Doing Well by Doing Good助人者诸事顺

by William R.Brody(约翰.霍普金斯大学校长布罗迪2005年5月26日在约翰.霍普金斯大学毕业班上讲话节选)

There is a man who I’d like to tell you about. His name is Sandy Greenberg. In his youth, Sandy was a very good student,but he came from a poor family. And so he went to Columbia University on a scholarship and there he met his roommate who also was receiving financial aid.
我想给大家讲讲一个人,他叫桑迪.格林伯格.他年少时学习非常优秀，但却出身贫寒。因此他靠奖学金的资助才进入哥伦比亚大学学习。在那里，他遇到了他的室友，这个人也同样接受经济资助。
Now while he was sophomore at Clumbia University, Sandy contracted an eye disease that eventually proved to glaucoma. But the trouble was, it wasn’t detected early enough , and as a result he became legally blind. I ask you all to imagine for a moment having been sighted all your life, and then all of a sudden being faced, in a very competitive school, with losing so much sight you could no longer read. This is what happened to Sandy Greenberg.
桑迪大二时，得了一种眼病，最后确诊为青光眼。但不幸的是由于没有及时地发现，他成了法定意义上的盲人。我想请大家设想一下，一向视觉正常的你，在一个竞争激烈的学校，突然失去视力从而再也无法看书，你将怎么办？这就是发生在桑迪身上的不幸。
But something else happened to Sandy that may surprise you. Sandy said that when he lost his sight,his roommate would read his textbooks to him, every night.
但是发生在桑迪身上的另一件事情可能会使你感到惊讶。桑迪说他丧失视力以后，他的室友每天晚上都会给他念课本。
So I’m going to put you in that question, in a competitive school like Clumbia , or Johns Hopkins. If your roommate had a serious disability, would you take the time to read textbooks to him every night, knowing the more you spend time reading textbooks to your roommate, perhaps the less well you might do with your other activities? That’s not as easy a question as it first appears.
我请大家设身处地地想一下：在像哥伦比亚大学或约翰.霍普金斯大学这样竞争激烈的大学里,如果你的室友丧失了视力,你会每天晚上花时间给他读课文吗?而你自己知道,花在给室友读课文上的时间越长,你在其他方面的表现就有可能越差.这个问题可不像看起来那么简单.
But luckily for Sandy, his roommate did. And as a result , Sandy went on to graduate with honors. He got a Fulbright Scholarship, and he went off to study at Oxford. He was still quite poor, but he said he had managed to save about five hundred dollars as he went along.
但是桑迪是幸运的，他的室友就这样做了。因此，桑迪得以继续学业，并且以优异的成绩毕业，而且拿到了福布赖特奖学金，到牛津大学继续深造。他依然很贫穷，但他说自己这么些年来还是积攒了$500左右。
His roommate, meanwhile, also also went on to graduate school. One day, Sandy got a call from him at Oxford. And his former roommate said, “Sandy , I’m really unhappy. I really don’t like being in graduate school, and I don’t want to do this.”
与此同时，桑迪的室友也进入了研究生院学习。一天，桑迪在牛津接到这位室友的电话。老室友说：“桑迪，我现在很不开心，我真不想呆在研究生院里，我不喜欢现在的生活。”
So Sandy asked, “Well, what do you want to do?”
于是桑地问道：“那你想要做什么呢？”
And his roommate told him, “Sandy, I really love to sing. I have a high school friend who plays the guitar. And we would really like to try our hand in the music business. But we need to make a promo record, and in order to do that I need $500.”

<1> <2> <3>

上一篇文章： Does Love Exist
下一篇文章：Don‘t look back 告别过去