常想一二

朋友买来纸笔砚台，请我题几个字挂在他新居客厅墙壁上。我便在朋友面前展纸、磨墨，写了四个字：“常想一二”。

朋友说：“这是什么意思？”

我说：“俗话说，‘人生不如意事十常八九’，但扣除八九成的不如意，至少还有一二成是如意的、快乐的、欣慰的事情。我们如果要过快乐人生，就要常想那一二成好事，这样就会感到庆幸，懂得珍惜，不致被八九成的不如意所打倒了。”

我从小喜欢阅读大人物的传记和回忆录，慢慢归纳出一个公式：凡是大人物都是受苦受难的，他们的生命几乎就是“人生不如意事十常八九”的真实证言，但他们在面对苦难时，都能保持思考，能“常想一二”。最后，他们超越苦难，苦难便化成生命中最肥沃的养料。

原来如意或不如意，并不是决定于人生的际遇，而是取决于思想的瞬间。因此，决定生命品质的不是八九，而是一二。

My friend invited me to his new home. He got ready with paper, Chinese writing-brush, and inkstand, asking me to write a scroll so that he could hang it on the wall of the drawing-room as a decoration. I agreed and spread the desk, rubbed the inkstick against the inkstand and wrote, “Often Remind Yourself of the 10 or 20%.”

“What do you mean by it？”

“As an old saying goes,‘80 or even 90% of the things that happen to one in one’s lifetime are unsatisfactory,’the remaining 10 or 20% should be satisfactory, pleasant or enjoyable,” I explained. “If we want a happy life, the best we can do is to remind ourselves of this part of things. By doing so we’ll feel that we are after all favored by fortune. We’ll treasure the happy things, and fend off the unsatisfactory things that outnumber them so overwhelmingly. ”

Since childhood I have been fond of famous personages’ biographies and memoirs. From them I’ve drawn a conclusion: as a rule the course of their advancement is a process of suffering, a witness to the truth of the above-mentioned saying. When confronted with hardships, however, they never lose their spirits. They often remind themselves of the 10 or 20% to help them surmount difficulties. Finally all hardships and obstacles in their way are turned into most valuable nutrients to faster their growth and success.

Thus whether a thing is favorable to one or not depends not on whether it offers an opportunity but on how one looks upon it at the moment. At the root of it, what one’s life is like pivots on the 10 or 20% rather than the 80 or 90%. （摘自2010年4月《英语沙龙》）