但是，人们总是很轻易地就失去了信心，尤其是陷于新旧交替的当口时更是如此。
这时，我们必须想想凤凰――在逝去的灰烬中一次次地重生。要知道，你已经度过生命中最艰难的那一刻，这一想法会带给你安慰和勇气。
古人将每一次的危机都视作神赐：一种解放、重生。只要是能够帮助他们从黑暗走向光明的事物，就都是有益的。
甚至还有人认为，异常的苦难并不是对那些犯下滔天大罪的人的惩罚，而是上天给他所宠爱的少数人的一种恩赐，是对他们的考验。
回首过去，你应该也会发现，过去那些最痛苦的经历的确为你以后的生活撒下了美好的种子。
仔细品味一下过去岁月中的那些阴影吧，它们增加了生命的深度和意义；而同时，你也要向前方展望，展望那令人炫目的未知的世界。
你将会发现生命没有结局，只有开始。
Have you heard about the birth myth It is supposed to hold the key, not so much to who you are, as to who you think you are.
The birth myth is the story you’ve been told about circumstances surrounding your birth.
It stands to reason that it makes a difference if you were born after three days of protracted labour, so agonising that your mother vowed never to bear another child, and never did…
Or if you were the long-awaited heir hailed as a gift from heaven, whose birth was celebrated in floods of champagne;or the unwanted fruit of a shameful illicit liaison, born after a failed termination, to your mother’s bitter grief.
Or perhaps you were the seventh out of ten, who slipped into the world almost unnoticed So insignificant, even your family can’t recall much about it.
Or a weakling saved against the odds amidst much tears and anguish: a triumph of life over affliction
Often it is nothing but a myth; sometimes quite unfounded. But it still reveals a lot about your own perceptions.
Now you know what the birth myth is. The question is ? what is yours
August, 1948. A hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. A young doctor, himself a patient, in a bare room, nearing the end of a losing battle against leukaemia.
Next to him, his wife: younger still, looking like a school-girl, except for the fact that she is nine months pregnant. They are waiting, as they have been waiting these last seven months, for life, for death. Which will arrive first Will he ever see this child, their third
The following day, she doesn’t arrive as usual. Instead there is a telephone call from his colleague in the maternity unit. “Congr-atulations! You have a daughter.”
Nobody knew where he found the strength to get up from his death-bed. He surprised them all as he entered the room, where his wife was nursing the new-born.
He took the baby in his arms, and for a short while they were together, the three of them, united by a sheer, ephemeral joy.
“Will you call her Ann ” he said, handing her back. “Ann Margareta Maria.” He knew he would never see his daughter again. This was the moment he’d been holding on for.
The baptism took place the day after his funeral. They gave her the names he had requested.
Such was my entry to life, the heritage I carry. He was my father. And I was his last-born child.
I found my neighbour in tears by her cattle-shed. She looked tired and dishevelled, her clothes were stained with mud and blood.
“We lost the calf,” she wept in answer to my question. “A fine bull calf. Everything was perfect. The little hooves, tail, ears; teeth and all.”
Are calves born with teeth I asked myself but I didn’t say so. I sympathised with her sadness, having once shed a few tears myself over a Charolais calf still-born for no better reason than the vet being out of reach. I remember the sight of the strong muscular body in its golden hide. The uncomprehending look of the mother as she licked him, expecting life.
