四六级考试网

I was fifteen months old, a happy carefree（无忧无虑的） kid until the day I fell. It was a bad fall. I landed on a glass rabbit which cut my eye badly enough to blind it. Trying to save the eye, the doctors stitched（缝纫，装订） the eyeball together where it was cut, leaving a big ugly scar in the middle of my eye. The attempt failed, but my mama, in all of her wisdom, found a doctor who knew that if the eye were removed entirely, my face would grow up badly distorted（扭曲的） , so my scarred, sightless, cloudy and gray eye lived on with me. And as I grew, this sightless eye in so many ways controlled me.I walked with my face looking at the floor so people would not see the ugly me. Sometimes people, even strangers, asked me embarrassing questions or made hurtful remarks. When the kids played games, I was always the “monster.” I grew up imagining that everyone looked at me with disdain（鄙弃） , as if my appearance were my fault. I always felt like I was a freak.Yet Mama would say to me, at every turn, “Hold your head up high and face the world.” It became a litany（烦复而古板的陈述） that I relied on. She had started when I was young. She would hold me in her arms and stroke my hair and say, “If you hold your head up high, it will be okay, and people will see your beautiful soul.” She continued this message whenever I wanted to hide.Those words have meant different things to me over the years. As a little child, I thought Mama meant, “Be careful or you will fall down or bump into something because you are not looking.” As an adolescent, even though I tended to look down to hide my shame, I found that sometimes when I held my head up high and let people know me, they liked me. My mama’s words helped me begin to realize that by letting people look at my face, I let them recognize the intelligence and beauty behind both eyes even if they couldn’t see it on the surface.In high school I was successful both academically and socially. I was even elected class president, but on the inside I still felt like a freak. All I really wanted was to look like everyone else. When things got really bad, I would cry to my mama and she would look at me with loving eyes and say, “Hold your head up high and face the world. Let them see the beauty that is inside.”When I met the man who became my partner for life, we looked each other straight in the eye, and he told me I was beautiful inside and out（从里到外埠，完全地） . He meant it. My mama’s love and encouragement were the spark that gave me the confidence to overcome my own doubt. I had faced adversity（窘境，不幸） , encountered my problems head on, and learned not only to appreciate myself but to have deep compassion for others.”Hold your head up high,” has been heard many times in my home. Each of my children has felt its invitation. The gift my mama gave me lives on in another generation.

“We are reading the first verse（诗篇） of the first chapter of a book whose pages are infinite…”I do not know who wrote those words, but I have always liked them as a reminder that the future can be anything we want to make it. We can take the mysterious, hazy（昏黄的） future and carve out of it anything that we can imagine, just like a sculptor carves a statue from a shapeless stone.We are all in the position of the farmer. If we plant a good seed, we reap a good harvest. If our seed is poor and full of weeds, we reap a useless crop. If we plant nothing at all, we harvest nothing at all.I want the future to be better than the past. I don’t want it contaminated by the mistakes and errors with which history is filled. We should all be concerned about the future because that is where we will spend the reminder of our lives.The past is gone and static. Nothing we can do will change it. The future is before us and dynamic. Everything we do will effect it. Each day will brings with it new frontiers, in our homes and in our businesses, if we will only recognize them. We are just at the beginning of the progress in every field of human endeavor（尽力，极力） .

Plants pursue a never-ending quest for nourishment（食品，营养品） of the liquid and solar variety. Clearly, the very essence of life. But what can our obsession（痴迷，困扰） with plants teach us about our own personal journeys?My aunts, mom and grandma always talk about their plants when they get together. They trade cuttings, smuggling them over state lines to propagate（滋长，增殖） at home. They discuss their plants like children or pets. They share tips. Compare progress.We turn plants into sentimental（感伤的） objects as we do with books and art, but with plants it’s different because they’re alive. They grow and change. You see photographs of your former apartment, and there’s that peace lily（百合花） , half its present size. It’s like looking at old family pictures: “Look how little you used to be!” Plants have a history and a life. That’s why they’re so hard to give up, even when you don’t love them anymore, even when you don’t have room for them. What are you supposed to do, just let them die? Impossible.When I had to move everything out of my house recently, I realized there were more little plants than I was willing to find places for in my new cramped（狭小的，难懂的） quarters. I thought, it’s silly to be sentimental about these plants. I can replace them later if I want. Yet I just couldn’t give up the succulent（多汁的，多水分的） I kept alive during my first year of teaching.It sat on top of a microwave, in a tiny, dark, cold office space that was really a storage closet with a window. During the times I thought I might lose my mind, I watched the plant’s health. It refused to wither. It stood hardy and strong, and occasionally sprung a tender new leaf. Sometimes I would forget to water it or take it home during vacations, but it withstood this neglect and stubbornly（固执地，强硬地） lived on. This buoyed（撑持，鼓动鼓励） my spirit more than chocolate or pats on the back.Our adopted foliage（植物，叶子） can serve as a sort of bellwether（前导，带领者） for our lives. Most of us have gone through periods where we let the phone ring, the dishes pile up, and the houseplants shrivel（枯萎，褶皱） . Eventually, the pile of brittle（易碎的，脆弱的） leaves collecting beneath the ficus（无花果属） forces us to assess the state of our lives.Of course, because we have sentimentalized our plants, it’s tempting to read their lives for clues to our own. Once, when a relationship was dying, my African violet exploded with unseasonable purple flowers. Maybe, I thought, there’s hope. There was— for the violet.My stepmom visits a particular hemlock（铁杉） in a park near her home every New Year’s Day. She walks circles around its trunk, one hand on the bark, releasing regrets from the old year and planning for the new one. Her own history and life is now intertwined with the hemlock’s, as year after year, the tree receives her hopes and ushers（接待，指导） them forth with fresh oxygen. “Here you go,” it says. “Here’s some more life.”

