第2章

The next year, as she and her team went to the Northern California Championship game, she was seen by a college recruiter. She was indeed offered a scholarship, a full ride, to a Division I, NCAA women’s basketball team. She was going to get the college education that she had dreamed of and worked toward for all those years.

It’s true: If the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.

The 50-Percent Theory of Life

生活理论半对半

I believe in the 50-percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. I believe life is a pendulum swing. It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future.

Let’s benchmark the parameters: Yes, I will die. I’ve dealt with the deaths of parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets. Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing. Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale.

Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son’s baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he’s swimming with the dogs, discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos.

But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically. This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory.

One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone those neighbors laughed. I felt chagrined at the wasted effort. Summer turned brutal-the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime. The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone. I was living lyrics from a country tune-music I loathed. Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for their first World Series, buoyed my spirits.

Looking back on that horrible summer, I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad. Worse than normal wouldn’t last long. I am owed and savor the halcyon times. They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that I can thrive. The 50- percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals’ recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.

Oh, yeah, the corn crop? For that one blistering summer, the ground moisture was just right, planting early allowed pollination before heat withered the tops, and the lack of rain spared the standing corn from floods. That winter my crib overflowed with corn-fat, healthy three-to-a-stalk ears filled with kernels from heel to tip-while my neighbors’ fields yielded only brown, empty husks.

Although plantings past may have fallen below the 50-percent expectation, and they probably will again in the future, I am still sustained by the crop that flourishes during the drought.

Born to Win

生而为赢

Each human being is born as something new, something that never existed before. Each is born with the capacity to win at life. Each person has a unique way of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and thinking. Each has his or her own unique potentials-capabilities and limitations. Each can be a significant, thinking, aware, and creative being-productive person, a winner.

The word “winner” and “loser” have many meanings. When we refer to a person as a winner, we do not mean one who makes someone else lose. To us, a winner is one who responds authentically by being credible, trustworthy, responsive, and genuine, both as an individual and as a member of a society.

Winners do not dedicate their lives to a concept of what they imagine they should be; rather, they are themselves and as such do not use their energy putting on a performance, maintaining pretence and manipulating others. They are aware that there is a difference between being loving and acting loving, between being stupid and acting stupid, between being knowledgeable and acting knowledgeable. Winners do not need to hide behind a mask.

Winners are not afraid to do their own thinking and to use their own knowledge. They can separate facts from opinions and don’t pretend to have all the answers. They listen to others, evaluate what they say, but come to their own conclusions. Although winners can admire and respect other people, they are not totally defined, demolished, bound, or awed by them.

Winners do not play “helpless”, nor do they play the blaming game. Instead, they assume responsibility for their own lives. They don’t give others a false authority over them. Winners are their own bosses and know it.

A winner’s timing is right. Winners respond appropriately to the situation. Their responses are related to the message sent and preserve the significance, worth, well-being, and dignity of the people involved. Winners know that for everything there is a season and for every activity a time.

Although winners can freely enjoy themselves, they can also postpone enjoyment, can discipline themselves in the present to enhance their enjoyment in the future. Winners are not afraid to go after what he wants, but they do so in proper ways. Winners do not get their security by controlling others. They do not set themselves up to lose.

A winner cares about the world and its peoples. A winner is not isolated from the general problems of society, but is concerned, compassionate, and committed to improving the quality of life. Even in the face of national and international adversity, a winner’s self-image is not one of a powerless individual. A winner works to make the world a better place.

Think it over...

好好想想……

Today we have higher buildings and wider highways, but shorter temperaments and narrower points of view;

We spend more, but enjoy less;

We have bigger houses, but smaller families;

We have more compromises, but less time;

We have more knowledge, but less judgment;

We have more medicines, but less health;

We have multiplied out possessions, but reduced out values;

We talk much, we love only a little, and we hate too much;

We reached the Moon and came back, but we find it troublesome to cross our own street and meet our neighbors;

We have conquered the utter space, but not our inner space;

We have higher income, but less morals;

These are times with more liberty, but less joy;

We have much more food, but less nutrition;

These are the days in which it takes two salaries for each home, but divorces increase;

These are times of finer houses, but more broken homes;

That’s why I propose, that as of today;

You do not keep anything for a special occasion. Because every day that you live is a special occasion.

Search for knowledge, read more, sit on your porch and admire the view without paying attention to your needs;

Spend more time with your family and friends, eat your favorite foods, visit the places you love;

Life is a chain of moments of enjoyment; not only about survival;

Use your crystal goblets. Do not save your best perfume, and use it every time you feel you want it.

Remove from your vocabulary phrases like “one of these days” or “someday”;

Let’s write that letter we thought of writing “one of these days”!

Let’s tell our families and friends how much we love them;

Do not delay anything that adds laughter and joy to your life;

Every day, every hour, and every minute is special;

And you don’t know if it will be your last.

有方法，才有希望

Victory won’t come to me unless I go to it.

-- M. Moore

胜利是不会向我走来的，我必须自己走向胜利。

--穆尔

Renew Your Life! Change Up the Routine

打破常规，开始新生活

Abraham Joshua Herschel was one of the leading American Rabbis, theologians, and social activists of the 20th century. He said something that I’ll never forget and that has stayed with me since the moment I heard it. In his book God in Search of Man, he wrote, “Life is routine and routine is resistance to wonder.”

There’s a true story of a man I have worked with who has spent his entire life believing that his ears were not symmetrical and therefore sunglasses always looked crooked on his face. He came to accept this over time, until he came in touch with mindfulness practice.

One day as he was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom he chose to take a moment to come down from his busy mind, become present, and really look at himself. What he noticed was astonishing.

He suddenly realized that he had not been standing straight and that one shoulder was slightly lower than the other. In that moment, he chose to stand up straight and low and behold his eyeglasses were no longer crooked on his face. All this time he thought his face was lopsided in some way when in effect, it was his posture.