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prologue and epilogue are already typed in. All that's left is the 介于两者之间的那些事儿了，这些事是我们作middle bit and that's down to us. We get to choose the meat of the 得了主的。 我们必须挑选故事情节。 story.
4 So, all those plans that you have on the back burner, you know, the great things you're going to do with your life \time is right\to be brought forward and done now, this minute, pronto, in a hurry, as quick as your little legs will carry you. The novel that you want to write, the trip to the Grand Canyon you've always planned to take, your mind's-eye dream-job, the West End play you want to direct—you have to do them now. We're dying, see. It's official.
5 So putting your dreams on the back burner until the circumstances are right means that they'll probably never be realized. Our only regrets in life are the things we don't do. We owe it to ourselves to go out and do them now before it's too late. Tomorrow? It's all a lie; there isn't a tomorrow. There's only a promissory note that we are often not in a position to cash. It doesn't even exist. When you wake up in the morning it'll be today again and all the same rules will apply. Tomorrow is just another version of now, an empty field that will remain so unless we start planting some seeds. Your time, which is ticking away as we speak (at about 60 seconds a minute chronologically; a bit faster if you don't invest your time wisely), will be gone and you'll have nothing to show for it but regret and a rear-view mirror full of \
6 Have you ever noticed when you go to a buffet restaurant how they give you a bowl the size of a saucer and then say, \as much salad as you like but you can only go up once\like that small salad bowl. Like the hungry people waiting for their main course, we can cram as much into that tiny bowl as we can carry. I love watching people ingeniously stack the cucumber around the side of the bowl—like they're filling a skip—and then cramming it so high that they have to hire a forklift truck to get it
4. 所以，那些被你搁置在一边的计划，即那些“当时机成熟时”你会用生命来完成的伟大事业怎么办呢？可我发现时机永远不会有成熟的时候。 时间必须提前，必须马上行动，就在这一刻，不能拖延，必须赶紧，而且越快越好。 不管是你想写的小说，还是你一直在筹划的去大峡谷的旅行，你心仪的工作，你想导演的伦敦西区话剧，你都必须现在就去做。 知道吗？我们都在走向死亡。 这是已经定了的。 5. 因此，把自己的梦想搁置起来，等到时机成熟之后才开始实现它，这就意味着梦想可能永远都不会实现。 人生的遗憾莫过于还有事情没有做，我们有必要现在就去做这些事，不然就晚了。 明天行吗？明天只是个谎言；根本就没有什么明天，只有一张我们常常无法兑现的期票。 明天甚至压根儿就不存在。 你早上醒来时又是另一个今天了，同样的规则又可以全部套用。 明天只是现在的另一种说法，是一块空地，除非我们开始在那里播种，否则它永远都是空地。 你的时间会流逝（时间就在我们说话的当下嘀嗒嘀嗒地走着，每分钟顺时针走60秒，如果你不能很好地利用它，它会走得更快些），而你没有取得任何成就来证明它的存在，唯独留下遗憾，留下一面后视镜，上面写满了“本可以做”、“本应该做”、“本来会做”的事情。 6. 你是否注意过，自助餐馆里服务员会给你一个茶杯碟大小的碗，并告诉你：“你想盛多少沙拉都可以，但只能盛一次”？生活就像那只盛沙拉的碗，我们可以和那些饥肠辘辘等着主菜的人一样在那只小碗里装上尽可能多的沙拉。 我喜欢看人们巧妙地把黄瓜片插在沙拉碗的四周——就像往废料桶里堆东西那样——把沙拉堆得老高老高，最后不得不雇个叉车把沙拉拉回餐桌。 他们不是贪婪，而是明白自己只有一次机会。
back to the table. They're not greedy. They just know that they 7. 把你的碗盛满吧，我们在这个世上只走一only have one shot at it. 遭，既然来了就好好利用这短暂的一生，就像
我们牢牢抓住一年一度去佛罗里达或西班牙度
7 Fill your bowl. We come this way but once so let's make the 假的机会那样。 在短暂的人生中填入尽可能多best of the short stay. Like the once-a-year holiday to Florida or 的内容吧。 确保每天回家后你都会因为干了很Spain. Fit as much into the short time there as you can. Make sure 多事而感到精疲力尽。 that you go back home knackered because you got so much done.