My fellow job seekers: I am honored to be among the first to congratulate you on completing your years at North Carolina A&T. But all of you should know: as Mother’s Day gifts go, this one is going to be tough to beat in the years ahead.The purpose of a commencement（毕业典礼，开端） speaker is to dispense（分派，免除） wisdom. But the older I get, the more I realize that the most important wisdom I’ve learned in life has come from my mother and my father. Before we go any further, let’s hear it one more time for your mothers and mother figures, fathers and father figures, family, and friends in the audience today.When I first received the invitation to speak here, I was the CEO of an $80 billion Fortune 11 company with 145,000 employees in 178 countries around the world. I held that job for nearly six years. It was also a company that hired its fair share of graduates from North Carolina A&T. You could always tell who they were. For some reason, they were the ones that had stickers（贴纸，尖刀） on their desks that read, “Beat the Eagles.”But as you may have heard, I don’t have that job anymore. After the news of my departure broke, I called the school, and asked: do you still want me to come and be your commencement speaker?Chancellor Renick put my fears to rest. He said, “Carly, if anything, you probably have more in common with these students now than you did before.” And he’s right. After all, I’ve been working on my resume. I’ve been lining up my references. I bought a new interview suit. If there are any recruiters（雇用职员，征兵职员） here, I’ll be free around 11.I want to thank you for having me anyway. This is the first public appearance I’ve made since I left HP. I wanted very much to be here because this school has always been set apart by something that I’ve believed very deeply; something that takes me back to the earliest memories I have in life.One day at church, my mother gave me a small coaster（杯托，小托盘） with a saying on it. During my entire childhood, I kept this saying in front of me on a small desk in my room. In fact, I can still show you that coaster today. It says: “What you are is God’s gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God.”Those words have had a huge impact on me to this day. What this school and I believe in very deeply is that when we think about our lives, we shouldn’t be limited by other people’s stereotypes or bigotry. Instead, we should be motivated by our own sense of possibility. We should be motivated by our own sense of accomplishment. We should be motivated by what we believe we can become. Jesse Jackson has taught us; Ronald McNair taught us; the Greensboro Four taught us; that the people who focus on possibilities achieve much more in life than people who focus on limitations.The question for all of you today is: how will you define what you make of yourself?To me, what you make of yourself is actually two questions. There’s the “you” that people see on the outside. And that’s how most people will judge you, because it’s all they can see what you become in life, whether you were made President of this, or CEO of that, the visible you.But then, there’s the invisible you, the “you” on the inside. That’s the person that only you and God can see. For 25 years, when people have asked me for career advice, what I always tell them is don’t give up what you have inside. Never sell your soul. Because no one can ever pay you back.What I mean by not selling your soul is don’t be someone you’re not, don’t be less than you are, don’t give up what you believe, because whatever the consequences that may seem scary or bad — whatever the consequences of staying true to yourself are — they are much better than the consequences of selling your soul.You have been tested mightily in your life to get to this moment. And all of you know much better than I do: from the moment you leave this campus, you will be tested. You will be tested because you won’t fit some people’s pre-conceived notions or stereotypes of what you’re supposed to be, of who you’re supposed to be. People will have stereotypes of what you can or can’t do, of what you will or won’t do, of what you should or shouldn’t do. But they only have power over you if you let them have power over you. They can only have control if you let them have control, if you give up what’s inside.I speak from experience. I’ve been there. I’ve been there, in admittedly（公认地，大白地） vastly different ways — and in many ways, in the fears in my heart, exactly the same places. The truth is I’ve struggled to have that sense of control since the day I left college.I was afraid the day I graduated from college. I was afraid of what people would think. Afraid I couldn’t measure up（合格，合适标准） . I was afraid of making the wrong choices. I was afraid of disappointing the people who had worked so hard to send me to college.

