音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.00]Passage 41. The 50-Percent Theory of Life

[00:07.10]I believe in the 50-percent theory.

[00:11.92]Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse.

[00:17.18]I believe life is a pendulum swing.

[00:20.02]It takes time and experience to understand what normal is,

[00:24.50]and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future.

[00:29.65]Let’s benchmark the parameters: Yes, I will die.

[00:34.57]I’ve dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets.

[00:41.13]Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing.

[00:47.15]Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale.

[00:51.20]Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person;

[00:56.89]having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son’s baseball team,

[01:02.69]paddling around the creek in the boat while he’s swimming with the dogs;

[01:06.95]discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails,

[01:13.31]his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos.

[01:19.43]But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically.

[01:26.43]This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory.

[01:31.03]One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed.

[01:38.36]I felt chagrined at the wasted effort.

[01:41.09]Summer turned brutal—the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime.

[01:46.23]The air-conditioner died, the well went dry, the marriage ended, the job lost, the money gone.

[01:53.01]I was living lyrics from a country tune—music I loathed.

[01:57.61]Only a surging Kansas City Royals team, bound for their first World Series, buoyed my spirits.

[02:05.16]Looking back on that horrible summer,

[02:07.79]I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad.

[02:13.59]Worse than normal wouldn’t last long.

[02:16.87]I am owed and savor the halcyon times.

[02:19.71]They reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that I can thrive.

[02:25.52]The 50-percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals’ recent slump,

[02:31.09]a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.