8. 如果你不想当邮递员就别当邮递员，放弃这
8 If you don't want to be a postman then don't be a postman. 份工作去当个画家、作家、滑雪运动员，干什
Give it up and be a painter, a writer, a tobogganist, whatever. Just 么都行。 千万不要干自己明明就不喜欢的事情。 don't be something that you patently do not want to be. 9 And now is the time, not tomorrow. There is no time like the 9. 现在就开始行动吧，不要等到明天。 没有比现在更好的时间了。 如果在这一刻你不能得present. If you can't have what you want this very second the least 到你想得到的东西，你至少可以趁灵感还在的you can do is start the journey now, this minute, while the 时候马上开始你的旅程，即刻起程。 我们有同inspiration is high. We all have the same amount of minutes, we 样多的时间，我们和布兰森以及盖茨一样，每all get the same 24 hours as Branson and Gates. It's just what we 天都有24个小时。 决定我们这一生成败的是do with our time, how we invest it, that determines where our 我们把时间花在什么事情上，是我们如何来分lives may lead. 配时间。 10 So what I'm thinking is (and this is not molecular science) if 10. 因此，我正在琢磨的是（这可不是分子科：如果我们正在走向死亡，而且分配给我们we are dying and our allotted time is finite, why the hell aren't we 学）doing all the things we want to do NOW? What's all this 的时间是有限的，那么我们到底有什么理由不back-burner stuff? And why are we all waiting for the right time 现在就去做所有想做的事情呢？ 这些被暂时搁置的事情到底又是什么呢？ 为什么明明知when we already know that the right time isn't going to show? 道成熟的时机永远不会到来，而我们却都还在The right time is the cheque that's permanently in the post, it 等待呢？ 成熟的时机是一张支票，它永远都在never arrives. It's the girl who keeps us standing at the corner of 邮寄的路上，永远都不会到来。 它就是那位让the Co-op looking like a spanner. No amount of clock watching 我们在合作社旁边像桥墩那样站着傻等的女will change the inevitable. She's stood us up. 孩，我们再怎么看表也无济于事，她失约了。 11 We wait; the right time never arrives. 12 So I say stop waiting and meet providence halfway. Start 别再等待了，走到路上去迎接filling your life with the riches on offer so that when the reaper 12. 所以我要说，arrives, you'll have achieved so much, crammed your time so full 天意。 开始给你的生活增添所有你能得到的财that he'll fall asleep waiting for your life to flash before your eyes. 富，这样当死神到来时，你已经完成了那么多事，你的一生是那么的充实。 当生命在你眼前13 Act now or your time will elapse and you'll end up as a 回放时，死神等着等着就睡着了。 sepia-coloured relative that no one can put a name to in a dusty photo album. 14 Better to leave a biography as thick as a whale omelette than an epitaph. 15 \Joe Smith ... hmmm. He didn't do much, did he?\ 15. “乔 ? 史密斯…… 嘿嘿，他没干过什么，对吧？” 13. 现在就行动吧，不然你的时间会流逝的，而你最终将成为尘封的相册里的一位谁都叫不上名字的灰头土脸的穷亲戚。 14. 还是给人间留下一本像大煎蛋饼那么厚的传记吧，那可比仅仅留下一块碑铭强。 11. 我们傻等着，而成熟的时机却永远不会到来。
Unit 1-3 Rites of passage 通过仪式 生活是否如同对生活持宿命论看法的美国1 Is life just \1. author Elbert Hubbard wrote a hundred years ago, taking a rather 作家阿尔伯特 ? 哈伯德在一百年前所描述的那fatalistic viewpoint? Or is it an obstacle race, in which the 样，是“该死的事情一桩接着一桩”？抑或是一contestants—human beings everywhere—have to show their 场障碍赛跑，其间每个参赛者，即世界各地的worth at certain crucial stages of their lives?
