipulated the circumstances to the best of his advantages.Probably this might be the reasonwhy we human are the most developed of all living species on the earth,and probably also in the universe.As we climbed the steps of evolution with giant leaps,we somehow left behind common sense and logical thinkingwe forgot that we have stopped thinking ahead of times.If you are hungry, what do you do? Grab a piece of your favorite mealand stay quiet after that? Just like your stomach, even your mind is hungry.But it never lets you know,because you keep it busy thinking about your dream lover,favorite star and many such absurd things.So it silently began to heed to your needs and never let itself grow.When mind looses its freedom to grow, creativity gets a full stop.This might be the reason why we all sometimes think What happens next?,Why cant I think?, Why am I always given the difficult problems?Well this is the aftermath of our own karmaof using our brain for thinking of not-so-worthy things.Hunger of the mind can be actually satiated through extensive reading.Now why reading and not watching TV?Because reading has been the most educative tool used by us right from the childhood.Just like that to develop other aspects of our life,we have to take help of reading.You have innumerable number of books in this worldwhich will answer your entire How to questions.Once you read a book, you just dont run your eyes through the lines,but even your mind decodes it and explains it to you.The interesting part of the book is stored in your mind as a seed.Now this seed is unknowingly used by you in your future to develop new ideas.The same seed if used many times can help you link and relate a lot of things,of which you would have never thought of in your wildest dreams!This is nothing but creativity.More the number of books you read,your mind will open up like never before.Also this improves your oratory skills to a large extentand also makes a significant contribution to your vocabulary.Within no time you start speaking English or any language fluently with your friendsor other people and you never seem to run out of the right words at the right time.Actually, I had a problem in speaking English fluently,but as I read, I could improve significantly.I am still on the path of improvement to quench my thirst for satisfaction.So guys do join me and give food for your thoughts by reading,reading and more reading. Now what are you waiting for?Go, grab a book, and let me know!2. Deciding to LiveI believe I am a climber. Three years ago,a series of medical and personal crises took what was a clinical depressionand made it something much darker.I thought of it as fallingas jumping off a bridge on a rainy winter day:three seconds in the air before I hit the water and plunged deep into the icy cold,my heavy coat pulling me deeper. And the surface far overheadtoo far away.This is the question that kept me from making the image a real one.What if I changed my mind? Jumping into the water,the air in my lungs would fail me before I could swim back to the living world.I would know for those last seconds that I did want to live after all,but it would be too late.Im not sure why I started climbing.I walked through the door of the local climbing gym one day on a whim.It was an alien world: strong beautiful men and women,towering walls under sodium vapor lights, white dust filling the air.Light instead of dark. Up instead of down.It was in every way the opposite of what was inside me.The second time I climbed, I got to a move where I was sure I would fall.I was 25 feet up on a rope, but I didnt know yet that I could trust it.I heard my voice say out loud, I have a choice here: fear or joy. What I meant was, climb or dont climb, live or die.In the more than two years since then,I have climbed hundreds of daysinside and out,sometimes tied to a rope, often not. I do pay a price here.My body can be so bruised from hitting wallsthat people ask me about my home situation.Nine months ago, I broke my leg and ankle.I healed fast, but the risk remains. Next time I might not.Climbing requires a cold-blooded decision to live.If I am inattentive or careless, I will fall.Every time I climb at the gym, or rope up for a route outside,or go boulderingwhich is climbing without a rope,and often more dangerousI am taking a risk.And I am committing to staying alive.Now, I believe in climbing, in not jumping.Jumping would have been easy, just step over the bridge railing and let go.Climbing is harder, but worth it.I believe that deciding to live was the right decision.Theres no way to describe the terrible darkness of depression in a waythat non-depressed people can understand.Now, Im less focused on the darkness.Instead, I think about the joy I feel in conquering it and the tool I used.I am a climber, and I am alive.3. Getting What You Want in LifeThere are lives that have bread in abundance and yet are starved;with barns and warehouses filled,with shelves and larders laden they are empty and hungry.No man need envy them; their feverish,restless whirl in the dust of publicity isbut the search for a satisfaction never to be found in things.They are called rich in a world where no others are more truly, pitiably poor;having all, they are yet lacking in allbecause they have neglected the things within.The abundance of bread is the cause of many a mans deeper hunger.Having known nothing of the disciplinethat develops lifes hidden sources of satisfaction,nothing of the struggle in which deep calls unto deepand the true life finds itself,he spends his days seeking to satisfy his soul with furniture,with houses and lands, with yachts and merchandise,seeking