Wherever you are, and whoever you may be, there is one thing in which you and I are just alike at this moment, and in all the moments of our existence: we are not at rest; we are on a journey. Our life is a movement, a tendency, a steady, ceaseless progress towards an unseen goal. We are gaining something, or losing something, everyday. Even when our position and our character seem to remain precisely the same, they are changing. For the mere advance of time is a change. It is not the same thing to have a bare field in January and in July. The season makes the difference. The limitations that are childlike in the child are childish in the man.
Everything that we do is a step in one direction or another. Even the failure to do something is in itself a deed. It sets us forward or backward. The action of the negative pole of a magnetic needle is just as real as the action of the positive pole. To decline is to accept—the other alternative.
Are you nearer to your port today than you were yesterday? Yes,—you must be a little nearer to some port or other; for since your ship was first launched upon the sea of life, you have never been still for a single moment; the sea is too deep, you could not find an anchorage if you would; there can be no pause until you come into port.
不论你处在什么地方，也不论你是什么人，不管是在此时此刻，还是在我们生命中的任何一个瞬间，有一件事对你我来说是恰巧相同的：我们不是在休息，我们是在一次旅途中。我们的生活是一种运动、一种趋势，是向一个看不见的目标稳定而不停地前进。每一天，我们都会赢得某些东西，或者会失去某些东西。甚至当我们的位置和我们的性格看起来跟以前完全相似时，它们事实上仍然在变化着。因为仅仅时间的前进就是—种变化。对于一块荒地来说，在一月和七月是不同的，季节会制造差异。能力上的缺陷对孩子来说是一种可爱的品质，但对大人来说就是一种幼稚的表现。
我们做的每一件事都是朝着一个或另一个方向前进一步。甚至“没有做任何事情”这件事本身也是一种行为，它让我们前进或后退。一根磁针阴极的作用和阳极的作用都是一样的真实；拒绝也是一种接受——这些都是二择一的选择。
你今天比昨天更接近你的港口了吗？是的——你必须接近某一个港口或者其他港口。自从你第一次被抛入生活之海，你的船连一分钟都没有静止过。海是如此之深，你不可能找到一个抛锚的地方，因此你也不可能停下来，直到抵达自己的港口。
tendency ['tendnsi] n. 趋势；倾向
For your information, the tendency of this market is still uncertain.
根据你的数据，这个市场的趋向仍然不确定。
magnetic [m鎔'netik] adj. 有磁性的；有吸引力的；催眠术的
The loop becomes magnetic when the current is switched on.
通电时线圈就会有磁性。
launch [l:nt] v. 投掷；使……升空；发射
The ship launched in the direction of Japan.
船起航前往日本。
anchorage ['鎘rid] n. 下锚；停泊所；停泊税
The vessel tax of anchorage is 5000 dollars per year.
这艘船的停泊税一年是五千美元。
能力上的缺陷对孩子来说是一种可爱的品质，但对大人来说就是一种幼稚的表现。
我们做的每一件事都是朝着一个或另一个方向前进一步。
海是如此之深，你不可能找到一个抛锚的地方，因此你也不可能停下来，直到抵达自己的港口。
It is not the same thing to have a bare field in January and in July. The season makes the difference.
make the difference：区别对待；起（重要）作用；有影响
The action of the negative pole of a magnetic needle is just as real as the action of the positive pole.
just as：同样地；正如
我们为学习而来
We're All Here to Learn
佚名 / Anonymous
"Sixteen, " I said. I have forgotten the math question my second-grade teacher, Joyce Cooper, asked that day, but I will never forget my answer. As soon as the number left my mouth, the whole class at Smallwood Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia, started laughing. I felt like the stupidest person in the world.
Mrs. Cooper fixed them with a stern look. Then she said, "We' re all here to learn."
Another time, Mrs. Cooper asked us to write a report about what we hoped to do with our lives. I wrote, "I want to be a teacher like Mrs. Cooper."
She wrote on my report, "You would make an outstanding teacher because you are determined and you try hard." I was to carry those words in my heart for the next 27 years.
After I graduated from high school in 1976, I married a wonderful man, Ben, a mechanic. Before long, Latonya was born.
We needed every dime just to get by. College and teaching was out of the question. I did, however, wind up with a job in a school—as a janitor' s assistant. I cleaned 17 classrooms at Larrymore Elmentary School each day, including Mrs. Cooper' s. She had transferred to Larrymore after Smallwood closed down.
I would tell Mrs. Cooper that I still wanted to teach, and she would repeat the words she had written on my report years earlier. But bills always seemed to get in the way.
Then one day in 1986 I thought of my dream, of how badly I wanted to help children. But to do that I needed to arrive in the mornings as a teacher—not in the afternoons to mop up.
I talked it over with Ben and Latonya, and it was settled: I would enroll at Old Dominion University. For seven years I attended classes in the mornings before work. When I got home from work, I studied. On days I had no classes to attend, I worked as a teaching assistant for Mrs. Cooper.
Sometimes I wondered whether I had the strength to make it. When I got my first failing grade, I talked about quitting. My younger sister Helen refused to hear it. "You want to be a teacher, " she said. "If you stop, you' ll never reach your dream."
Helen knew about not giving up—she' d been fighting diabetes. When either of us got down, she would say, "You' re going to make it. We' re going to make it."
In 1987, Helen, only 24, died of kidney failure related to diabetes. It was up to me to make it for both of us.
On May 8, 1993, my dream day arrived—graduation. Getting my college degree and state teaching license officially qualified me to be a teacher.
I interviewed with three schools. At Coleman Place Elementary School, principal Jeanne Tomlinson said, "Your face looks so familiar." She had worked at Larrymore more than 10 years earlier. I had cleaned her room, and she remembered me.
Still, I had no concrete offers. The call came when I had just signed my 18th contract as a janitor' s assistant. Coleman Place had a job for me teaching fifth grade.
Not long after I started, something happened that brought the past rushing back. I had written a sentence full of grammatical errors on the blackboard. Then I asked students to come and correct the mistakes.