ကေလးတစ္ေယာက္ကုိ ျပဳစုပ်ဳိးေထာင္ရန္ ေဒၚလာ နွစ္သိန္းနွစ္ေသာင္း တစ္ေထာင္မွ် ကုန္က်သည္

၂၀၀၉ ခုနွစ္ ဩဂုတ္လ ၂၄ ရက္ေန.ထုတ္ Time မဂၢဇင္းမွာ ပါတဲ့ Nancy Gibbs ရဲ. Raising a Child Costs Some $221,000 Before College ဆုိတဲ့ Essay ေလးကုိ ဘာသာျပန္ထားတာပါ ။ ကေလးတစ္ေယာက္ရဲ. တန္ဖုိးကုိ သိလာေစနုိင္တဲ့ ၊ မိခင္တစ္ေယာက္ရဲ. ရႈေထာင့္ကေန ေရးထားတဲ့ ခ်စ္စရာေကာင္းတဲ့ Essay ေလးပါ ။ မူရင္း စာေရးဆရာရဲ. Essay ကေတာ့ ေကာင္းမွေကာင္း ဆုိတဲ့ထဲကပါပဲ။ ဘာသာျပန္ကုိ ဖတ္ၾကည္ျပီး စိတ္တုိင္းမက်ခဲ့ၾကရင္ ကြ်န္ေတာ့္မွာပဲ တာဝန္ရွိပါလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒီဘာသာျပန္ Essay ေလးနဲ. မိခင္ရဲ. ဂုဏ္ေက်းဇူးကုိ ပူေဇာ္ကန္ေတာ့ မိပါတယ္ ။

