Unit 9 Facing Life’s ChallengesA Famous Quote:The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.- Franklin Delano RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt(1882-1945), the 32nd President of the United States (1933-1945), he led the nation out of the Great Depression and later into World War II. Before he died, he cleared the way for peace, including establishment of the United Nations. His presidency is widely regarded as one of the greatest in US history.Text A: 300 HurdlesPre-reading Questions:1. Have you ever done hurdles? What do you think of it?2. What kinds of difficulties and challenges have you ever met in your life?Life may give you negative, but don’t despair – it may just develop into a beautiful picture one day. This year, I realized my theory that I have on life. Life is like a 300m hurdle race. Since I run the 300m hurdles, I would know what the race is like.The first thing to any race is worrying about whether you are going to win or not. This relates to worrying about the petty things in life. Does it really matter if you win? Is it really going to be the end of the world? Or will you be upset if you lose and forget about it? In life we worry too much and live in the moment too little.Next is the lining up in our own individual lanes. We each start at different spots, but the race is still the same distance for everyone. This relates to our lives taking us to different places and putting us in different situations, but hopefully we will end up in the same place, but maybe at different times.Now comes the beginning of the race. We all try to keep up with everyone and pace ourselves with other people. This symbolizes that at times in everyone’s lives we worry about fitting in or being the same as other people, instead of worrying about being unique. If anyone were the same, the world would be incredibly boring.Now comes the first hurdle. This hurdle is the easiest to get over because you are not worn out from running. We all make it over this hurdle with ease. This symbolizes those obstacles in life that we struggle to get over, but wealways manage to do so. You can look at that hurdle in two ways: “I can’t make it over, I’m tired” or “I am one more hurdle closer to finishing this race.” This is an example of taking a negative situation and seeing something positive in it.The next part of the race is every hurdle between the first and the last one. These hurdles get tougher and tougher and you may feel as though you can’t go on. This happens a lot in life too. There may be a situation that arises where you feel as though you can’t make it and all you can think is giving up. You may fall over that “hurdle” or struggle getting over it, but somehow you find it in yourself to jump over it and move on with the race.Next is that last 100m of the race. You feel as though you just want to say, “No I can’t do this.” Again, you must find it in yourself that you can do it, and you must finish the race stronger than when you had started it.Now lastly is the last hurdle. This hurdle is the toughest out of all of them. In life we find ourselves falling and falling, and maybe getting too lost in our problems that we feel like we have been through enough and there’s no hope. That last hurdle symbolizes these situations. It’s one step close to the end of the race.Once you finish, you look back on it and you realize that you made it not by leaping, but step by step. “Yard by yard, life is very hard. But inch by inch, life can be a cinch.”All it takes is one step at a time, one hurdle at a time.Text B A Violin with Three StringsPre-reading Questions:1. Do you know anyone that is/was deprived of something in life but still leads/led asuccessful or brilliant life?2. How do you understand the slogan “Nothing is impossible”?On Nov. 18th, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.He walks painfully, yet majestically, until the reaches his chair. Then hesits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap – it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.We figured that he would have to get up, put on the claps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage – to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn’t. instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-turning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said – not boastfully, but in quiet, pensive, reverent tone –“You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much you can still make with what you have left.”What a powerful line that is! It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life – not just for artists, but for all of us.Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin with four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable,than any that he had ever before, when he had four strings.So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with that we have left.。
