I had an experience once which taught me something about the ways people made a bad situation worse by blaming themselves. One January, I officiated(主持) at two funerals for two elderly women. Both died a natural death. At the first home, the son of the deceased(已故) woman said, “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 said, “If only I had not insisted her going to Florida, she would be alive today. That long airplane ride was more than she could take. It is my fault.”
When things don’t turn out as we would like them to, we tend to assume that had we done things differently, the story would have had a happier ending. 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, for example, keeping mother at home, would have turned out better. After all, how could it have turned out any worse?
There seem to be elements involved in our readiness to feel guilty. The first lies in our belief that the world makes sense——there is a reason for everything that happens.
The second is the thought that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. 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 calls the rest of the world to its 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 do not completely abandon that childish thought that our wishes cause things to happen.
小题1: What is true about the two deceased elderly women?
| A．They died from accidents. |
| B．They both died of old age. |
| C．They died due to lack of care by family members. |
| D．They weren’t accustomed to the change in life. |
小题2: People feel guilty for the death of their loved ones because______.
| A．they cannot find a better way to express their sorrow |
| B．they don’t know that natural course of events |
| C．they believe that it is their fault |
| D．they don’t know things often turn out in the opposite direction |
小题3:People have believed since early childhood that
.
| A． everybody is at their command |
| B． life and death is an unsolved mystery |
| C． every story should have a happy ending |
| D． their wishes are the cause of everything that happens |
小题4: What is the main idea of this passage?
| A． Two sons blamed themselves for their mother's death. |
| B． Things don't always go well as we expect. |
| C． Two factors account for guilty sense. |
| D．Baby's wishes lead everything to happen. |