နွစ္တစ္နွစ္၏ ယခုလုိအခ်ိန္သည္ (ဒီဇင္ဘာေရာက္ရန္ ၂လတာမွ်သာလုိေတာ့သည္) ကေလးမ်ား၏ ကုန္က်စရိတ္ မည္မွ်ရွိေၾကာင္း သတိေပးသည့္ အခ်ိန္ျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။ ျပည္နယ္အစုိးရတုိ.က ေက်ာင္းျပန္ဖြင့္ခ်ိန္ ေဈးဝယ္ကာလ တစ္ပတ္အတြက္ အေရာင္းခြန္မ်ားကုိ ဆုိင္းငံ့ထားျခင္းမွာ အဆင္ေျပေသာ္လည္း စက္တင္ဘာလဆုိလွ်င္ ရႈးဖိနပ္အသစ္ ၊ မွတ္စုစာအုပ္အသစ္ ၊ ျဖစ္နုိင္လွ်င္ ထမင္းဘူးအသစ္ စသည္ျဖင့္ ျပန္လည္၍ ဝယ္ရေတာ့မည္ ဆုိသည့္အခ်က္မ်ားကုိေတာ့ျဖင့္ ေျပာင္းလဲမသြားေစနုိင္ပါ ။ ကေလးမ်ားသည္ ခက္ခဲက်ပ္တည္းလွသည့္ အခ်ိန္မ်ားမွာပင္ “စီးပြါးေရးက်ဆင္းမႈကုိ ခံနုိင္စြမ္းရွိေၾကာင္း” စီးပြါးေရးပညာရွင္တုိ. ေတြ.ရွိလာၾကပါသည္ ။ ရင္းနွီးျမႈပ္နွံမႈ အေနျဖင့္ ဆုိပါက သူတုိ.သည္ ယုတၱိမတန္ေသာ စိတ္လႈပ္ရွားမႈမ်ား၏ ခုိင္လုံေသာ သက္ေသအေထာက္အထားတစ္ခု ၊ ေငြေၾကးနွင့္ ပက္သက္သည့္ စည္းကမ္းမ်ားကုိ ခ်ဳိးဖ်က္မိေစသည့္ ျပယုတ္တစ္ခု ျဖစ္သည္ ။
ေဘဘီစင္တာေဒါ့ကြမ္းတြင္ ကေလးတစ္ေယာက္ကုိ ျပဳစုပ်ဳိးေထာင္သည့္ စားရိတ္မည္မွ်ကုန္က်သည္ကုိ ခန္.မွန္းတြက္ခ်က္သည့္ ဂဏန္းတြက္စက္တစ္ခု ထည့္သြင္းထားသည္ ။ ထုိစက္ကေလးက ဘယ္ေလာက္ထိမ်ား အဟန္.အတား ျဖစ္ေစပါသနည္း ဆုိသည္ကုိေတာ့ သိခ်င္စမ္းလွပါသည္ ။ ထုိဂဏန္းတြက္စက္တြင္ တြက္ခ်က္ထားသည့္ ကိန္းဂဏန္းမ်ားမွာ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စု စုိက္ပ်ဳိးေရး႒ါနမွ ထုတ္ျပန္သည့္ နွစ္စဥ္အစီရင္ခံစာကုိ အေျခခံ၍ တြက္ထားျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ ၊ ထုိ႒ါနသည္ ဂ်ဳံစုိက္ပ်ဳိးမႈ သုိ.မဟုတ္လ်င္လည္း ကေလးျပဳစုပ်ဳိးေထာင္မႈ ကြ်မ္းက်င္သည့္႒ါနတစ္ခု ျဖစ္လိမ့္မည္ဟု ထင္ပါသည္ ။ ကေလးတစ္ေယာက္ကုိ တစ္ဆယ့္ခုနွစ္နွစ္ အရြယ္ေရာက္သည္အထိ ျပဳစုပ်ဳိးေထာင္ရန္အတြက္ ပုံမွန္မိသားစုတစ္ခုသည္ ေဒၚလာ နွစ္သိန္းနွစ္ေသာင္းတစ္ေထာင္မွ် သုံးစြဲေၾကာင္း ယခုနွစ္အစီရင္ခံစာက ဆုိထားသည္ ။ ထုိပမာဏမွာ ကြ်န္မကုိ ေမြးဖြားခဲ့စဥ္ကထက္ နွစ္ဆယ့္တစ္ ရာခုိင္နႈန္းမွ် ပုိပါသည္ ။ ယခုေခတ္တြင္ အစားအေသာက္နွင့္ အဝတ္အစားမ်ားမွာ ေဈးသက္သာေသာ္လည္း အုိးအိမ္နွင့္ က်န္းမာေရးစားရိတ္မ်ားက ပုိ၍ေဈးၾကီးလာပါသည္ ။ ဤသည္မွာ မိဘမ်ားအတြက္ ေလွ်ာ့ေဈးအၾကီးအက်ယ္ ရလုိက္သည့္နွယ္ျဖစ္သည္ ။ ကေလးတစ္ေယာက္ရွိေသာ မိသားစုသည္ ကေလးနွစ္ေယာက္ရွိေသာ မိသားစုထက္ နွစ္ဆယ့္ငါးရာခုိင္နႈန္းမွ် ပုိ၍သုံးစြဲျပီး သင့္တြင္ကေလးသုံးေယာက္ သုိ.မဟုတ္ ထုိ.ထက္ပုိ၍ ရွိပါက သင္သည္ ကေလးတစ္ေယာက္ခ်င္းစီအတြက္ နွစ္ဆယ့္နွစ္ ရာခုိင္နႈန္းမွ် ပုိ၍သက္သာသြားပါသည္ ။