2 The sad clown Jacques in Shakespeare's play As You Like It suggests that there are \2.
莎士比亚的戏剧《皆大欢喜》中那个悲伤
phenomenon of rites of passage in almost every society confirms 的小丑雅克认为，人的一生要经历“七个年龄that we prefer to think of life in terms of these stages, such as 段”，几乎每个社会都有的通过仪式也证明，我childhood, middle age and old age.
3 A rite of passage is a formal recognition of change, imposed by society, of a move from one stage to another, the most 3.
通过仪式是社会对个人从一个阶段走向另
universally recognized one being the transition between childhood 一阶段的正式的认可，其中被广泛认同的是由and adulthood. This can take very different forms. For example, in 少年步入成年时举行的成年礼。 成年礼有多种Jewish tradition one of the most important moments in a person's 形式。 例如，在犹太传统中，人生最重要的时life, marked by a religious ceremony and a family feast, is the Bar 刻之一就是“犹太男孩成人仪式”，人们为年满Mitzvah, when children become responsible for their actions—at 13岁的孩子举办宗教仪式和家宴，这标志着从the age of 13. This is roughly the same age that children can be 此以后这个孩子要对自己的行为负责了。 13held legally responsible in many countries.
4 A very different rite of passage is the tradition of the prom at the end of American high school. This is a dance with a difference. 4.
美国中学生活结束前的毕业舞会是另一种
Students have to wear formal clothes—many for the first time in 截然不同的通过仪式。 这次舞会非同寻常，学their lives—and it is usual to hire an expensive limousine to arrive 生们不仅穿着正式（许多学生平生第一次这么at the prom. It is as if, for one night, they behave like adults twice 穿），他们通常还乘坐着一辆租来的豪华轿车their age—or at least look older than they really are.
到达舞会现场。 就在那一天晚上，他们似乎要表现得和年龄是他们两倍的成年人一样，至少
5 Perhaps one of the most interesting rites of passage is the 是看上去要比自己的实际年龄老。 walkabout of Australian aborigines, when adolescents would be required to spend about six months walking alone through the 5.
世界上最有趣的通过仪式之一或许就是澳
wilderness, following the paths of their ancestors along the age-old 洲原住民的“徒步旅行”了，还处于青春期的少\which mapped out the country. In so doing they 年必须在野外独自行走六个月，沿着划定国土penetrated the heart of aboriginal culture—the oldest continuous 疆域的“歌之版图”追寻祖先的足迹。 通过这样culture in the world—and, in the process, discovered themselves 的仪式，他们深入到土著文化这一世界上最古too.
老而持久的文化的精髓之中，并在这一过程中发现自我。
岁也恰恰是许多国家规定开始承担法律责任的年龄。
们往往是把生命分为这几个阶段来看待的，比如童年、中年和老年。
人们，不得不在生命的各个重要阶段展现自己的价值？
Unit 2-1 Superman 超 人 战争爆发的那一年，我在温斯罗普的安1 The year the war began I was in the fifth grade at the Annie 1. F. Warren Grammar School in Winthrop, and that was the 妮 ? F. 沃伦文法学校读五年级，那年冬天我获得winter I won the prize for drawing the best Civil Defense signs. 了民防图标设计赛的冠军。 也就是在那个冬天，That was also the winter of Paula Brown's new snowsuit, and 波拉 ? 布朗买了新的防雪服，即便是13年后的even now, 13 years later, I can recall the changing colors of 今天，我仍然能清晰地记起那些精彩纷呈的日those days, clear and definite as a pattern seen through a 子，它们历历在目，犹如万花筒里看到的图案那kaleidoscope.