to feed his heart on things,a process of less promise and reason than feeding a snapping turtle on thoughts.It takes many of us altogether too long to learn thatyou cannot find satisfaction so long as you leave the soul out of your reckoning.If the heart be empty the life cannot be filled.The flow must cease at the faucet if the fountains go dry.The prime, the elemental necessities of our being arefor the life rather than the body, its house.But, how often out of the marble edifice issues the poor emaciated inmate,how out of the life having many things comes that which amounts to nothing.The essential things are not often those which most readily strike our blunt senses.We see the shell first. To the undeveloped mind the material is all there is.But looking deeper into life there comes an awakening to the factand the significance of the spiritual, the feeling that the reason,the emotions, the joys and pains that have nothing to do with things,the ties that knit one to the infinite,all of which constitute the permanent elements of life.4. The Thanks We GiveIts not the turkey alone were grateful for.Not the cranberry sauce or the stuffing or even the pumpkin pie.Some of the people seated at the tableare strangersfriends of friends,cousins of in-lawsand some are almost desperately familiar,faces we live and work with every day.In any other week, today would merely be Thursdayand the gathering of all these peoplethe cookingand serving and cleaninga chore.But today it doesnt feel that way.The hostperhaps its youstands up and asks that we give thanks,and we do, each in our own way.And what were thankful for is simply this, the food, the shelter,the company and, above all, the sense of belonging.As holidays go, Thanksgiving is in some ways the most philosophical.Today we try not to take for granted the thingswe almost always take for granted. We try,if only in that brief pause before the eating begins,to see through the well-worn patterns of our lives towhat lies behind them. In other words,we try to understand how very rich we are,whether we feel very rich or not.Today is one of the few times most Americans consciously set desire aside,if only because desire is incompatible with the gratitudenot to mention the abundancethat Thanksgiving summons.Its tempting to think that one Thanksgivingis pretty much like another,except for differences in the guest list and the recipes.But it isnt true. This is always a feast about where we are now.Thanksgiving reflects the complexion of the year were in.Some years it feels buoyant, almost jubilant in nature.Other years it seems marked by a conspicuous humilityuncommon in the calendar of American emotions.And this year? We will probably remember this Thanksgivingas a banquet of mixed emotions. This is, after all,a profoundly American holiday.The undertow of business as usual seems especially strong this year.The shadow of a war and misgivings over the futureloom in the minds of many of us.Most years we enjoy the privacy of Thanksgiving, but this year,somehow, the holiday feels like part of a public effort to rememberand reclaim for ourselves what it means to be American.That means giving thanks for some fundamental principlesthat should be honored every day of the yearin the life of this nationprinciples of generosity,tolerance and inclusion. This is a feastthat no one should be turned away from.The abundance of the food piled on the table should signifythat there is plenty for all, plenty to be shared.The welcome we feel makes sense only if we also extend it to others.5. Today I Begin a New LifeToday I shed my old skin which hath, too long,suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity.Today I am born anew and my birthplaceis a vineyard where there is fruit for all.Today I will pluck grapes of wisdom from the tallestand fullest vines in the vineyard,for these were planted by the wisest of my profession who have come before me,generation upon generation.Today I will savor the taste of grapes from these vines and verilyI will swallow the seed of success buried in eachand new life will sprout within me.The career I have chosen is laden with opportunityyet it is fraught with heartbreak and despair and the bodies of thosewho have failed, were they piled one atop another,would cast a shadow down upon all the pyramids of the earth.Yet I will not fail, as the others,for in my hands I now hold the chartswhich will guide through perilous waters to shoreswhich only yesterday seemed but a dream.As a child I was slave to my impulses; now I am slave to my habits,as are all grown men. I will form good habits and become their slave.And how will I accomplish this difficult feat? Through these scrolls,it will be done, for each scroll contains a principlewhich will drive a bad habit from my life and replace it with onewhich will bring me closer to success.And I make a solemn oath to myself that nothing will retard my new lifes growth.I will lose not a day from these readingsfor that day cannot be retrieved nor can I substitute another for it.I must not, I will not, break this habit of daily reading from these scrolls and,in truth, the few moments spent each day on this new habitare but a small price to pay for the happiness and success that will be mine.Today my old skin has become as dust.I will walk tall among men and they will know me not,for today I am a new man, with a new life.6. A Truth of LifeOne of my patients, a successful businessman,tells me that before his cancer he would become depressedunless things went a certain way. Happiness was “having the cookie.”If you had the cookie, things were good. If you didnt have the cookie,life wasnt worth a damn. Unfortunately, the cookie kept changing.Some of the time it was money, sometimes power, sometimes desire.At other times, it was the new car, the biggest contract,the most prestigious address.A year and a half after his diagnosis of prostate cancerhe sits shaking his head ruefully.