အစိုးရသည္ အိပ္စက္ျခင္း ၊ စိတ္နွလုံး ၾကည္လင္ျခင္း ၊ အထီးက်န္ျခင္း စသည့္ မျမင္သာသည့္ စာရင္းေပ်ာက္ တန္ဖုိးတုိ.ကုိ ထည့္၍ မတြက္နုိင္ေသးပါ ။ ျပတင္းေပါက္မ်ားကုိ ျပဳျပင္ရျခင္း ၊ ဓာတ္ပုံကူးရျခင္း ၊ လက္ကုိင္ဖုန္းခ ၊ စိတ္ျငိမ္ေဆးဖုိး အစရွိသည့္ အေသးသုံး ကုန္က်စားရိတ္တုိ.ကုိ ထည့္သြင္းတြက္ခ်က္ရန္လုိပါေသးသည္ ။ အစုိးရ၏ စာရင္းဇယားတြင္ ကေလး၏ အဝတ္အစားနွင့္ ရႈးဖိနပ္ဖုိးအတြက္ တစ္လလွ်င္ ေဒၚလာေျခာက္ဆယ္မွ် သုံးစြဲေၾကာင္း ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္ ၊ ၾကည့္ရသည္မွာ အရာရွိမင္းတုိ.သည္ ယခုလတ္တေလာကာလအတြင္း ေဈးဝယ္ထြက္ျဖစ္ပုံမရပါ ။ ဂလုိဘယ္လုိက္ေဇးရွင္းသည္ အဝတ္အစားေဈးနႈန္းတုိ.ကုိ က်ဆင္းသြားေစသည္မွာ အမွန္ပင္ျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။ သုိ.ေသာ္ သင့္တြင္သမီးမ်ားရွိပါက နွစ္စဥ္နွစ္တုိင္း ၾကဳံေတြ.ေနၾကျဖစ္သည့္ ေဈးနႈန္းၾကီးလာသည္နွင့္အမွ် အဝတ္အစားတုိ. ေသးက်ဳံ.လာသည့္ ျဖစ္ရပ္နွင့္ ရင္ဆုိင္ေတြ.ရဖုိ.ရွိပါသည္ ။ ပုခုံးနွင့္ခ်က္ကုိ လုံျခဳံစြာ ကာကြယ္ဖုံးအုပ္ထားရမည္ဟု သတ္မွတ္ထားသည့္ ေက်ာင္းဝတ္စုံစည္းကမ္းကုိသာ အၾကီးအက်ယ္ေက်းဇူးတင္ ရေပေတာ့သည္ ။
ဒါတြင္မကေသးပါ ေပးလုိက္ရသည့္ အခ်ိန္တုိ.လည္း ရွိပါေသးသည္ ။ ေလ့လာမႈတစ္ခုက ေငြေၾကးထက္ပုိ၍ တန္ဖုိးၾကီးမားသည္ဟု ဆုိေသာ္လည္း ထုိအခ်ိန္တုိ.ကုိ ေငြေၾကးျဖင့္ တြက္၍ ရနုိင္မည္မဟုတ္ပါ ။ မိဘဘဝဆုိသည္မွာ ဘယ္ေသာအခါမွ ထီးတည္းမဟုတ္ပါ ။ ကေလးတုိ.အိမ္ကုိစြန္.ခြါထြက္သြား၍ သူတုိ.ကုိ ထိန္းေက်ာင္းျပဳစုပ်ဳိးေထာင္ရာတြင္ သုံးစြဲလုိက္ရသည့္ အခ်ိန္နွင့္အင္အားတုိ.အတြက္ မည္သုိ.ေရွ.ဆက္ရမည္ကုိ မသိနုိင္ေတာ့သည့္ ေန.အထိတုိင္ မိဘတုိ.၏ဘဝသည္ ထီးတည္းမဟုတ္ပါ ။ ကြ်န္မသည္ ေနာက္ဆုံးတြင္ သုိးေမႊးထိုးနည္းကုိ သင္ယူေကာင္းသင္ယူ ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မည္ ။ သုိ.မဟုတ္ အနည္းဆုံး အမယ္သုံးမ်ဳိးပါသည့္ဟင္းကုိ ခ်က္မိပါလိမ့္မည္ ။ သုိ.မဟုတ္လွ်င္လည္း နွစ္စဥ္နွစ္တုိင္း ရုိက္ကူးလာခဲ့သည့္ သူတို.ေလးေတြ၏ ဓာတ္ပုံတုိ.ကုိ ျပန္လွန္ၾကည့္၍ အယ္လဘမ္အတြင္းသုိ. အစီအစဥ္အတုိင္း ျပန္၍ ထည့္သြင္းေကာင္းထည့္သြင္း မိပါလိမ့္မည္ ။ ပုံရိပ္တုိ.က မွတ္ဥာဏ္ကုိ သမုိင္းအျဖစ္ ျပန္လည္၍ ေႏြးေထြးလာေစပါသည္ ။
ယခုနွစ္ အစီရင္ခံစာကုိ ျပဳစုသည့္ စီးပြါးေရးပညာရွင္သည္ ကေလးစားရိတ္မည္မွ်ကုန္က်ေၾကာင္း လူေတြတအံ့တဩ ေျပာၾကဆုိၾကသည္ကုိ အကြ်မ္းတဝင္ရွိေနပုံရပါသည္ ။ “ကေလးေတြနဲ.ပတ္သက္တဲ့ အက်ဳိးေက်းဇူးေတြလည္း အမ်ားၾကီး ရွိပါတယ္ ၊ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ အဲဒီအခ်က္ကုိလည္း ထည့္ျပီးစဥ္းစားရမယ္လုိ. ကြ်န္ေတာ္က မိဘေတြကုိ ေျပာျပပါတယ္” ဟု သူကဆုိပါသည္ ။ ဥပမာအားျဖင့္ ဆုိပါက ကေလးတုိ.ၾကီးျပင္းလာသည္နွင့္အမွ် မိဘတုိ.