请在此帖中贴出富有人生哲理的散文及小品文。我先开一贴：
Upgrade Your Life - Not Your Computer

By Joseph Phillips.
Date: Feb 24, 2006.

Article Description
Feeling lost, unhappy, and unfulfilled in your life and career? Tech guru Joseph Phillips helps you face the questions and find the answers using — of all things — technology.

It’s the end of the month as I’m writing this, and I have the entire Grand Canyon to myself. Thousands of feet below me, past the fir and pine trees, the Colorado River gurgles southbound. In the distance, the bend of the river catches the sun and shimmies like a shattered mirror.

I position myself on this boulder to soak it all in: the powder-blue sky, the cool wind, the whisper of pines, and a herd of cautious, curious deer just a twig snap away. I’m at the lonesome North Rim of the Grand Canyon, where snow comes early and visitors are sparse. The air is crisp, cool, and smells like Christmas.

Few places in the world can make you and your worries feel as insignificant as the Grand Canyon. Here on the literal edge of civilization with the sun on your face and the wind in your hair, you can accept that your life may end, but this—this majesty—never will. This was here long before you and will be here long after. It’s a peaceful escape from our hectic, instant-everything world.

And then it’s time to leave. Once you climb back in your car and your last view of the canyon fades in your rearview mirror, all those troubles, worries, and realities are straight ahead. All roads in the desert seem destined for disappointment. But trust me; it’s only the desert’s mirage, the pessimistic shadows, and cynicism of lost ambitions. The desert does end.

Where Are You, and What is Your Life About?
Are you in the desert? Do you feel lost? Are you unhappy?

It’s more than career burn-out, isn’t it? You’ve taken vacations before and returned with a renewed vigor to tackle the challenges and seize opportunities to learn and excel. It’s the feeling that you’re not contributing, that once you’re gone everything you’ve ever done won’t matter.

It’s the mini-mansions, job titles, and bigger-and-bigger income contests your friends play with you—and you always seem to be the loser. Their nice homes traded for nicer homes. Their smart homes. Their networked home. Their theatre and plasma-TV-packed homes. Their homes with 2.3 kids and stay-at-home moms, and their lawn services, and everything right at home—everything, that is, but you. And it’s the fight to be happy for them and the fight of your own envy.

It’s the release, or the struggle for release, of purpose. It’s the nod to the release of dreams you believe won’t ever be coming true. It’s the weight on your chest when you think back to summers invested on calico-shaded lawns scheming how your life would turn out. It’s the lump in your throat when you hear a song that captured your youth.

It’s the fear of living in world where you won’t do as well as your parents did. It’s the fear for your children and what tomorrow’s world will bring them. It’s the temptation to trudge along, to forget the past, to ignore the future, and to simply watch the clock until your weekend returns.

I know, because I’ve been there. I thought about it all on that gray boulder. I thought about how once in my life I wanted to be a preacher. And how instead I’ve preached the gospel of technology. And then I thought about how once in my life I wanted to be a writer. And how instead I wrote dozens of novels disguised as technical manuals. And I thought about how I wanted to be an actor. And how instead I acted like I enjoyed working with computers, servers, routers, and building networks.

"Instead" is a very powerful, dangerous word. Instead of my dreams and my ambitions, I chose technology. What have you chosen instead?

My Life, Technically

But technology has been good to me. I’ve been able to be self-employed for a very long time. I’ve worked as a consultant, a writer, and a technical trainer for companies around the globe. I’ve taught classes on designing networks, configuring computer operating systems, and customizing applications for thousands of people.

Computers have allowed me to write books and articles on my consulting adventures, exam guides, and most recently books stemming from my work as an IT project manager. Technology has allowed me to do lots of things: pay my bills, feed my family, and afford me trips to visit places I’d never have been able to visit otherwise.

As much as computers have helped me along, they’ve never been my passion. As much as I’ve enjoyed making computers do the things their manufacturers promise, it’s time to make myself do the things I’ve promised. I’m done with the "instead." And I’m encouraging you to do the same.

On my long drive west from the Grand Canyon, I thought about my first days as computer technician. I thought about my early days upgrading hard drives and network cards, and fumbling through DOS, Macintosh, and the painful Microsoft upgrades.

Technology changes overnight. Something always has to be upgraded, patched, or hot-fixed. Virus definitions constantly need to be updated. New hardware shoves old hardware to the curb. Firmware and software leapfrog one another so often it’s a blur of what’s current, what’s leading edge, and what’s fantasy. Computers always need upgrading—it’s their nature.

But what about our nature? What about our lives?

As I finally eased out of the desert and could see the sun slipping behind Utah’s ruddy mountains, it all became so clear:

Don’t upgrade your computer—upgrade your life!

Choosing Your Operating System

Open your Sunday newspaper, and you’ll be flooded with slick ads for the latest greatest computer. You’ll read about megahertz, kilobits, bandwidth, and new tech toys that are easy to install and easier to use.

Get to work on Monday, and the offers keep pouring in. You’ll be bombarded with information on new laptops, new leases, and new servers—all with excellent information on how technology will make your business better, your clients happier, and your life more successful.

