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Simone George:
I met Mark when he was just blind. I had returned home to live in Dublin after the odyssey that was my 20s,educating my interest in human rights and equality in university, traveling the world, like my nomad grandmother. And during a two-year stint working in Madrid, dancing many nights till morning in salsa clubs. When I met Mark, he asked me to teach him to dance. And I did.
They were wonderful times, long nights talking, becoming fiends and eventually falling for each other. Mark had lost his sight when he was 22, and the man that I met eight years later was rebuilding his identity, the cornerstone of which was this incredible spirit that had taken him to the Gobi Desert, where he ran six marathons in seven days. And to marathons at the North Pole, and from Everest Base Camp.
When I asked him what had led to this high-octane life, he quoted Nietzsche: “He, who has a Why to live, can bear with almost any How.”He had come across the quote in a really beautiful book called“Man's Search for Meaning,”by Viktor Frankl,a neurologist and psychiatrist who survived years in a Nazi concentration camp.Frankl used this Nietzsche quote to explain to us that when we can no longer change our circumstances, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Mark Pollock:
And one night, lying flat on my back, I felt for my phone to write a blog, trying to explain how I should respond. It was called“Optimist, Realist or Something Else?” and it drew on the experiences of Admiral Stockdale, who was a POW in the Vietnam war. He was incarcerated, tortured, for over seven years. His circumstances were bleak, but he survived. The ones who didn't survive were the optimists. They said,“We'll be out by Christmas,”and Christmas would come and Christmas would go, and then it would be Christmas again, and when they didn't get out, they became disappointed, demoralized and many of them died in their cells. Stockdale was a realist He was inspired by the stoic philosophers, and he confronted the brutal facts of his circumstances while maintaining a faith that he would prevail in the end. And in that blog, I was trying to apply his thinking as a realist to my increasingly bleak circumstances.
But if you remember the blog that I mentioned, it posed a question of how we should respond, optimist, realist or something else? And I think we have come to understand that the optimists rely on hope alone and they risk being disappointed and demoralized. The realists, on the other hand, they accept the brutal facts and they keep hope alive,as well. The realists have managed to resolve the tension between acceptance and hope by running them in parallel. ∵And that's what Simone and I have been tying to do over the last number of years.
Look, I accept the wheelchair-I mean, it's almost impossible not to.And we're sad, sometimes, for what we've lost. I accept that I, and other wheelchair users, can and do live fulfilling lives, despite the nerve pain and the spasms and the infections and the shortened life spans. And I accept that it is way more difficult for people who are paralyzed from the neck down. For those who rely on ventilators to breathe, and for those who don't have access to adequate, free health care. So, that is why we also hope for another life.
Simone George:
I met Mark when he was just blind. He asked me to teach him to dance, and I did. One night, after dance classes, I turned to say goodnight to him at his front door, and to his gorgeous guide dog, Larry.I realized, that in switching all the lights off in the apartment before I left, that I was leaving him in the dark. I burst into uncontrollable tears and tried to hide it, but he knew. And he hugged me and said,“Ah, poor Simone. You're back in 1998, when I went blind.Don't worry, it turns out OK in the end.”
Acceptance is knowing that grief is a raging river. And you have to get into it. Because when you do, it carries you to the next place. It eventually takes you to open land, somewhere where it will turn out OK in the end.
30.Mark.ran Marathons and took part in the expedition race to
A.build up confidence
B.maintain his health
C.rebuild his identity
D.rely on his hope
31.What's Mark's understanding of realists and optimists?
A.Optimists who hold hope can easily survive in difficulty.
B.Optimists may be psychologically damaged but never lose heart.
C.Realists tend to face the reality bravely and maintain their hope.
D.Realists fail to handle the tension between acceptance and hope.
32.Which could be the best title of the passage?
A.Accept the Impossible
B.To Hope or Not to Hope
C.Dance with Optimism
D.Be Optimistic or Realistic
本文节选自Ted Talk: A love letter to realism in a time of grief。本文讲述了， 当面对生活中最艰难的环境时，我们应该如何应对：作为一个乐观主义者， 一个现实主义者还是其他什么人?
30.C 【解析】由第二段“the man that I met eight years later was rebuilding his identity, the cornerstone of which was this incredible spirit that had taken him to the Gobi Desert, where he ran six marathons in seven days.”可知，故选C。
31.C【解析】由第五段“The realists, on the other hand, they accept the brutal facts and
they keep hope alive, as well.”可知C正确。
32.C【解析】略。
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