I had an experience some years ago, which taught me
something about the ways in which people make a bad situation worse by
themselves. One January, I had to hold two funerals on successive days for two
elderly women in my community. Both had died “full of years”, as the Bible
would say .Their homes happened to be near each other, so I paid condolence(吊唁)calls on the two families on the same afternoon.
At the first home, the son of the deceased woman said
to me, ”If only I had sent my mother to Florida and gotten her out of this cold
and snow, she would be alive today. It’s my fault that she died. ”At the second
home, the son of the other deceased woman said, “If only I hadn’t insisted on
my mother’s going to Florida, she would be alive today .That long airplane
ride, the sudden change of climate ,was more than she could take．It’s my fault that she’s dead.”
You see that any time there is a death, the survivors
will feel guilty. Because the course of action they took turned out bad, they
believe that the opposite course------keeping mother at home, putting off the
operation----would have turned out better. After all, how could it have turned
out any worse?
There seem to be two elements involved in our
willingness to feel guilty. The first is our pressing need to believe that the
world makes sense, that there is a cause for every effect and a reason for
everything that happens. That leads us to find patterns and connections
both where they really exist and where they exist only in our minds.
The second element is the view that we are the cause
of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. It seems to be a short
step from believing that every event has a cause to believing that every
disaster is our fault. The roots of this feeling may lie in our childhood.
A baby comes to think that the world exists to meet
his needｓ,and that he makes everything happen in it.
He wakes up in the morning and summons the rest of the world to his tasks. He
cries, and someone comes to attend to him. When he is hungry, people feed him，and when he is wet, people change him. Very often, we
don not completely outgrow that childish view that our wishes cause things to
happen.
1.The author had to conduct the two women’s funerals
probably because_______.
A．he was
minister of the local church
B．he wanted to
comfort the two families
C．he was an
official of the community
D．he had great
pity for the deceased
2.People feel guilty for the death of their loved ones
because________.
A．they can’t find a better way of express their sorrow
B．they have
neglected the natural course of events
C．they believe
that they were the reason
D．the don’t know things often turn in the opposite direction
3.According to the main passage, the underlined part
in Paragraph 4 probably means that________.
A．everything in
the world is predetermined
B．there’s an explanation for everything in the world
C．the world can
be interpreted in different ways
D．we have to be
sensible in order to understand the world
4.What’s the main idea of the message?
A .Life and death is an unsolved mystery.
B. Never feel guilty all the time because not every
disaster is our fault.
C Every story should have a happy ending.
D. In general, the survivors will feel guilty about
the people who passed away.
