北京新东方国内部 唐静

　　"Sustainability" has become  a popular word these days, but to Ted Ning,the concept will always have personal meaning. Having endured a painful period of unsustainability in his own life made it clear to him that sustainability-oriented values must be expressed through every day action and choice。

　　当今，“可持续性”已经成为了一个流行的词语。但是，对特德宁来说，它对这个词有着自身的体会。在忍受了一段痛苦的、难以为续的生活之后，他清楚地认识到，以可持续发展为导向的生活价值必须通过日常的活动和做出的选择表现出来。

　　Ning recalls spending a confusing year in the late 1990s selling insurance. He'd been through the dot-com boom and burst and, desperate for a job, signed on with a Boulder agency。

　　宁回忆了在上个世纪90年代末期的某一年，他卖保险，那是一种浑浑噩噩的生活。在经历了网络经济的兴盛和衰败之后，他非常渴望得到一份工作，于是和一家博德的代理公司签了合约。

　　It didn't go well. "It was a really bad move because that's not my passion," says Ning, whose dilemma about the job translated, predictably, into a lack of sales. "I was miserable. I had so much anxiety that I would wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I had no money and needed the job. Everyone said,” Just wait, you'll turn the corner, give it some time.''

　　事情进展不顺，“那的确是很糟糕的一种选择，因为那并非是我的激情所在，”宁如是说。可以想象，他这种工作上的窘境是由于销售业绩不良造成的。“我觉得很悲哀。我太担心了，以至于我会在半夜醒来，盯着天花板。没有钱，我需要这份工作。每个人都会说，等吧，总会有转机的，给点时间吧。”

　　来源分析：

　　原文是来自一份杂志，叫“experience life”，出题人做了部分改动，原文和改动的文章如下：

　　Sustainability has become something of a buzzword(出题人把这个单词改为popular word) these days, but to Ted Ning, the concept will always have personal meaning. Having endured a painful period of unsustainability in his own life made it clear to him that sustainability-oriented values must be expressed through everyday action and choice。

　　Ning, director of LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability)， the Boulder, Colo.–based information clearinghouse on sustainable living, recalls spending a tumultuous(出题人把这个词改为了confusing) year in the late ’90s selling insurance. He’d been through the dot-com boom and bust(出题人似乎把这个词改为burst了) and, desperate for a job, signed on with a Boulder agency。

　　It didn’t go well. “It was a really bad move because that’s not my passion,” says Ning, whose ambivalence about the job translated, predictably, into a lack of sales. “I was miserable. I had so much anxiety that I would pull alongside of the highway and vomit, or wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I had no money and needed the job. Everyone said, ‘Just wait, you’ll turn the corner, give it some time.’”

　　Ning stuck it out for a year because he simply didn’t know what else to do, but felt his happiness and health suffer as a result. He eventually quit and stumbled upon LOHAS in a help-wanted ad for a data analyst. “I didn’t know what LOHAS was,” he says, “but it sounded kinda neat。” It turned out to be a better fit than he could have ever imagined。

　　At the time, the LOHAS organization did little more than host a small annual conference in Boulder. It was a forum where progressive-minded companies could gather to compare notes on how to reach a values-driven segment of consumers — the LOHAS market — who seemed attracted to products and services that mirrored their interest in health, environmental stewardship, social justice, personal development and sustainable living。

　　In contrast with his disastrous foray into the insurance business, Ning’s new job felt like coming home. Growing up in the foothills of the Rockies outside of Denver, he’d developed a love of the outdoors and a respect for the earth, while his parents provided a model of social activism — the family traveled widely, and at one point his parents created and operated a nonprofit that offered microcredit loans to small businesses in Vietnam and Guatemala. He has three adopted sisters from Vietnam and Korea. He studied international relations and Chinese at Colorado University and slipped easily into the Boulder lifestyle — commuting by bike, eating organics, buying local and the rest — though he stopped short of the patchouli-and-dreadlocks phase embraced by many of his peers. (He opted instead for the university’s ski team and, after graduating, wound up coaching the Japanese development team during the Nagano Olympics in 1998.)

　　From his ground-level job, Ning moved quickly up the ranks in the organization, becoming its executive director in 2006. “When I got the job, LOHAS was a sleepy conference in Boulder,” says Ning. Today, the forum is booming, the organization is expanding and the market is evolving. Ning has more than grown into the position he stumbled on in the want ads. “I don’t consider this a job. It is really more of a calling。”

　　Ning, 41, coordinates the conference and oversees the organization’s annual journal and Web site (www.lohas.com)， while compiling research on trends and opportunities for businesses. He also travels the country promoting — and explaining — the LOHAS concept and the burgeoning market it represents。

　　First identified by sociologist Paul Ray in the mid-1990s as “cultural creatives,” the U.S. market segment that embraces LOHAS today has grown to about 41 million consumers, or roughly 19 percent of American adults. But those LOHAS consumers are powerfully influencing the attitudes and behaviors of others (witness the rise of interest in yoga, all-natural products, simplicity and hybrid vehicles). Which is why LOHAS-related products now generate an estimated $209 billion annually。

　　“Over the last two years a green tidal wave has come over us,” says Ning. Riding that wave, says Ning, is not about jumping on a trend bandwagon. It’s connecting with — and acting on — a set of shared, instrinsic values. “People know what is authentic. You can’t preach this lifestyle and not live it,” he says. He and his wife, Jenifer, live in a solar-powered home, raise organic vegetables in their backyard and drive a car that gets 48 miles to the gallon. He even buys carbon offsets to negate the global warming impact of his cell phone。

　　Ning emphasizes that there are many different ways of “living LOHAS。” Ultimately, it’s really about finding a way of life that makes sense and feels good — now and for the long haul. “People are looking internally,” he says, “asking themselves, ‘What really makes me happy?’ Is it the fact that I can go out and buy that giant flat-screen TV, or is it that I can have a quiet evening with my family just hanging out and playing a game of Scrabble?”

　　For Ning, it’s a no-brainer. He’ll take Scrabble every time。

　　Laine Bergeson is an Experience Life senior editor。

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