မျပဳလုပ္ေတာ့သည့္ အေလ့အထတုိ. ရွိပါသည္ ။ ပင္လယ္ကမ္းေျခသုိ.သြားကာ မီးပုံပြဲလုပ္ေနၾကပါဦးမည္ေလာ ။ ေရထဲတြင္ေမ်ာပါလာသည့္ သစ္တုိသစ္စတုိ.ကုိ ဆယ္ယူၾကပါဦးမည္ေလာ ။ မည္သူမွ်မၾကဳိက္ၾကေသာ မာ့ရွ္မဲလုိး မီးကင္တုိ.ကုိ ျပဳလုပ္ၾကပါဦးမည္ေလာ ။ ဂ်က္အုိမီးအိမ္တုိ.ကုိ ထြင္းထုေနၾကပါဦးမည္ေလာ ။ အီစတာၾကက္ဥတုိ.ကုိ ေဆးေရာင္ခ်ယ္သ ေနၾကပါဦးမည္ေလာ ။ သုိ.တည္းမဟုတ္ အားလပ္ရက္ရွည္မ်ားကုိ ပုံမွန္အတုိင္းပင္ အလည္အပတ္ ခရီးထြက္ေနၾကပါဦးမည္ေလာ ။ ခ်ိစ္ဒူးဒယ္နွင့္ ဂ်ယ္လီဘယ္လီတုိ.ကုိ ေအာက္ေမ့တသ ေနပါဦးမည္ေလာ ဆုိသည္ကုိ ကြ်န္မ သိခ်င္လွပါသည္ ။ ကြ်န္မအတြက္ေတာ့မူ ၎တုိ.ကုိ ေနာက္ထပ္ ဝယ္ယူေတာ့မည္ မဟုတ္သည္မွာ ေသခ်ာလွပါသည္ ။
ကေလးမ်ားသည္ အစဦးေနျဖင့္ အကုန္အက် မ်ားျပားပါသည္ ၊ သုိ.ေသာ္ မွန္ကန္စြာ စီမံခန္.ခြဲပါက သင္၏ရင္းနွီးျမႈပ္နွံမႈအတြက္ သင့္တင့္ေလွ်ာက္ပတ္ေသာ အက်ဳိးအျမတ္တုိ. ျပန္ရနုိင္ပါသည္ ။ သူတုိ.၏ အိမ္စာမ်ားကုိ ကူညီေျဖရွင္းေပးျခင္းျဖင့္ သင္မေလ့လာေတာ့သည္မွာၾကာျပီျဖစ္သည့္ ဂဏန္းသခၤ်ာတုိ.ကုိ ျပန္လည္၍ေလ့လာ မိေစပါသည္ ။ ကေလးငယ္တုိ.က သင့္ကုိ လွ်င္ျမန္သြက္လက္စြာ လုပ္ကုိင္တတ္လာေစပါသည္ ။ သူတို.သည္ အိပ္ယာေပၚတြင္ အေႏြးဓာတ္ကုိ အေကာင္းဆုံးေပးနုိင္ၾကသည္ ၊ သူတုိ.၏ ေသးငယ္သည့္ လက္ေခ်ာင္းေလးမ်ားသည္ ဘယ္လုိမွ ျဖည္၍ရနုိင္ဖြယ္မရွိသည့္ ၾကဳိးထုံးတုိ.ကုိ ျဖည္နုိင္စြမ္းရွိၾကပါသည္ ။ သူတုိ.သည္ သင့္ကုိ သတၱိပုိရွိလာေစျပီး ယုံၾကည္စိတ္ရွိလာေစရန္ သတိေပးနုိင္စြမ္းလည္း ရွိၾကပါသည္ ။ သူတုိ.သည္ သင္ထင္ထားသည္ထက္ပုိ၍ ေကာင္းမြန္စြာ ဘုရားရွိခုိး ဆုမြန္မ်ား ေတာင္းတတ္ၾကပါေသးသည္ ။ သူတုိ.၏ ကုိယ္နံ.ေလးမွာ ေမႊးလွပါသည္ (အနည္းဆုံးေတာ့ သူတုိ. သန္.သန္.ရွင္းရွင္း ရွိေနခ်ိန္ေတြမွာေပါ့ေလ ။)
သူတုိ.သည္ ကြ်န္မတုိ.၏ အုိမင္းရင့္ေရာ္လာမႈကုိလည္း သတိျပဳလာေစပါသည္ ။ ကေလးသာမရွိပါက ကြ်န္မ၏ဆံပင္တုိ.သည္ ယခုထက္ပုိ၍ အျဖဴျမန္လာမည္ကုိ ကြ်န္မသိေနပါသည္ ။ သူတုိ.နွင့္အတူ ေနထုိင္၍ ဘဝကုိ ျဖတ္သန္းၾကီးျပင္းရသည္မွာ အလြန္ပင္ၾကီးက်ယ္ေသာ ဆုလာဘ္တစ္ခု ျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။ သူတုိ.က ကြ်န္မတုိ.ကုိ နုပ်ဳိလန္းဆန္းေစသည္ ၊ တစ္ေယာက္ကုိ တစ္ေယာက္ ျဖတ္သြားသည့္နွယ္ပင္ျဖစ္သည္ ။ ေက်ာင္းသားက ဆရာျဖစ္သြားသည္ ၊ မိဘက ကေလးျဖစ္သြားသည္ ။ သူတုိ.သည္ ကြ်န္မတုိ.ထက္ပုိ၍ စမတ္က်ကာ ပုိ၍ ၾကံ.ခုိင္ေတာင့္တင္း လာပုံတုိ.ကုိ ၾကည့္ကာ ၊သူတုိ.မည္သုိ.မည္ပုံ ရင့္က်က္လာပုံတုိ.ကုိ တအံ့တဩ ျဖစ္ရပါသည္။ ကြ်န္မတုိ.သည္ သူတုိ.နွင့္ အတူတူ ေနထုိင္ရသည္ကုိ တစိမ့္စိမ့္ အရသာခံနုိင္လာ၍ သူတုိ.၏ လက္တြင္ ေနထုိင္ရသည္မွာ စိတ္ခ်လုံျခဳံမႈကုိ ခံစားနုိင္ၾကပါသည္ ။ ဤတန္ဖုိးတုိ.ကုိလည္း ထည့္တြက္ရန္ေမ့မေနေစခ်င္ပါ ။

