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大学英语自学教程（下）电子版
second, that if we now have a pet, we let it be our last one. l could never say that pets are bad. I am saying, let's give up this good thing -- the ownership of a pet -- in favor of a more imperative good.
The purchase, the health care, the feeding and housing and training of a pet -- and I chiefly mean the larger, longer-lived pets -- cost time and money. Depending on the animal's size and activity, it's special tastes and needs, and the standard of living we establish for it, the care of a pet can cost from a dollar a week to a dollar or more a day. I would not for a moment deny it is worth that.
But facts outside the walls of our home keep breaking in on our awareness. Though we do not see the poverty-stricken people of India and Africa and South America, we can never quite forget that they are there. Now and then their faces are shown in the news, or in the begging ads of relief organizations. Probably we send a donation whenever we can.
But we do not, as a rule, feel a heavy personal responsibility for the afflicted and deprived for we are pretty thoroughly formed by the individualistic, competitive society we live in. The first dime we ever made was ours to spend in any way we chose. No one thought of questioning that. That attitude, formed before we had learned to think, usually prevails through our life: \my money. I can spend it any way I like.”
But more and more we are reading that the people of the \developed countries (with the United States far more developed than any of the others) for our seizing hold
of two-thirds of the world's wealth and living like kings while they work away all day to earn a bare living.
The money and the time we spend on pets is simply not our own to spend as we like in a time of widespread want and starvation. A relief organization advertises that for $33 a month they can give hospital care to a child suffering from kwashiorkor -- the severe deficiency disease which is simply a starving for protein. Doing without such a pet, and then sending the money saved to a relief organization would mean saving a life -- over the years, several human lives.
Children not suffering from such a grave disease could be fed with half that amount -- not on a diet like ours, but on plain, basic, life-sustaining food. It is not unreasonable to believe that the amount of money we spend on the average pet dog could keep a child alive in a region of great poverty. To give what we would spend on a cat might not feed a child, but it would probably pay for his medical care or basic education. The point needs no laboring. That is all that need be said.
12-A. Let Your Mind Wander
Until recently daydreaming was generally considered either a waste of time or a symptom of neurotic tendencies, and habitual daydreaming was regarded as evidence of maladjustment or an
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大学英语自学教程（下）电子版
escape from life抯 realities and responsibilities. It was believed that habitual daydreaming would eventually distance people from society and reduce their effectiveness in coping with real problems. At its best, daydreaming was considered a compensatory substitute for the real things in life.
As with anything carried to excess, daydreaming can be harmful. There are always those who would substitute fantasy lives for the rewards of real activity. But such extremes are relatively rare, and there is a growing body of evidence to support the fact that most people suffer from a lack of daydreaming rather than an excess of it. We are now beginning to learn how valuable it really is and that when individuals are completely prevented from daydreaming, their emotional balance can be disturbed. Not only are they less able to deal with the pressures of day-to-day existence, but also their self-control and self-direction become endangered.
Recent research indicates that daydreaming is part of daily life and that a certain amount each day is essential for maintaining equilibrium. Daydreaming, science has discovered, is an effective relaxation technique. But its beneficial effects go beyond this. Experiments show that daydreaming significantly contributes to intellectual growth, powers of concentration, and the ability to interact and communicate with others.
In an experiment with schoolchildren in New York, Dr. Joan Freyberg observed improved concentration: \the group, and more attention paid to detail.\
In another experiment at Yale University, Dr. Jerome Singer found that daydreaming resulted in improved self-control and enhanced creative thinking ability. Daydreaming, Singer pointed out, is one way individuals can improve upon reality. It is, he concluded, a powerful spur to achievement.
'But the value of daydreaming does not stop here. It has been found that it improves a person's ability to be better adapted to practical, immediate concerns, to solve everyday problems, and to come up more readily with new ideas. Contrary to popular belief, constant and conscious effort at solving a problem is, in reality, one of the most inefficient ways of coping with it. While conscious initial effort is always necessary, effective solutions to especially severe problems frequently occur when conscious attempts to solve them have been put off. Inability to relax, to let go of a problem, often prevents its solution.
Historically, scientists and inventors are one group that seems to take full advantage of relaxed moments. Their biographies reveal that their best ideas seem to have occurred when they were relaxing and daydreaming. It is well known, for example, that Newton solved many of his toughest problems when his attention was waylaid by private musings. Thomas Alva Edison also knew the value of \to be dealt with, he would stretch out on his laboratory sofa and let fantasies flood his mind. Painters, writers, and composers also have drawn heavily on their sensitivity to inner fantasies. Debussy used to gaze at the River Seine and the golden reflections of the setting sun to establish
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大学英语自学教程（下）电子版
an atmosphere for creativity. Brahms found that ideas came effortless only when he approached a state of deep daydreaming. And Cesar Frank is said to have walked around with a dreamlike gaze while composing, seemingly totally unaware of his surroundings.
