美联英语提供：英语阅读：The Art of Living生活的艺术 两分钟做个小测试，看看你的英语水平
http://www.meten.com/test/kuaisu.aspx?tid=16-73675-0
The Art of Living生活的艺术
The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: It enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbis of old put it this way:\his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open.\
生活的艺术是要知晓何时取得与何时放弃。因为生活自身便是一个矛盾：它一方面劝诫我们要珍惜它的诸多恩赐，同时最后又注定将其统统收回。在古时候，犹太教的教士们曾这样说过一个人来到这个世界上的时候，他的手是紧握成拳的;但是当他离开这个世界的时候，他的手掌是张开的。”
Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of God's own earth. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what was and then suddenly realize that it is no more.
当然，我们应该紧紧抓住生活，因为它奇妙无比，并且饱含滲透每一寸土地的美感。纵然我们明白这一点，可是往往只是在我们回首从前忆起往事，而后忽然发觉已经物是人非之
时，才会对此颇有感触。
We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.
我们记得已经凋落的美，已经消褪的爱。可是，我们的回忆却满是痛苦:我们没有在美丽绽放之时看到它，没有在爱意缱绻之时以爱去回应。
A recent experience re-taught me this truth. I was hospitalized flollowing a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.
最近,我的一次经历让我再一次认识到这一真理。在一次严重的心脏病发作之后,我住进医院接受治疗，在特别护理区住了好几天。那可不是什么让人感到愉快的地方。
One morning, I had to have some additional tests. The required machines were located in a building at the opposite end of the hospital, so I had to be wheeled across the courtyard on a gurney.
有一天早晨，我不得不再做一些检测，检测的器械在医院对面尽头的一幢大楼上，因此我不得不躺在轮床上让人推着从院子里经过。
As we emerged from our unit, the sunlight hit me. That's all there was to my experience. Just the light of the sun. And yet how beautiful it was - how warming, how sparking, how brilliant! I looked to see whether anyone else relished the sun's golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean concerns to respond from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life's gifts are precious - but we are too heedless of them.
当我们从病房里出来的时候，阳光照射在我身上。这便是我当时所感受到的一切。仅仅是太阳的光芒；可是那阳光多么美妙啊——那样温暖，那样耀眼，那样灿烂！我四下张望，想看看是否还有人在品味这金灿灿的阳光，可是每个人都是行色匆匆，大多数眼睛紧盯着地面。这时候，我回想起对于每一天的阳光我也是常常漠不关心，只关注琐碎甚至于毫无意义的小事，而忽视了对于司空见惯的经历做出反应；生活的馈赠是珍贵 的——但是我们却忽略了它们。
Here then is the first pole of life's paradoxical demands on us: Never too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.
那么，这就是生活对于我们相互矛盾的要求的一极:永远不要由于过度忙碌而忽视生活
的奇妙和庄严。要对即将到来的每一天虔诚恭敬。拥抱每一个小时。抓住珍贵的每一分钟。
Hold fast to life ... but not so fast that you cannot let go. This is the second side of life's coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.
抓住生活……可是不要抓得太紧，以至于你无法放弃。这是生活如硬帀似的另一面，也就是其矛盾的另一极:我们必须接受失去,并且学会放弃。
This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, nay, will, be ours. But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this truth dawns upon us.
要学会这一课，并非易事，尤其是当我们年轻气盛之时，因为那时我们认为自己是世界的主宰，认为我们以充满激情的躯体中的力量去渴求的东西最终是我们的。可是，随之而来的生活将现实摆在我们面前，然后我们也将明白这一道理。
At every stage of life we sustain losses - and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools, then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married and have children and then have to let
them go. We confront the death of our parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we must confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves as it were, all that we were or dreamed to be.
在人生的每个阶段，我们都会有所失去——并在此过程中成长。我们只有在离开母体并且失去其庇护之时才开始我们独立的生活。我们进入各级学校就读，然后我们离开了父母和幼时生活过的故乡。我们结婚生子，然后又放飞子女。我们要面对父母和配偶的离世。我们要面对我们自身或快或慢的衰弱。最后,就像张开和闭合的手一样，我们必须面对我们自己的死亡,失去原有的自我，失去我们所有的一切或者我们所梦想的一切。
两分钟做个小测试，看看你的英语水平
http://www.meten.com/test/kuaisu.aspx?tid=16-73675-0