(August 24, 2009 ခုနွစ္ထုတ္ Time မဂၢဇင္းမွ Nancy Gibbs ၏ Raising a Child Costs Some $221,000 Before College ကုိ သင့္ေလ်ာ္ေအာင္ ဘာသာျပန္ဆုိထားပါသည္ ။)

ဖတ္မိသမွ်ေလးေတြ ( get)

Get ကုိ Spoken English မွာ အသုံးမ်ားၾကပါတယ္ ။ Informal ျဖစ္ျပီး Writing မွာေတာ့ မသုံးၾကပါဘူး ။
သူ.ရဲ.ေနာက္မွာရွိေနတဲ့ စကားလုံးအေပၚမူတည္ျပီး အဓိပၸါယ္ေတြလည္း လုိက္ျပီးေျပာင္းလဲသြားပါသတဲ့ ။

1. get + noun/pronoun

ဒီပုံစံမွာေတာ့ get ရဲ. အဓိပၸါယ္က ‘receive’, ‘fetch’, ‘obtain’ စတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ေတြ ရွိပါသတဲံ ။
I got a letter from Lusy this morning.
Can you come and get me from the station when I arrive?
I’m going out to get some bread.

2. get + adjective

get ရဲ. အဓိပၸါယ္ ‘become’ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္ ။
As you get old your memory gets worse.
My feet are getting cold.
get + object + adjective (=’make something become…..’ ) လုိ. အဓိပၸါယ္ရပါသတဲ့ ။

I can’t get my hands warm.
We must get the house clean before Mother arrives.