Many successful people actually daydreamed their successes and achievements long before they realized them. Henry J. Kaiser maintained that \that a great part of his business success was due to positive use of daydreams. Harry S. Truman said that he used daydreaming for rest. Conrad Hilton dreamed of operating a hotel when he was a boy. He recalled that all his accomplishments were first realized in his imagination.
\living starts with a picture, held in some person's imagination, of what he would like someday to do or be. Florence Nightingale dreamed of being a nurse. Edison pictured himself an inventor; all such characters escaped the mere push of circumstance by imagining a future so vividly that they headed for it? These are the words of the well-known thinker Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, and they show that people can literally daydream themselves to success. Fosdick, aware of the wonderful power of positive daydreaming. offered this advice: \a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself as winning and that will contribute remarkably to success. Do not picture yourself as anything, and you will drift like an abandoned ship at sea.\
To get the results, you should picture yourself -- as vividly as possible -- as you want to be. The important thing to remember is to picture these desired objectives as if you had already attained them. Go over several times the details of these pictures. This will deeply impress them on your memory, and these memory traces will soon start influencing your everyday behavior toward the attainment of the goal.
While exercising your imagination, you should be alone and completely undisturbed. Some individuals seem to have the ability to tune into their private selves in the midst of the noisiest crowds or company. But most of us, especially when the experience is new, require an environment free from outside distraction.
A life lived without fantasy and daydreaming is a seriously impoverished one. Each of us should put aside a few minutes daily, taking short 10- or 15-minute vacations. Daydreaming is highly beneficial to your physical and mental well-being, and you will find that this modest, inexpensive investment in time will add up to a more creative and imaginative, a more satisfied, and a more self-fulfilled you. It offers us a fuller sense of being intensely alive from moment to moment, and this, of course, contributes greatly to the excitement and joy of living.
12-B. To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
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大学英语自学教程（下）电子版
So you awoke this morning in a miserable mood. Well, maybe your special dream character didn't put in an appearance last night, or maybe there just weren't enough people drifting through your dreams.
If that sounds like far-fetched fantasy, consider these interesting findings that have emerged from eight years of sleep and dream research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio:
While sleep affects how sleepy, friendly, aggressive, and unhappy we feel after awakening, feelings of happiness or unhappiness depend most strongly on our dreams.
Each of us has a special dream character, a type of person whose appearance in our dreams makes us feel happier when we awake.
What we dream at night isn't as important to how we feel in the morning as the number of people who appear in our dreams. The more people, the better we feel.
Our sleep influences our mood. Our mood, in turn, affects our performance. And throughout the day, our levels of mood and performance remain closely linked.
During the past two decades, research has greatly expanded our knowledge about sleep and dreams. Scientists have identified various stages of sleep, and they have found that humans can function well on very little sleep, but only if they dream. Yet the true function of sleep and dreaming continues to elude precise explanation.
In 1970 Milton Kramer and Thomas Roth, researchers at the VA Hospital and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, respectively, raised this question: Do our moods in the morning relate in any way to our sleep and dreams the previous night?
Human experience suggests that they do. Certainly we generally feel better after a good night抯 sleep. But Drs. Kramer and Roth sought a much more definitive answer. And that answer, though still evolving, is a positive yes.
Kramer and Roth began by seeking to determine whether one's mood differs between night and morning, and whether this is related directly to sleep. They found that there is a difference, and it is definitely related to sleep. Then they explored the various aspects of mood and their relationship to the various stages of sleep and dreaming.
What does a good night's sleep mean to our mood? Generally we are happier, less aggressive, sleepier, and, a bit surprisingly, less friendly. Being sleepier is easily explained. It simply takes a little time to become fully alert after awakening.
But why should we feel less friendly? Here the researchers must speculate a little. They suggest the answer may be the lack of association with other humans during the period of sleep.
Once the two doctors established scientifically what common sense and folk wisdom had long taught -- namely, that there is link between sleep and how we feel -- they set out to learn what parts of our mood are related to which specific parts of the sleep cycle.
Normal sleep is broken into five distinct parts -- Stages 1 through 4, plus REM, an acronym for rapid eye movement. Much remains unknown about each of the five sleep stages. Most dreaming
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