原文
Sharing Beauty
I think it was 1982. I know it was October. A friend had business dealings in the city of Reno, Nevada. I was asked to accompany her on an overnight trip. While she conducted her business, I was aimlessly wandering down Virginia Street, headed into a most gloriously beautiful sunset. I had an urge to speak to someone on the street to share that beauty, but I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone. It seemed everyone was shuffling along looking at their feet.
I took the next-best action. Quickly I ducked into a department store and asked the lady behind the counter if she could come outside for just a minute. She looked at me as though I were from some other planet and said, “Well…”
I said, “It will only take a moment.” Seemingly against her better judgment, she moved toward the door.
When she got outside I said to her, “Just look at that sunset! Nobody out here was looking at it and I just had to share it with someone.”
For a few seconds we just looked. Then I said, “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.” I thanked her for coming out to see it; she went back inside and I left. It felt good to share the beauty.
I forgot about the episode.
Four years later my situation had altered considerably. I had come to the end of a twenty-year marriage. I was alone and on my own for the first time in my life and in drastically reduced circumstances. I lived in a trailer park which, at the time, I considered a real come-down, and I had to do my wash in the communal laundry room.
One day, while my clothes were going around, I picked up a Unity Magazine and read an article about a woman who had been in similar circumstances. She had come to the end of a marriage, moved to a strange community, and the only job she could find was one she disliked: cosmetic sales in a department store. We had a lot in common. She was as bummed out as I was.
Then something happened to her that changed everything. She said a woman came into her department store and asked her to step outside to look at a sunset. The stranger had said, “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world,” and she had realized the truth in that statement and that she simply had not been seeing it. From that moment on, she turned her life around.
(EDITORS’ NOTE: later the author wrote Unity Magazine that she wanted the woman in Reno to know that she has done the same thing for her. The gift has come full circle.)
参考译文
分享美好
我记得那是1982年10月间。我有个朋友去内华达州雷诺市出差，约我陪她去，要在那儿住一晚。她去办她的事去了，我就沿着弗吉尼亚街漫无目的地散着步，迎面而来的是一片灿烂绚丽的日落景色。我突然有种冲动想和街上行人共享这一美景，但我找不到和我眼神交流的人，每个人看起来好像都在目视双脚、曳足而行。
我只好退而求其次。我迅速钻进一家百货商店，询问柜台后面的女售货员是否能出来一会儿。她打量着我，仿佛我来自另一个星球似的，她迟疑地说：“这个……”
我说：“只要一会儿就好。”好像与她本身意愿相悖似的，她朝着门边走来。
她出来后我对她说：“看看这夕阳！我很想有个人和我一起欣赏，可惜这路上没人在意。”
有几秒的时间我们就这样静静地看着，然后我说：“上帝在天，世上一切安好。”我感谢她出来和我共享美景，她回到商场里我就走了。分享美景的感觉真好。
后来我就淡忘了这段小插曲。
4年后我的境况发生了很大变化：20年的婚姻终结了，我这辈子头一次感到孤立无援，一切要靠自己；生活状况也大不如前，我住在拖车式活动房屋，当时我认为自己真是落魄，我还不得不到公共洗衣房去洗衣服。
一天，当我的衣服在洗衣机里打转的时候，我拿起一本《联合杂志》，读到一篇文章，讲的是一位和我境遇相似的女士。她也结束了自己的婚姻，搬到一个陌生的社区。她唯一能找到的工作还是她不喜欢的——在一家百货商场卖化妆品。我们有很多共同点，她和我一样落魄失意。
但后来发生的一件事彻底改变了她的生活。她说，有一位陌生女子走进她工作的商场请她走出去看一眼夕阳。那个素不相识的人还说：“上帝在天，世上一切安好。”这让她突然认识到话里蕴含的真谛，而在这之前她从未意识到这点。从那一刻起，她整个生活都改观了。
（编者按：后来，本文作者给《联合杂志》写信，希望杂志社转告雷诺市的那位妇女，让她知道她自己也做了和作者同样的事、反过来帮助了作者。至此，这份分享的美好完成了一个圆满的轮回。）