All of these new computers come loaded with an operating system. An operating system, also known as an OS, is just a big program that controls all the hardware and applications you’ve installed, and provides access to network resources like servers, printers, and the Internet. Operating systems (such as Windows XP, Windows 2000, Linux, and Macintosh) utilize the hardware and software installed.

Without an operating system, your computer is dead, you’re having zero fun, and you’re out of luck. Without an OS, your computer might as well be a microwave, a toaster, or a dishwasher.

What If Your Life Were an OS?

If your life were an OS, would you like it? Would you rather uninstall it and get something better? Or would an upgrade do? In life’s operating system, you are the operator and the designer. You are in charge.

Your operating system oversees all areas of your life: your finances, the clients you gain or lose, your health, your desires, your passions, the dreams you dare to live, and the secret dreams you’ve tucked away. The operating system of life is a powerful piece of software that is the intermediary between our true selves, the selves we want to be, and the selves we allow others to see.

If you were going to design a new computer operating system, you’d meet with a computer programmer. He’d put on his horn-rimmed glasses and interview you to discover what you’d like in your OS. He’d need to know about what you want to do with your OS and why you’d want these elements built into it.

If you decide to design a new life, you have to recognize the values you’d like in your life. All of us have a short list of wishes, but do any of us have a robust, definite list of what we’d like in our lives? How about:

Happiness at home, school, and work
Someone to love and be loved by
A healthier body
A loving family
More time for your children, your parents, and yourself
A more spiritual existence
A meaningful career
What would you put into your ideal life? If you were going to upgrade an OS, you’d need to tell the programmer what you’d like. Guess what? In the OS of life, you are the programmer—no horn-rimmed glasses needed! The problem most of us have in finding success is we know what we don’t want, but can’t put our finger on what we do want.

To upgrade your life, you must determine the elements, the qualities, and the values you desire. Think of the attributes associated with an ideal life: peace, love, family, satisfaction, happiness, and more. Realize now, the success of life does not stem from possessions, desire, greed, or contempt. The success of life, the heart of life, is made of invisible elements you can’t buy or borrow. These invisible elements are created by your thoughts, your actions upon those thoughts, and the consequences of your actions.

Building the OS Requirements

Examine your work, your activities, and your relationships and how they contribute or deduct from the values you desire. Like a programmer, you must add to the momentum of what’s successful and re-code, re-design, or even delete the areas of your life that are not.

As the programmer, determine the values you will add to your life. Create a list of values and the corresponding activities that you currently have or can add to your life. This list will serve as the requirements for your new operating system.

When you power on a computer, the hardware kicks in first. Then, once the devices have power, the OS takes over. Any operating system is only as reliable as the hardware in place to support it. It’s a delicate balance between the ability of the programmer and the quality of hardware manufacturer to provide a stable OS to deliver on its promises.

Your operating system, the one you’ve described and made a commitment to build, is a work in progress. You’ll be working on perfecting your OS for the rest of your very exciting life! It won’t be easy, and your friends and colleagues might think you’re crazy for following through on your decisions in order achieve your goals. Ignore the skeptics. These people can’t understand your level of commitment or your desire to upgrade your life. Use their doubts and barbs as inspiration to keep moving on your plan to reach your goals.

These skeptics and critics, however, will eventually envy your happiness, your boldness, and your talent to control the facets of life. Don’t celebrate their envy; befriend them and share the secrets you’ve discovered. Helping others creates and contributes to the worth and success of life.

Like a programmer who creates a computer’s OS, it takes trial and error, testing and retesting, and a steady effort. Commit to do one step, one activity, one effort each day towards achieving your goals. If you will, you’ll meet and exceed any goal you create.

A good programmer will evaluate the goal of a project, and then use a process to break down the required work into all of the deliverables the OS will include. This process is called decomposing the work and it results in a work breakdown structure (WBS).

Once the WBS is created and the deliverables of the project have been identified, it’s time to create the activity list. The activity list includes all the tasks required to build the items in the WBS. Once you create the list, you can then put them into the order they should, or must, happen.

When you’re finished, you’ll have a logical approach to achieving your goal. The hard part, just as in a technical implementation, is following the plan. One of the benefits of taking a complex goal and breaking down the work is discovering that the individual steps aren’t as tough to tackle as achieving the goal in one step. In other words, you don’t eat a watermelon in one bite.

Now you must find motivation, inspiration, and internal desire. The best source of motivation is to revisit the values you’ve identified to add to your life. How much better, happier, and healthier will you be when you add these values to your life? How will achieving this goal add love, create compassion, and success? Make a commitment to visit your value list often to find momentum, inspiration, and reason to achieve your goals.

After you’ve identified the steps to complete the work, you must create a deadline. A deadline creates a commitment. Without a deadline, you’ll have no sense of urgency to complete your goals. Imagine a programmer tasked with creating an OS with no deadline assigned. This programmer may work on the assignment initially, but soon the project will get pushed aside, lost, and forgotten. The same is true when it comes to designing your life. Each goal must have a deadline. A goal without a deadline is nothing more than a wish.

In order to upgrade your life, you have to leave the Grand Canyon, the desert, and any dreamy regrets and self-pity. Nothing happens without action. I challenge you to take the first step to upgrade your life. And then the next step, and the next.

Push away from technology and run to your ambitions!

好长

长是长了点，就当是每周的阅读材料吧。