Your life only lasts for a few decades, so be sure that you don’t leave any regrets. Laugh or cry as you like, and it’s meaningless to oppress yourself. 人生短短几十年，不要给本身留下了甚么遗憾，想笑就笑，想哭就哭，该爱的时辰就往爱，无谓压抑本身。Don’t waste your time on a man/woman, who isn’t willing to waste their time on you. 不要为那些不肯在你身上破钞时候的人而华侈你的时候。Don’t spend time with someone who doesn’t care spending it with you. 不要把时候花在一个不在乎与你一路分享的人身上。Don’t struggle so much, best things happen when not expected. 不要做太多的抗争，最好的东西老是产生在出乎料想的时辰。Remember what should be remembered, and forget what should be forgotten. Alter what is changeable, and accept what is mutable.记住该记住的，健忘该健忘的。改变能改变的，接管不克不及改变的。A true friend is some one who reaches for your hand and touches your heart.一个真实的伴侣是向你伸出手，震动你心灵的人。Self-confidence and self-reliance are the mainstays of a strong character.自傲和白手起家是固执风致的柱石。There is nothing sexier than being confident and taking care of yourselves. 布满自傲，爱护保重本身，魅力无以过之。

These days, there are so many choices to labor through, from the most basic, such as paper or plastic at the grocery（食品杂货店） checkout counter, to the nearly suicide-inducing, such as the friends-and-family plan or unlimited texting.In these tough times, the abundance of life-changing decisions— finances, health care, career moves— can be overwhelming（胜过性的，势不成挡的） . But don’t take it from me. Ask the guy who wrote the book The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making. That would be Scott Plous, a psychology professor at Wesleyan University. “There’s no question that we have more choices than ever before,” Plous agreed. “And decisions are generally harder and more time-consuming when there are lots of alternatives.”Even Steve Jobs, whose technology allows us the misery of 18,000 music selections in our pockets, has to counteract so many choices by wearing the same outfit— blue jeans, black turtleneck（高领翻毛衣） , New Balance sneakers— every single day of his life. With every move you make, you’re bombarded with predicaments（窘况，窘境） from the banal to the extraordinary, and you obviously can’t trust yourself to make the right decisions anymore— look where that’s gotten you.I know I’m not alone in this. We’re all feeling a little needy. Whom can we turn to? Friends and family always have their own agendas; therapists are useless. So, who’s left?Strangers, of course. They’re everywhere.“Excuse me,” I said to the woman behind me one morning in the queue at Dunkin’ Donuts. “I’m currently asking strangers to make all my decisions. Would you mind picking out a dozen doughnuts（甜甜圈） for me?”“I’ll order two, but then you’re on your own,” she said.“Never mind.”Everyone knows the first two doughnuts are the easy ones.“I’ll do it, but you’ll have to tell me what you like,” a gangly（身材瘦长的） woman who had overheard theprevious exchange said.“Thanks, but that kind of defeats my purpose,” I responded. “As long as you’re paying,” a thick-armed guy shrugged at me just as it was his turn to order.He attacked the chore with glee（欢愉，欢欣） . His choices were a blur of glaze and frosting. He stopped only once, looked back at me and said, “Sprinkles, two sprinkles,” and they fell into the box with the majesty of a fireworks grand finale.It was a win-win, a successful random act of indecision（踌躇不决，踌躇不决） (RAI). And I was striking a blow for science. “Your experiment will reveal how much pleasure in a dessert comes from it simply being a dessert, rather than a dessert that you would have chosen,” Plous had observed. “In many cases, the difference in benefit between two choices is smaller than we’d guess.”This may be the best idea I’ve ever had. For two weeks, I relinquished（放弃，罢休） control over my decisions. I turned the reins（肾脏，腰部） over to perfect strangers.At a Starbucks, I was perspiring（流汗） heavily from a bike ride when I started to ask the woman beside me what I wanted to drink. She cut me off midway through my spiel（流利夸大的讲话） about how I was conducting a social experiment and whatnot（放古玩的架子，不成名状的东西） .“Just have a water,” she said, snatching a bottle from the front case and thrusting it at me.She herself ordered something that took the barista（咖啡师） 11 moves to make, but I was suddenly a model of simplicity: a sweaty man drinking cold water.Moments later, I asked a man at the newsstand if I should become a night shaver instead of a morning shaver. I always wanted to be a night shaver— go to bed cleanly shaven and wake up with sexy stubble（发茬，须茬） that would be alluring（诱惑的） until at least noon and…“Absolutely not,” the gentleman said.I’m sure he’s right.Later in the day, when I asked a sandy-haired woman at Old Navy to pick out a shirt for me, she quickly devoted herself to the cause.“I want you to have a crisper（保鲜盒） , cleaner look,” she exclaimed.I was still feeling crisp and clean when I stopped at the library. The mission: to give a stranger the chore of selecting a book for me to read.“You sure? Picking out a book… that’s kind of an intimate decision,” the chosen one said. She was sitting at a tiny table with a little boy and looking up at me as if I were one more irritation in an already long day. But once I said I was positive, she popped up as if she’d just adopted me.