3. get + adverb particle or preposition

up, away, out စတဲ့ adverb particle ေတြရဲ. ေရွ.မွာဆုိရင္ေတာ့ get ဟာ မ်ားေသာအားျဖင့္ movement ကုိ ျပပါသတဲ့ ။

I often get up at five o’clock.
I went to see him, but he told me to get out.
Would you mind getting off my foot?
အဲဒီ Structure ကုိ ဘဲ Object နဲ. ယွဥ္တြဲျပီးသုံးရင္ေတာ့ somebody / something ကုိ move လုပ္ခိုင္းတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ ရွိပါတယ္ ။

You can’t get her out of the bedroom in the morning.
Would you mind getting your papers off my desk?
Have you ever tried to get toothpaste back into the tube?

4. get (+ object) + verb-form

4 (a) get + object + infinitive

I can’t get the car to start.

4 (b) get + object + -ing

Don’t get him talking about his illnesses, please.

ေအာက္က Sentence ေတြမွာေတာ့ get + infinitive structure ဟာ တစ္စုံတစ္ဦးကုိ တစ္ခုခု ျပဳလုပ္ရန္ စြဲေဆာင္ျခင္းဆုိတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ ရွိပါတယ္ ။

Get John to help us ,if you can.
I can’t get that child to go to bed.

5. get + object + past participle ဆုိတဲ့ Structure ကေတာ့ ျပဳလုပ္ဖုိ.ရန္ရွိတဲ့ အလုပ္ေတြကုိ စီစဥ္ျခင္း ဆုိတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္ ရွိပါသတဲ့ ။ Passive Meaning ပါတဲ့ ။

I must get my hair cut.
You ought to get your watch repaired.

5. Passive structure ေတြမွာ be အစား get ကုိ သုံးလုိ.ရပါတယ္ ။ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္မထားဘဲ ရုတ္တရက္ျဖစ္လာတဲ့ ျဖစ္စဥ္ေတြမွာ သုံးေလ့ရွိပါတယ္ ။

My watch got broken while I was playing with the children.
He got caught by the police driving at 160km an hour.

6. get and go : movement

Get ကုိ movement ရဲ. အဆုံးသတ္အျဖစ္သုံးနုိင္ပါတယ္ ။ the arrival လုိ. အဓိပၸါယ္ရတယ္ ။
Go ကေတာ့ the whole movement ကုိ ေျပာတဲ့အခါမွာ သုံးပါတယ္ ။ ေအာက္က sentence ေတြကုိ ၾကည့္ပါ ။
I go to work by car and Lucy goes by train. I usually get there first.
I went to Bristol yesterday. I got to Bristol at about eight o’clock.

ေရာက္ရွိဖုိ.အတြက္ အခက္အခဲ တစ္ခုခု ရွိတဲ့အခါမ်ဳိးေတြမွာ Get ကုိ သုံးေလ့ရွိပါသတဲ့ ။ ေအာက္က sentence ေတြကုိ ၾကည့္လုိက္ရင္ သေဘာေပါက္သြားမယ္လုိ. ယူဆမိပါတယ္ ။

It wasn’t easy to get through the crowd. (crowd ကုိ ျဖတ္ထြက္ဖို.အတြက္ ခက္ခဲ။)
I don’t know how we are going to get over the river. (ျမစ္ကုိ ျဖတ္ဖုိ.အတြက္ ခက္ခဲ။)
Can you tell me how to get to the police station? (ရဲစခန္းကုိသြားတဲံ လမ္းကုိ မသိလုိ. ခက္ခဲ။)

အေပ်ာ္တမ္းသမား ေနာက္ဆက္တြဲ

အရင္အပတ္က တင္ခဲ့တဲ့ အေပ်ာ္တမ္းသမား ရဲ.မူရင္းပါ ။ မူရင္းစာေရးဆရာရဲ. သေရာ္ကြက္ေလးေတြကုိ နွစ္သက္မိပါတယ္ ။

The Avenging Amateur
By KURT ANDERSEN

Time (Monday, Aug. 10, 2009)

