We Are Just Beginning在起跑線上

By Charles F. Kettering

“We are reading the first verse of the first chapter of a book whose pages are infinite.”

“我們正在閱讀一本不知道多少頁數的書的第一章的第一節…”

I do not know who wrote those words, but I have always liked them as a reminder that the future can be anything we want to make it. We can take the mysterious, hazy future and carve out of it anything that we can imagine, just like a sculptor carves a statue from a shapeless stone.

我不知道這段文字是誰寫的，但我一直很喜歡用它來提醒自己：未來操之在我。我們可以掌握神秘而不可知的未來，從中創出我們所能想象的任何東西，一如雕刻家可以將一塊沒有形狀的石頭刻成雕像一樣。

We are all in the position of the farmer. If we plant a good seed, we reap a good harvest. If our seed is poor and full of weeds, we reap a useless crop. If we plant nothing at all, we harvest nothing at all.

我們每個人都像是一個農夫。如果我們種下好種子，就會有豐收。如果種子不好而且田里雜草叢生，雖會有點兒收成但卻派不上多大用場。而如果我們什么都不種，就根本不會有任何收獲。

I want the future to be better than the past. I don’t want it contaminated by the mistakes and errors with which history is filled. We should all be concerned about the future because that is where we will spend the reminder of our lives. The past is gone and static. Nothing we can do will change it. The future is before us and dynamic. Everything we do will affect it.

不管怎樣，我希望未來會比過去更好。我不希望在未來再犯下那些充斥在歷史中的錯誤。關心未來吧，因為我們的余生都要在未來中度過。往昔已經一去不復返了，而且是靜止的，任憑我們怎么努力都不能改變它了。而未來就在我們眼前，而且是動態的，我們的任何行為都會影響到它。

Each day will brings with it new frontiers, in our homes and in our businesses, if we will only recognize them. We are just at the beginning of the progress in every field of human endeavor.

如果我們能夠認識得到，我們會發現每天都會有一些新的情況發生，在家里，還有我們的事業里。人類在每個領域都努力向前，而我們就處在起跑線上。