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Thoughts for a New Year 新年沉思 Most of us look away when we pass strangers. It is the exceptional person who stops to help the woman maneuvering her kids and groceries up the staircase. We rarely give up in line or on the subway or bus. Locked into our automobiles, we prefer gridlock to giving way. 当我们与陌生人擦肩而过时，我们多数人往往把目光转开。要是有人停下来帮妇女哄她的小孩儿或帮她把食品搬上楼梯，反而会被人看成异样。无论是排队还是乘地铁或公共汽车，我们很少让位于他人。坐在自己的汽车里，我们宁愿堵塞交通也不愿给人让路。(maneuvering =manoeuvre 设法使......。)(give up： 让给，在这里等于give up one's seat or priority to sb将座位或优先位置让给别人。） These daily encounters, when they are angry or alien3, diminish our lives. When they are pleasant, we feel buoyed4. Yet when we sit at home and make resolutions, we think about what we can accomplish in private spaces: home, work. Too many have given up the belief that they control the shared, the public world. 这些日常接触，要是气冲冲的或是使人反感的，那便会减少我们生活的乐趣；要是它们令人愉快，那便会使我们精神振奋。然而，当我们坐在家里做出各种决定的时候，我们考虑的仅是在个人天地—— 家庭和工作里可以实现的目标。太多的人已经放弃了他们也是管理着共享的、公有的世界这 一信念。 ( alien：原义为相反的；完全不同的，这里转义为令人反感的。此词常与 to 和 from 连用，例如:Their ideas are alien to our way. 他们的思想和我们的 想法完全不同。) ( buoyed：buoy 的过去分词，在此用作表语，意为受到鼓励的，得到支持的。) As individuals we can change the contour of a day, the mood of a moment, the way people feel. The demolition and reconstruction of public life is the result of personal decisions made every day;the decision to give up a seat on the bus; the decision to be patient or pleasant against all odds; the decision to let that jerk take a left-hand turn from a righthand lane—without rolling down the window and calling him a jerk. 作为许许多多个人，我们是可以改变一天的面貌、一时的情绪，以及人们的感觉方式的。公共生活的毁坏和重建是人们每日每时所做的种种个人决定的综合结果。这些决定包括：公共汽车上让座，面对逆境而能容忍或具有乐观精神；让笨蛋从右车道往左拐而不摇下车窗骂他声笨蛋。 (people feel：定语从句，修饰 the way，后面省去 in which。) (against all odds：在一切不利的条件下,意即处于逆境。odds 为力量或形势等对比下的差距。) (jerk = 〈俚〉foolish person) It's the resolution to be a civil, social creature. 这是做一个文明的、社会的人的决定。 This may be a peak period for the battle against the spread of a waistline and creeping cholesterol. But it is also within our willpower to fight the spread of urban rudeness and creeping hostility. Civility doesn't stop nuclear holocaust and doesn't put a roof over the head of the homeless. But it makes a difference in the shape of a community, as surely as lifting weights can make a difference in the shape of a human torso. 今天也许是人们为减小腰围和降低胆固醇而斗争的高峰期。然而。反对城市野蛮行为和人际敌对态度的蔓延，也是我们只要愿做就能做到之事。有礼貌不能就制止核战争，也不能为无家可归者提供栖身之所，但它确能改变社会集体的面貌，犹如举重定能改变一个人的体形一样。 (cholesterol：胆固醇) (holocaust：大破坏) (human torso：人体的躯干) |
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