Love is like a butterfly. It goes where it pleases and it pleases where it goes. 爱情就像一只胡蝶，它喜好飞到哪里，就把欢乐带到哪里。 Where there is great love, there are always miracles. 哪里有真爱存在，哪里就有古迹。 At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. 每个洗澡在爱河中的人都是诗人。Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. 幸福是一只胡蝶，你要追逐它的时辰，它老是在你前面不远的处所；可是若是你暗暗地坐下来，它或许会落到你身上。Love is not a matter of counting the days. It’s making the days count. 爱情不是数着日子畴昔，它让每个日子都变得成心义。Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have. 爱你的人若是没有按你所但愿的编制来爱你，那实在不代表他们没有经心全意地爱你。Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the person, we will know how to be grateful. 在碰到梦中人之前，上天或许会放置我们先碰到别的人；在我们终究碰见心仪的人时，便应把稳存感激感动。

With the wonder of your love, the sun above always shines. 具有你斑斓的爱情，太阳就永久明媚。Passionate love is a quenchless thirst. 强烈热烈的爱情是不成按捺的巴看。I’ll think of you every step of the way. 我会想你，在漫漫长路的每步。I miss you so much already and I haven’t even left yet! 固然还不曾分开，我已对你朝思暮想！My heart is with you. 我的爱与你同在。The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman’s heart. 在这个世界上，汉子最珍贵的财富就是一个女人的心。She who has never loved, has never lived. 人活着总要爱一回。No words are necessary between two loving hearts. 两颗相爱的心之间不需要言语。Life is the flower for which love is the honey. 生命如花，爱情是蜜。You make my heart smile. 我的心因你而笑。Being with you is like walking on a very clear morning. 和你在一路就像在一个清爽的凌晨安步。One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life.That word is love. 有一个词可让我们摆脱糊口中所有的承担和疾苦，那就是”爱情”。

Over the years I have learned what harm can come from gossip（闲谈，蜚语） or just talking about other people.In my work place, gossip is a big problem, which is heightened by a couple of women who actually feel the need to stretch and twist certain bits of information, simply for the sake of（为了） turning staff against each other.Having been on the receiving end of their back stabbing, I have become very aware of what I say and to whom. I have prayed to God for help in being straightforward with people, and not say anything that might get back to someone who could be hurt by my words.One night, I was on the phone with my sister-in-law, Dawn. I had called her to let her know our husbands would have to work very late that Saturday night due to some machinery problems. She was carrying on about not getting anything done that day since they were due to move out of their apartment by that next Friday. I mentioned that sixteen hours at time-and-a-half pay would certainly make up for it. She was OK with that, but said it would not make much difference when they had to pay the whole next month’s rent if they were not out by the end of the week. I acknowledged her point, but figured either way; they wouldn’t really be out any expected money.The next day, while my husband, Arlo, was helping his brother move, my dad called hoping to also enlist（撑持，参军） Arlo’s help.I have 3-way calling on our phone, so I clicked over and called my brother-in-law’s house, leaving a message on the answering machine for Arlo to call my dad when he could.I clicked back over to my Dad and began telling him about the long day Arlo and his brother had put in. We inadvertently（非专心肠） got on the subject of Dawn, who was not so thrilled about the time they had lost for moving. Dad agreed that for the money they made, it was worth it. Then I mentioned that she should have “gotten off her butt（屁股，烟头） and did something herself.”Monday evening came along and Arlo walked in the house, looked at me, and began laughing as he headed into the next room. He did a sort of double take and said, “Brenda, next time you are talking bad about someone, make sure the three-way calling is disconnected.”Almost immediately I knew what he was talking about, but I wasn’t exactly sure what all I had said.Dawn’s answering machine had picked up the entire conversation between Dad and me!Arlo and his brother thought the situation was hysterical（歇斯底里的） . Of course, men tend not to let things like that get to them. However, I know Dawn well enough to know she would be pretty upset, especially after both of our husbands spent the afternoon laughing at her and making cracks（裂纹） about her lazy butt.Wondering how I was going to fix this one, I stopped by to apologize a couple of times, but Dawn wasn’t around. After a couple of weeks, I finally spoke to her. When she picked up the phone I tried to make a joke of it, but she did not see the humor in it.After this incident, I got to think. Lately, I have become very comfortable with some people and have found myself slipping back（逆流，倒退） into the gossip mode I had worked so hard to get myself out of. I sort of wonder if this was God’s way of washing my mouth out with soap. I certainly didn’t forget the taste when I was a kid.I won’t forget it now.