天津阅读 Rd017・2021_03 阅读理解

Job for You!

Family Alliance Meal Delivery** Family Alliance is looking for people who can deliver hot Chinese meals one to two times a week for people with disabilities in north suburban Fairfield County. All applicants must have a driver’s license and access to a car. Gas will be covered for each delivery. Working hours: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays For more information, contact Charles Chen at cchen@famd.com Or call 740-6668988

Lancaster Design** We provide full furnishings, like donated kitchen equipment and furniture items, for the new homes of people who were once homeless. We need people who can work at our warehouse (仓库) sorting and packing items to be delivered to families, repair donated furniture and more. Candidates will be matched with a task based on skill set. Interested? Submit your application to www.lancasterdesign.org Or call 740-6119735

Lancaster Weekly** Would you like the opportunity to earn extra cash close to home? If so we have a vacancy in our team which would suit you. Both adults and youngsters aged 13+ are required to deliver our newspaper. You may have to cover some distance. Bicycles are available if needed. Working hours: 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Saturdays For more information Call 740-6538360

Parkview Nursing Home** Caregivers are wanted. We seek people who are patient and caring, and who have experience and interest in working with older adults. As part of the package, initial and follow-up training sessions are provided and accommodation is available if required. For more details, visit us at Unit 3 Park View Lane Or contact Ellen White at 740-6968399

About five weeks ago, I noticed the skin of our pet lizard (蜥蜴) was growing dusty. It worried me. I reported the strange surface on the skin of the lizard to my husband and children the next morning. Seconds later, our lizard emerged from its tank with its old skin flowing behind it.

I didn’t think about it much until a morning last week when I knocked my favorite teapot off the table. It burst into hundreds of pieces. As I swept up the mess, I wondered why we had been breaking so many things over the months.

The destruction started three months ago. It was my husband’s birthday. He had just lost his job. The uncertainty was starting to wear on us, so I wanted to do something special.

“Let’s make a cake for Dad!” I cried.

My kids screamed with joy. We baked, iced and sprinkled for most of the day. Candles on the cake! Balloons on the walls! Flowers on the table!

Two hours before my husband came back home from another job interview, my daughter climbed up to grab a glass vase from a high shelf. It fell and crashed beside the cake. Tiny pieces of glass were everywhere. She sobbed loudly as I threw the cake away. My husband had banana pudding for his birthday.

Three days ago, the light in our living room suddenly went out. After several frustrating hours of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, my husband suggested watching the Michael Jordan documentary (纪录片) series The Last Dance.

The poignancy (酸楚) of Jordan retiring from his beloved basketball to play baseball and what had pushed him to make such a tough decision took me by surprise. As I watched him take off his basketball uniform and replace it with a baseball uniform, I saw him leaving behind the layer that no longer served him, just as our lizard had. Neither of them chose the moment that had transformed them. But they had to live with who they were after everything was different. Just like us. I realized that we have to learn to leave the past behind.

Humans do not shed skin (蜕皮) as easily as other animals. The beginning of change is upsetting. The process is tiring. Damage changes us before we are ready. I see our lizard, raw and nearly new.

Jordan said that no matter how it ends, it starts with hope. With our tender, hopeful skin, that is where we begin.

A trial project by the Montreal Children’s Hospital suggested that the use of medical hypnosis (催眠) can reduce pain and anxiety in patients. The project also resulted in a reduction in the amount of medicines used to perform medical-imaging (医学影像) procedures.

“During the examination children don’t move. It works perfectly. It’s amazing,” said Johanne L’Ecuyer, a medical-imaging technologist at the hospital.

The project was inspired by a French team from Rouen University Hospital Centre where examinations are done under hypnosis instead of general anesthesia (麻醉).

A French medical-imaging technologist—also a hypnotist—was invited to train a few members in the medical-imaging department of the children’s hospital. In all, 80 examinations were conducted for the project between January and September, 2019, focusing on the imaging procedures that would cause anxiety.

Hypnosis is not a state of sleep: It is rather a modified (改变的) state of consciousness. The technologist will guide the patient to this modified state—an imaginary world that will disassociate itself more and more from the procedure that follows.

“The technologist must build up a story with the patient,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. “The patient is left with the power to choose what he wants to talk about. Do you play sports? Do you like going to the beach? We establish a subject that we will discuss throughout the procedure.”

Everything that happens next during the procedure must be related to this story—an injection (注射) becomes the bite of an insect; the heat on the skin becomes the sensation of the sun and a machine that rings becomes a police car passing nearby.

“The important thing is that the technologist associates what is happening outside the patient’s body with what the patient sees in his head,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. “It requires creativity on the part of the technologist, imagination, a lot of patience and kindness.”

The procedure appealed to the staff a lot when it was introduced in January. “It spread like wildfire that someone from France was here to train the technologists,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. She added that she had a line of staff at her door wanting to take the training.

There is something to be said for being a generalist, even if you are a specialist. Knowing a little about a lot of things that interest you can add to the richness of a whole, well-lived life.

Society pushes us to specialize, to become experts. This requires commitment to a particular occupation, branch of study or research. The drawback to being specialists is we often come to know more and more about less and less. There is a great deal of pressure to master one’s field. You may pursue training, degrees, or increasing levels of responsibility at work. Then you discover the pressure of having to keep up.

Some people seem willing to work around the clock in their narrow specialty. But such commitment can also weaken a sense of freedom. These specialists could work at the office until ten each night, then look back and realize they would have loved to have gone home and enjoyed the sweetness of their family and friends, or traveled to exciting places, meeting interesting people. Mastering one thing to the exclusion (排除) of others can hold back your true spirit.

Generalists, on the other hand, know a lot about a wide range of subjects and view the whole with all its connections. They are people of ability, talent, and enthusiasm who bring their broad perspective (视角) into specific fields of expertise (专长). The doctor who is also a poet and philosopher is a superior doctor, one who can give so much more to his patients than just good medical skills.

Things are connected. Let your expertise in one field fuel your passions in all related areas. Some of your interests may not appear to be connected but, once you explore their depths, you discover that they are. My editor Toni, who is also a writer, has edited several history books. She has decided to study Chinese history. Fascinated by the structural beauty of the Forbidden City as a painter, she is equally interested to learn more about Chinese philosophy. “I don’t know where it will lead, but I’m excited I’m on this pursuit.”

These expansions into new worlds help us by giving us new perspectives. We begin to see the interconnectedness of one thing to another in all aspects of our life, of ourselves and the universe. Develop broad, general knowledge and experience. The universe is all yours to explore and enjoy.