【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 thoven overcame his cruel and harsh father and grudging acceptance as a musician to bee the greatest, most famous musician in the world, and Thomas Edison was thrown out of school in fourth grade, at about age 10, because he seemed to the teacher to be quite dull and illbehaved. Many other cases may be found of people who failed and used the failure to motivate them to achieve, tosucceed, and to bee famous. But, unfortunately, for most people failure is the end of their struggle, not the are few, if any, famous failures.Well then, why does anyone want fame? Do you? Do you want to be known to many people and admired by them? Do you want the money that usually es with fame? Do you want the media to notice everything you do or say both in public and in private? In some areas it is very obvious that to be famous is to be the target of everyone who disagrees with you as well as of the turns all the lights on and while it gives power and reputation, it takes the you out of you: you must be what the public thinks you are, not what you really are or could be. But why does anyone want fame? Several reasons e to mind: to demonstrate excellence in some field。 to gain the admiration and love of many others。 to be the one everyone talks about。 to show family and friends you are more than they thought you were. Probably you can list some other reasons, but I think these are reasonably mon.I say to those who desperately seek fame and fortune, celebrity: good luck. But what will you do when you have caught your tail, your success, your fame? Keep chasing it? If you do catch it, hang on for dear life. See you soon famous and almost famous! Unit 6Two Truths to Live byThe art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. An ancient man said long ago: “A man es to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open.”Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wonderful, and full of a beauty. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what it was and then suddenly realize that it is no more.We remember a beauty that faded, a love that withered. 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. A recent experience retaught me this truth. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place. 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 in a chair. 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 sparkling。 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 to the great beauty of it all. The insight gleaned from that experience is really as monplace as was the experience itself: life’s gifts are precious — but we are too careless of them.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 respectful before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.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.This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to mand, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passion can, and will be ours. But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this second truth dawns upon us.At every stage of life we sustain losses — and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we e to this world. We enter 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 weakening of our own strength. And ultimately, we must confront the inevitability of our own death, losing ourselves, as it were, all that we were or dreamed to be. But why should we be reconciled to life’s contradictory demands? Why fashion things of beauty when beauty is shortlived? Why give our heart in love when those we love will ultimately be torn from our grasp? In order to resolve this paradox, we must seek a wider perspective, viewing our lives as through windows that open on eternity. Once we do that, we realize that though our lives are finite, our deeds on earth weave a timeless pattern.Life is never just being. It is being, a relentless flowing on. Our parents live on through us, and we will live on through our children. The institutions we build endure, and we will endure through them. The beauty we fashion cannot be dimmed by death. Our flesh may perish, our hands will wither, but the beauty and goodness and truth they create live on for all time to e.Don’t spend and waste your lives accumulating objects that will only turn to dust and ashes. Pursue not so much the material as the ideal, for ideals alone invest life wit