上周参加一对来自澳洲的学者夫妇的两场讲座，题目分别是：Success in Life 和 How to be a good parent，颇有体会和感悟。在日记中记下他们妙语连珠。为体现他们语言的原汁原味，我还是用英文直接放在日记中吧。个人感觉，在语言翻译的过程中，即使意思保留了原意，但意境很有可能已经缺失了。

To find a suitable partner in life, a person need have three Ps. They are purpose, perseverance and patience.

First, purpose means you should have a clear mind that what kind of partner you want to find in your life. Just as when you go shopping to buy a shoe, you should know what style, size, color, etc. you will choose beforehand, otherwise, you will probably be confused by those various kinds of shoes in the shopping mall. Some people even go to the clothes section when they want to buy shoes, obviously, that is against their previously set purpose and unwise as everyone can see. However, this kind of unwise behavior is very common in our real life.

Second, perseverance means keeping and even sticking to the set goals in life and do not always easily change them. Life is a long journey and we may meet various kinds of seduction unavoidably. If we have no steadfast brief in life, how can we live with our partner in the whole life? Life need tolerance, understanding, appreciation, respect, and love when living each other. In the nature, we may notice that the water in the river will never change its direction just because of an obstacle, like an island or a big stone, in front, and that the waterfall will always tremendously fall down and also never turn back.

Last but not least, we put patience as the last criteria not because it is of the least importance, but because we must obey this order, purpose, perseverance and patience, when we seek our soul mate. If we put patience in the first, things will become stupid or patience may equal to laziness. In Australian, there are some old jokes regarding this: a lazy man is sleeping in the sunshine at noon, and another kind man suggests him to sleep under the tree to avoid the harmful sunshine. However, the lazy man answers: “I am waiting for the sun to move to that direction thus I may sleep in the shadow of the true.” Another funny joke is like this: a hungry man is sleeping under an apple tree, and another man advises him to climb the tree to eat apples, but the hungry man says that he is waiting the apple to fall into his mouth! How patient these two lazy men in jokes are! So, we should have clear purpose and strong perseverance at first, and then we talk about patience.

Concerning the How to be a Good Parent section of their lecture, the most impressive part is that we should use positive words to teach children and avoid negative words.

就写这些了。新年即将到来，希望自己也希望大家都能找到suitable partner.