阅读理解 Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers advised, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience．” How right they were! “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm．” Wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson．It is the paste that helps you hang on there when the going gets tough．It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” When others shout, “No, you can’t” It took years and years for the early work of Barbara Mclintock, a geneticist who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in medicine, to be generally accepted．Yet she didn’t stop working on her experiments．Work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping． We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder and it is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such youthful air, whatever their age．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．As author and poet Samuel Ulaman once wrote, “Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul．” Enthusiastic people also love what they do, regardless of money or title or power．Patricia Mcllrath, retired director of the Missouri Repertory Theater in Lamsas City, was once asked where she got her enthusiasm．She replied, “My father, a lawyer, long ago told me, I never made a dime until I stopped working for money．” If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we can as a hobby, Elizabeth Layton of Wellsville, Kan, was 68 before she began to draw．This activity ended periods of depression that had troubled her for at least 30 years, and the quality of her work led one critic say, “I am tempted to call Layton a genius．” 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”．We need to live each moment whole heartedly, with all our senses-finding pleasure in the sweet smell of a backyard garden, the simple picture of a six-year-old, the beauty of a rainbow． |