“Its like I stopped learning how to live after I was a kid.When I give my son a cookie, he is happy. If I take the cookie away or it breaks,he is unhappy. But he is two and a half and I am forty-three.Its taken me this long to understandthat the cookie will never make me happy for long.The minute you have the cookie it starts to crumbleor you start to worry about it crumblingor about someone trying to take it away from you.You know, you have to give up a lot of things to take care of the cookie,to keep it from crumbling and be sure that no one takes it away from you.You may not even get a chance to eat it because you are so busy,just trying not to lose it. Having the cookie is not what life is about.”My patient laughs and says cancer has changed him.For the first time he is happy.No matter if his business is doing well or not, no matter if he wins or loses at golf.“Two years ago, cancer asked me, Okay, whats important?What is really important? Well, life is important. Life.Life any way you can have it, life with the cookie, life without the cookie.Happiness does not have anything to do with the cookie;it has to do with being alive. Before, who made the time?” He pauses thoughtfully.“Damn, I guess life is the cookie.”7. Storms Always Give Way to the SunWhat is the secret ingredient of tough peoplethat enables them to succeed?Why do they survive the tough timeswhen others are overcome by them?Why do they win when other sink?The answer is very simple.Its all in how they perceive their problems.Yes, every living person has problems.A problem-free life is an illusiona mirage in the desert.Accept that fact. Every mountain has a peak.Every valley has its low point. Life has its ups and downs,its peaks and its valleys.You may not be able to control the times,but you can compose your response.You can turn your pain into profanity or into poetry.The choice is up to you.You may not have chosen your tough time,but you can choose how you will react to it.For instance, what is the positive reaction toa terrible financial setback?In this situation would it be the positive reactionto cop out and run away? Escape through alcohol? No!Such negative reactions only produce greater problemsby promising a temporary “solution” to the pressing problem.Your reaction to the problem is the last word!What will you let this problem do to you?It can make you tender or tough.It can make you better or bitter. It all depends on you.In the final analysis, the tough peoplewho survive the tough times do sobecause theyve chosen to react positively to their predicament.Tough times never last, but tough people do.Tough people stick it out.History teaches us that every problem has a lifespan.No problem is permanent. Storms always give way to the sun.Winter always thaws into springtime.Your storm will pass. Your winter will thaw.Your problem will be solved.8. DreamsTo accomplish great things, you must dream great dreams.But dreaming alone isnt enough,you must believe in your dreams and you must act.Without action, even the most grand of dreams evaporate into the airwhen left unnurtured in the misty realms of the mind.Do you dare to be a dreamer? Prepare to go it alone.Dreamers build bridges between the known and the unknown.As you dance your dreams into reality,those who cant hear the music may think you a fool.Pay no heed to those who would kill your dreams;small minds always do that. Great minds will encourage you thatyou can become great too.Afraid you havent got what it takes?Then get it! Feed your mind the mental food it hungers for.There was a dog breeder who had two dogs that raced every weekend.He took bets and always won. One week hed bet on his black dog,and the black dog would win. The next week hed bet on the white dog,and folks seeing the black dog win the week before would bet,but this time the white dog would win. Why?One week hed feed the dog he wanted to win a grand diet,and just give the other dog enough to survive.The dog that was well fed was stronger and would always win the race.Your mind is the same way;it grows stronger or weaker with what you feed it.The diet of the mind is what gives you the confidence, courage,knowledge, and the direction you need to succeed in your dreams,or keep you from them. You can build your mind up or tear it down.The choice is yours and you make it every day.Have you been waiting for the right time to reach for your dreams?Have you been waiting for the right circumstancesto reach for your dreams?Have you been waiting for the right opportunity to reach for dreams?My, youre patient, arent you? You could be waiting forever, you know.Time is an illusion. Circumstances are what you make them.Opportunity is a whisper that waits for your invitation,it doesnt burst in and shout its arrival.Now is the right time. Circumstances change when you take action.Opportunity is yours for the making.So what are you really waiting for?9. I Want! I Do! I Get!Theres a great song out there by Jimmy Cliff,one of reggaes top artists,that in six words summarizes just how you succeed in life:I want! I do! I get!These six words are a very powerful wayof connecting what you want with what you will achieve.First comes wanting somethinga better life for yourself,your family, more money, a better job,whatever it is you dream about and long for.You desire it, you dream about it,you daydream about it, you yearn for it.But thats not enough.Next an