英語勵(lì)志美文精華 58 I Do a Lot of Office Fishing 辦公室里的垂釣者

I Do a Lot of Office Fishing
by Richard Salmon

Some years ago, I started to look at the stars through high-powered binoculars and began reading books written by astronomers for people like me. I became an entranced stargazer for a while.

The men who have learned as much as we know about the universe point out that the sun is an insignificant, moderately hot star in a nebula where it is fixed. The Milky Way, which I have always wanted to spell “w-h-e-y,” is composed of our brothers and sisters, and we are all moving around a central hub. And the hub is moving toward some place, I don’t know where. My brothers and sisters are numbered in billions of billions, and our galaxy itself is one of many, many…how many, I don’t know.

Our sun is so small and our earth, its offspring, is so tiny that when I think of the magnitude, I think of what O. Henry described as a “Statue of What’s the Use.”

What difference does it make that I exist? What possible influence can I make, or my nation make, or a world make?

Where am I going on this ride and does it make any sense? Who’s the boss and what’s He got in mind?

That’s what I got to thinking…it’s all too big, too inevitable, too uncontrollable, and if I think about it with my eyes closed, it’s a pretty pessimistic picture.

Then one day I saw a hunting dog in the woods, an English setter flecked with black. His tail tangled with dock burs. This is a common occurrence to guys like me. I always want to stop and pull out the burs. But this time, out of nowhere, came the realization that this bounding, healthy dog was performing an important job: the job of transporting seeds that were constructed for the very purpose of hitchhiking. The fluff of milkweed sails on the wind to start a new colony miles from its original parent. This dog and its tangle of dock burs are all part of a plan. And so am I.

I believe the plan on this small, lonely earth is to make the best of it—a policy that is becoming increasingly more difficult as the number of human beings increases.

When I came to New York many years ago, I found that in big cities people live faster and decide things quicker than country folk. They have to, in order to survive in the struggle for existence.

Several times a week I slug it out with city dwellers for a place in the subway. They seem a bad lot. But when I pass a city dweller on a trout stream I find he’s just like other people. He’ll speak to me with interest, even warmth. He will ask me how many trout I’ve taken, what fly was successful. And I break down and tell him, and point out that perhaps the black gnat he’s using is too large.

I have tried to make the best of it by doing a lot of office fishing, some front porch fishing, and some quiet mulling about the magnificent things such as dock burs and remote stars. What’s more, I have found it fun; fun that has brought me a lot of happiness, a lot of contentment, and a lot of peace.