BBC Take Away English (Do you ne

你是否一直想学跳探戈、变魔术或者跳伞？如果你有这样的一个愿望，也许你需要一份 “人生愿望清单”，列出你死亡前想做的所有事情。这样一份清单听起来很棒，但也有人指责它限制了人们的想象力，因为它鼓励人们追随他人对完美生活的看法。本期随身英语讨论是不是每个人都需要有一份愿望清单。

article

‘Life is for living’, according to the well-used expression: What we choose to do is up to us. That may not be completely true, but there is no harm in dreaming about what we’d like to achieve in our life. Many of us write a list of things we’d like to do before we die – often called a bucket list.

Bucket lists have been called ‘the greatest hits of your life’ and have helped some people overcome anxiety which would have stopped them following their dreams. Some of us may choose to write one to fill our life with exciting and new experiences – from skydiving to swimming with sharks – the list is unlimited.

This is something the BBC radio programme All In The Mind has been looking at. It heard from a blogger called Annette White who said she made a promise to live her bucket list which “continuously pushes the comfort zone to its limits and beyond it.” Such a list can be exciting and can indeed help you plan your life and give you focus. When the BBC reporter Helen Fawkes knew she was suffering from incurable ovarian cancer, she took comfort in drawing up a bucket list -although she called it her ‘list for living’ because these were things for making the most of life. Sadly, she was not able to achieve all of her 50 things before she died at the age of 45.

Creating a bucket list can certainly give us hope, but some people have argued it can be used as a coping strategy to try to control something uncontrollable – death. Clinical psychologist Linda Blair told the BBC that she was “not really in favour of bucket lists… [they] take you away from the chance to be spontaneous.” It’s probably true that a list can encourage people to follow someone else’s idea of the perfect life. And also, following a fixed list of goals makes you less impulsive - your aims and wishes might change as you approach the day when you finally kick the bucket.

But why not at least dream of what we would like to do? Why not reach for the stars, even if we only reach the sky? Whether we want to plan it or just see what happens, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so maybe we should live for today.

vocabulary

life is for living 活出精彩
bucket list 人生愿望清单
anxiety 焦虑
experience 经历
skydiving 跳伞运动
comfort zone 舒适区
to its limits 到……最大限度
focus 专注的重点，中心
take comfort 从……中得到安慰
coping strategy 应对策略
uncontrollable 无法控制的
in favour of 支持，赞同
spontaneous 自发的，本能的
goal 目标
impulsive 冲动的
kick the bucket 死亡
reach for the stars 追求难以实现的东西
live for today 活在当下

make sentences

1. Dan needs to be pushed out of his comfort zone if he wants to further his career.

2. News that someone had spotted our missing cat gave us hope that she will eventually return home.

3. We chose Thailand in favour of Vietnam for our holiday because we got a good price for a flight.

4. The audience was so impressed with his speech, they broke into spontaneous applause even before he had finished.

5. Finally, my old car has decided to kick the bucket. I am going to have to buy a new one.

@ BBC Learning English