照料你的夢想

Care for your dream

Dreams really do exist, but in the morning when you wake up, they are remembered just as a dream. That is what happened to me.

I always had a dream to dance. When I was young, I would dance around and around in the fields of wildflowers that grew in my backyard. Reality woke me up when I heard a voice saying: “I don’t know why you bother trying to dance. You don’t have the talent to be a ballerina.” Hearing that, I fell to the ground and wept for hours.

We lived in the country by a lake. My mother always criticized everything because she thought nothing was ever perfect in her life. She dreamed of a different life but she ended up living in the country, far away from the city where she believed her dreams would have come true.

I enjoyed hanging out by the water. I would sit there for hours and stare at my reflection. There I was, looking nothing like a pretty ballerina. Reflections don’t lie. Once the waves came, my reflection would be gone—washed away, just like my dream to dance.

As I grew older I began to realize that the reason why my dream was even born was that it was something that was inside me. The dream I had was never cared for, so it slowly died. It’s not that I wanted it to die, but I allowed it to die the day I started listening to the words: “You can’t do it.” When I finally woke up from many years of dreaming, I realized that I could’t just settle for dancing in the wildflowers, I had to move on to the stage.

【助讀詞匯】

◇ballerina n. 芭蕾舞女

◇reflection n. 倒影，反射，映象

【參考譯文】

照料你的夢想

夢的的確克是存在的，但是早上當你醒來的時候，它們僅僅是記憶里的一個夢。這正是發生我身上的事。

我一直夢想著跳舞。小時候我會在后院那一片野花地里跳來跳去。當我聽見一個聲音說“我不知道你為什么要浪費功夫來嘗試跳舞。你又沒有成為芭蕾舞者的天資”，現實讓我從夢里醒了過來。聽到那聲音，我撲倒在地上，連哭了好幾個小時。

我們住在鄉下一個湖旁邊。媽媽什么事都抱怨，因為她覺得自己生活里每一件事都不如意。她夢想過另外一種生活，結果她卻在鄉下住了下來，離她認為可以實現夢想的城市很遠。

我喜歡在湖邊散步。我可以在那坐上幾個小時，盯著自己的倒影看。我就是這模樣，一點都不像個漂亮的芭蕾舞者。倒影不會騙人。每次波浪蕩過來，我的倒影就消失不見了——被沖掉了，就像我想跳舞的夢想一樣。

長大后，我開始明白，我之所以懷有這個夢想是因為它就在我心里。但是我沒有照料它，它就枯死了。并不是我希望它枯死，但是當我把“你做不到”這句話聽進去的時候，我就放任它枯死了。最后我從多年來的夢中醒來，懂得了在野花叢中起舞是不夠的，得上舞臺去跳。

【人生啟迪】

在一部很有名的好萊塢勵志片《當幸福來敲門》里，一位父親對他的兒子說：“別讓別人說你不能成事，即使是我也不行。如果你有夢想，就得保護它。別人干不了，他們就說你也干不成。如果你想干什么，就去干。”對，想干就干，別愧對你的夢想！