英语美文：学会站起来（打印版）

　Bringing a giraffe into the world is a tall order. A baby giraffe falls 10 feet from its mother' s womb and usually lands on its back. Within seconds it rolls over and tucks its legs under its body. From this position it considers the world for the frist time and shakes off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from its eyes and ears. Then the mother giraffe rudely introduces its offspring to the reality of life.

　　In his book, A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond describes how a newborn giraffe learns its first lesson.

　　The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.

　　When it doesn't get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs.

　　Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they'd get it too, if the mother didn' t teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.

　　The late Irving Stone understood this. He spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing novelized biographies of such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.

　　Stone was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of all these exceptional people. He said,"I write about people who sometime in their life have a vision or dream of something that should be Accomplished and they go to work."

　　"They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified, and for years they get nowhere. But every time they' re knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they've accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do."

　　长颈鹿初到这个世界就如同“从天而降”。小长颈鹿从它妈妈的子宫口掉下地，通常是背部着地，垂直距离有十英尺高。几秒钟之内，它翻过身来，四条腿蜷缩在身体下面。用这个姿势是它第一次打量大千世界，同时抖掉眼睛和耳朵里面残余的羊水。然后，母长颈鹿近乎粗暴地将它带到现实生活中。

　　在《动物园景观》中，盖瑞·瑞奇蒙描述了一只新生的长颈鹿是怎样上它的第一堂课的。

　　母长颈鹿深深地低下头，看了一眼她的新宝宝。然后，它轻移脚步，直直地站在新生儿的上方。等了大概一分钟，接下来它做的是最不合情理的事情了。它向外甩开长长的蹄子，开始踢小长颈鹿，把它们踢得满地打滚。

　　如果小长颈鹿还不站起来，母长颈鹿就接连不断地一次次猛踢。小长颈鹿站立起来是至关重要的。如果小长颈鹿挣扎累了，母长颈鹿一再地去踢、激励它。最后，小家伙终于第一次颤巍巍地站了起来。

　　接着，母长颈鹿再次做出异乎寻常的举动，它再次将小家伙踢倒。为什么呢?它想让小家伙记住自己是怎样站起来的。在野外，小长颈鹿必须尽快地站起来跟上大部队，才能确保安全。小长颈鹿的嫩肉是狮子、土狼、猎豹和野狗都喜欢享用的，假如母长颈鹿没有教会它的孩子怎样很快站起来跟上队伍，小长颈鹿就一定会成为它们的美食。

　　已故的欧文·斯通深谙此理。他一生都在研究伟人的生平，他的传记小说包括米开朗基罗、文森特·梵高、西格蒙德·弗洛伊德和查尔斯·达尔文。

　　一次有人问斯通，是否有一条主线贯穿于这些优秀人物的一生。他说：“我写传记的这些人，在生命中的某个时刻他们想入非非，并且踌躇满志，然后他们着手实施这些梦想。

　　“他们遭到过当头棒喝，被打倒在地，被贬低，甚至多年一事无成。但是每次被打倒后他们又站了起来，这些人是不能被摧毁的。这样，当走到生命尽头时，他们实现了他们既定目标的一小部分。”

英语美文：学会站起来（在线收听）