2014届高三英语二轮专题复习拔高训练：社会现象类阅读理解24.docVIP

2014届高三英语二轮专题复习拔高训练：社会现象类阅读理解24 1. Nowadays more and more people are trapped in too busy work to relax themselves. We have no time to tell a bed-time story to our children, or enjoy a nice dinner with our family, or take a break to think about how we live the precious life, or even meet friends. All we notice is that the distinctions that used to guide and steady us— between Sunday and Monday, public and private, here and there—are gone. We have more ways to communicate, but less and less to say. Partly because were so busy communicating. Maybe thats why more and more people I know，even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. Some friends of mine try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “ exhibit greater attentiveness，stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper, ” More than that, sympathy, as well as deep thought, depends on neural processes that are “inherently slow, ” the very ones our high-speed lives have little time for. In my own case, I turn to unusual and often extreme measures to try to keep my good sense and ensure that I have time to do nothing at all. Ive not yet used a cellphone and Ive never tweeted or entered Facebook . I try not to go online till my days writing is finished, and I moved from Manhatan to rural Japan. None of this is a matter of principle or asceticism (苦行主义)：its just pure selfishness. Nothing makes me feel better, calmer, clearer and happier than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. Its actually something deeper than mere happiness： its joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesnt depend on what happens. ” That is the highest of the highest we have been longing for—The Joy of Quiet. 44. The writer sometimes doesnt do