样色彩斑斓。
我的家位于城里靠海湾的一侧，在洛根机场
2 I lived on the bay side of town, on Johnson Avenue, 2.
opposite the Logan Airport, and before I went to bed each night, 对面的约翰逊大道上。 每天晚上睡觉前，我都I used to kneel by the west window of my room and look over 会跪在卧室朝西的窗户旁，眺望黑幽幽的海水那the lights of Boston that blazed and blinked far off across the 边波士顿城明亮闪烁的灯光。夕阳将粉色的余晖darkening water. The sunset flaunted its pink flag above the 洒在机场上空，浪涛的声音永远淹没在一架架飞airport, and the sound of waves was lost in the perpetual droning 机永无休止的嗡嗡声中。 我惊奇地望着跑道上of the planes. I marveled at the moving beacons on the runway 的移动信标，看着那些闪烁的红灯、绿灯像流星and watched, until it grew completely dark, the flashing red and 般升起、降落，直到机场变得一片漆黑为止。 机green lights that rose and set in the sky like shooting stars. The 场就是我的麦加，我的耶路撒冷。 我整夜都在airport was my Mecca, my Jerusalem. All night I dreamed of 做梦，梦见自己在空中飞行。 flying.
3.
那正是我梦想斑斓的岁月。 妈妈认为我需
3 Those were the days of my technicolor dreams. Mother 要大量的睡眠，所以我每天上床睡觉时一点儿都believed that I should have an enormous amount of sleep, and 不觉得累。 那是一天中最美好的时光，我可以so I was never really tired when I went to bed. This was the best 躺下，在昏暗的暮色中慢慢进入梦乡，脑子里制time of the day, when I could lie in the vague twilight, drifting 造出许多奇异的梦来。 我的飞行梦像达利的风off to sleep, making up dreams inside my head the way they 景画那么真实可信，以致于自己常常会在一阵惊should go. My flying dreams were believable as a landscape by 吓中醒来，好像伊卡罗斯那样从天空中摔下来，Dali, so real that I would awake with a sudden shock, a 虽然发现自己刚好掉到软软的床上，但也被吓得breathless sense of having tumbled like Icarus from the sky and 喘不过气来。 当超人开始侵入我的梦乡，并教caught myself on the soft bed just in time. These nightly 给我飞行的技巧之后，我每夜的太空冒险便开始adventures in space began when Superman started invading my 了。 超人身着耀眼的蓝色衣服，肩披随风飕飕dreams and teaching me how to fly. He used to come roaring by 作响的斗篷，经常从我身边呼啸而过。他长得太in his shining blue suit with his cape whistling in the wind, 像我的舅舅弗兰克了，舅舅那会儿正跟妈妈和我looking remarkably like my Uncle Frank who was living with 住在一起。 当超人的斗篷神奇地旋转时，我好mother and me. In the magic whirling of his cape I could hear 像能听见上百只海鸥的振翅声，上千架飞机的马the wings of a hundred seagulls, the motors of a thousand 达轰鸣声。 planes.
4.
我不是这个街区里唯一的超人崇拜者，在街
4 I was not the only worshipper of Superman in our block. 的另一头，那个脸色苍白、有点书呆子气的男孩David Stirling, a pale, bookish boy who lived down the street, 儿戴维 ? 斯特令和我一样，热爱飞行的纯粹的诗shared my love for the sheer poetry of flight. Before supper 意。 每天晚饭前，我们一起收听电台的超人故every night, we listened to Superman together on the radio, and 事，白天在上学的路上，我们自己设计出各种各during the day we made up our own adventures on the way to 样的冒险活动。 school.
5.
安妮 ? F. 沃伦文法学校是一座红砖楼，座
5 The Annie F. Warren Grammar School was a red-brick 落在远离主干道的一条黑色柏油街道上，学校四building, set back from the main highway on a black tar street, 周是光秃秃的铺着碎石的操场。 戴维和我发现surrounded by barren gravel playgrounds. Out by the parking lot 学校外面停车场附近有一个角落，那里是我们玩