书城外语享受一分钟的感动
1659000000030

第30章 赐予心灵一面明镜 (1)

Bright Mirror to the Heart

以他人为镜,能更清楚地折射出你对自我价值的感受。反过来,对于你不认同的人,你也能以之为镜,显露出对自身不满意的方面。

Take Others as Your Mirror以他人为镜

The first time you meet someone, in the first moment you form an impression in your mind of that person. Your reactions to other people, however, are really just barometers for how you perceive yourself. Your reactions to others say more about you than they do about others. You cannot really love or hate about yourself. We are usually drawn to those who are most like us and tend to dislike those who display those aspects of ourselves that we dislike.

Therefore, you can allow others to be the mirror to illuminate more clearly your own feelings of self-worth. Conversely, you can view the people you judge negatively as mirrors to show you what you are not accepting about yourself.

To coexist peacefully with others, you will need to learn tolerance. A big challenge is to shift your perspective radically from judgment of other to a lifelong exploration of yourself. Your task is to assess all the decisions, judgments you make onto others and to begin to view them as clues to how you can heal yourself and become whole.

I recently have a business lunch with a man who displayed objectionable table manners. My first reaction was to judge him as offensive and his table manners as disgusting. When I noticed that I was judging him, I stopped and asked myself what I was feeling. I discovered that I was embarrassed to be seen with someone who was chewing with his mouth open and loudly blowing his nose. I was astonished to find how much I cared about how the other people in the restaurant perceived me.

Remember that your judgment of someone will not serve as a protective shield against you becoming like him. Just because I judge my lunch partner as offensive does not prevent me from ever looking or acting like him. In the same way, extending tolerance to him would not cause me to suddenly begin chewing my food with my mouth open.

When you approach life in this manner, those with whom you have the greatest grievances as well as those you admire and love can be seen as mirrors, guiding your to discover parts of yourself that you reject and to embrace your greatest quality.

第一次见到某人时,在第一瞬间,你的脑海里会形成一个印象。你对他人的反应,其实就像你如何看待自己的晴雨表,更多的是反映处你自己,而不是其他人。你不可能真正喜欢或讨厌他人的某个方面,除非它反射处你对自身某方面的喜好。通常,我们靠近与自己类似的人,而那些展示处我们自身某个不喜欢的方面的人,往往令我们讨厌。

所以,你以他人为镜,能更清楚地折射出你对自我价值的感受。反过来,对于你不认同的人,你也能以之为镜,显露出对自身不满意的方面。

要与他人和睦相处,你必须学会容忍。你要从根本上转变视角,不去评判别人,而是不断地反省自身,而这是一个巨大的挑战。你的任务是,以你对别人做出的所有的决定,评判为线索,来改进和完善自我。

最近,我与一位客户一起吃午饭,他吃饭的样子实在令我很反感。我的第一反应就是:他粗鲁无礼,吃饭的样子令人恶心。当我意识到自己正评判他时,便停下来,扪心自问是什么感觉。被人看到与这么个张着嘴咀嚼,大声擤鼻涕的人在一起,我发现自己感到很难堪。我还发现自己很在乎餐馆里其他人对我的看法,这让我感到很惊讶。

记住,你对他人的评判并不意味着你就不会像他那样。比如,仅仅因为我评判那位客户粗鲁无礼,并不能保证我永远都不会有像他那样的行为。同样,如果我容忍他的行为,并不会因此突然张嘴咀嚼。

假如你用这种方式走进生活,你就能同时以你最不满的人,和你罪尊敬、最爱的人为镜,指引你发现自身的缺陷,同时欣赏自己的最佳品质。

The Smile微笑

Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other―it doesn’t matter who it is―and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.

Many Americans are familiar with The Little Prince, a wonderful book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This is a whimsical and fabulous book and works as a children’s story as well as a thought-provoking adult fable. Far fewer are aware of Saint-Exupery’s other writings, novels and short stories.

Saint-Exupery was a fighter pilot who fought against the Nazis and was killed in action. Before World War II, he fought in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists. He wrote a fascinating story based on that experience entitled The Smile. It is this story which I’d like to share with you now. It isn’t clear whether or not he meant this to be autobiographical or fiction. I choose to believe it to be the former.

He said that he was captured by the enemy and thrown into a jail cell. He was sure that from the contemptuous looks and rough treatment he received from his jailers he would be executed the next day. From here, I’ll tell the story as I remember it in my own words.

“I was sure that I was to be killed. I became terribly nervous and distraught. I fumbled in my pockets to see if there were any cigarettes, which had escaped their search. I found one and because of my shaking hands, I could barely get it to my lips. But I had no matches, they had taken those.

“I looked through the bars at my jailer. He did not make eye contact with me. After all, one does not make eye contact with a thing, a corpse. I called out to him ‘Have you got a light?’ He looked at me, shrugged and came over to light my cigarette.

“As he came close and lit the match, his eyes inadvertently locked with mine. At that moment, I smiled. I don’t know why I did that. Perhaps it was nervousness, perhaps it was because, when you get very close, one to another, it is very hard not to smile. In any case, I smiled. In that instant, it was as though a spark jumped across the gap between our two hearts, our two human souls. I know he didn’t want to, but my smile leaped through the bars and generated a smile on his lips, too. He lit my cigarette but stayed near, looking at me directly in the eyes and continuing to smile.

“I kept smiling at him, now aware of him as a person and not just a jailer. And his looking at me seemed to have a new dimension, too. ‘Do you have kids?’ he asked.

“ ‘Yes, here, here.’ I took out my wallet and nervously fumbled for the pictures of my family. He, too, took out the pictures of his family and began to talk about his plans and hopes for them. My eyes filled with tears. I said that I feared that I’d never see my family again, never have the chance to see them grow up. Tears came to his eyes, too.