温馨夜读II PART1 7.Eating the Cookie（在线收听）

[00:01.27]7.Eating the Cookie

[00:04.65]One of my patients, a successful businessman, 

[00:07.91]tells me that before his cancer he would become depressed unless things went a certain way. 

[00:14.23]Happiness was “having the cookie.” 

[00:17.34]If you had the cookie, things were good. 

[00:20.39]If you didn’t have the cookie, life wasn’t worth a damn. 

[00:24.25]Unfortunately, the cookie kept changing. 

[00:27.74]Some of the time it was money, sometimes power, sometimes sex. 

[00:33.83]At other times, it was the new car, the biggest contract, the most prestigious address. 

[00:40.70]A year and a half after his diagnosis of prostate cancer he sits shaking his head ruefully. 

[00:47.67]“It’s like I stopped learning how to live after I was a kid. 

[00:52.57]When I give my son a cookie, he is happy. 

[00:55.18]If I take the cookie away or it breaks, he is unhappy. 

[00:59.10]But he is two and a half and I am forty-three. 

[01:02.48]It’s taken me this long to understand that the cookie will never make me happy for long. 

[01:08.03]The minute you have the cookie it starts to crumble or you start to worry about it crumbling 

[01:14.23]or about someone trying to take it away from you. 

[01:16.52]You know, you have to give up a lot of things to take care of the cookie, 

[01:21.20]to keep it from crumbling and be sure that no one takes it away from you. 

[01:25.23]You may not even get a chance to eat it because you are so busy just trying not to lose it. 

[01:30.90]Having the cookie is not what life is about.”

[01:34.49]My patient laughs and says cancer has changed him. 

[01:38.63]For the first time he is happy. 

[01:40.91]No matter if his business is doing well or not, no matter if he wins or loses at golf. 

[01:46.25]“Two years ago, cancer asked me, ‘Okay, what’s important? What is really important?’ 

[01:53.12]Well, life is important. Life. 

[01:56.61]Life any way you can have it, life with the cookie, life without the cookie. 

[02:01.87]Happiness does not have anything to do with the cookie; it has to do with being alive. 

[02:07.33]Before, who made the time?" 

[02:10.51]He pauses thoughtfully. "Damn, I guess life is the cookie.”