The financial crisis came about because we got complacent, depending on all-knowing financial experts — mortgage lenders, Wall Street sharpers, the Federal Reserve — to run our system expertly. But then the experts did the same thing, imagining that they had laid off all their risks on other experts. Until finally the last expert down the line turned out to be just another greater fool, and the system crashed.
We still need experts. But we can no longer abdicate judgment to them or to the system they've cobbled together. This country, after all, was created by passionately engaged amateurs. The American spirit really is the amateur spirit. The great mass of European settlers were amateur explorers, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who created the U.S. were amateur politicians. "I see democracy," the late historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, as "government by amateurs, as a way of confessing the limits of our knowledge." In the early 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville approvingly noted the absence of "public careers" in America — that is, the scarcity of professional politicians.
Back then, amateur was an entirely positive adjective. An amateur pursuit meant something that one pursued — a field of study, an artistic enterprise, a craft — not unseriously, but out of love rather than merely to earn a living.
Amateurs do the things they want to do in the ways they want to do them. They don't worry too much about breaking rules and aren't paralyzed by a fear of imperfection or even failure. Active citizenship is all about tapping into one's amateur spirit. "But hold on," you say. "I will never understand credit-default swaps or know how to determine the correct leverage ratio for banks." Me neither, and I don't want to depend on an amateur physician telling me how to manage my health. But we can trust our reality-based hunches about fishy-looking procedures and unsustainable projects and demand that the supposed experts explain their supposed expertise in ways we do understand The American character is two-sided to an extreme and paradoxical degree. On the one hand, we are sober and practical and commonsensical, but on the other hand, we are wild and crazy speculators. The full-blown amateur spirit derives from this same paradox. Even as we indulge our native chutzpah — Live the dream! To hell with the naysayers! — as a practical matter, it also requires a profound humility, since the amateur must throw himself into situations where he's uncertain and even ignorant, and therefore obliged to figure out new ways of seeing problems and fresh ways of solving them. At this particular American inflection point, after the crash and before the rebuild, frankly admitting that we aren't absolutely certain how to proceed is liberating, and crucial. I like paradoxes, which is why, even though I'm not particularly religious, Zen Buddhism has always appealed to me. Take the paradoxical state that Buddhists seek to achieve, what they call sho-shin, or "beginner's mind." The 20th century Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who spent the last dozen years of his life in America, famously wrote that "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." Which sounds to me very much like the core of Boorstin's amateur spirit. "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance," Boorstin wrote, "but the illusion of knowledge."
This isn't just airy-fairy philosophy: it's real, and it works. A decade after Steve Jobs co-founded Apple, he was purged by his own board, but after the sense of betrayal passed, and he went on to build Pixar and oversee Apple's glorious renewal, he realized his personal reset had been a blessing in disguise. "The heaviness of being successful," Jobs has said of his firing, "was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." I happen to know what Jobs means: my sacking as editor of New York magazine 13 years ago freed me to reinvent myself as a novelist and public-radio host. Getting fired was traumatic. Finding my way since has been thrilling and immensely gratifying. May America and Americans have such good luck figuring out how to climb out of the holes we find ourselves in now.

Notes :
come about (that…….) ~ (phr v) to happen : Can you tell me how the accident came about?
complacent (about sb/sth) ~ (adj) too satisfied with yourself or with a situation, so that you do not feel that any change is necessary; showing or feeling complacency: a dangerously complacent attitude to the increase in unemployment. We must not become complacent about progress.
sharper ~ (n) a professional gambler
abdicate ~ (v) to give up the position of being king or queen : He abdicated in favour of his son. She was forced to abdicate the throne of Spain. နန္းစြန္.သည္ ။
cobble sth together~ (phr v) to produce sth quickly and without great care or efforts, so that it can be used but is not perfect: The essay was cobbled together from some old notes. ရရာနွင့္ စပ္ဟပ္ျပဳလုပ္သည္ ။ လြယ္လြယ္နွင့္ ျဖစ္ကတတ္ဆန္းလုပ္သည္ ။
active citizen ~ (n) a person who is actively involved in trying to improve things in their local community
be all about sb/sth ~ used to say what the most important aspect of sth is
credit default swap ~ (CDS) is a swap contract in which the buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments to the seller and, in exchange, receives a payoff if a credit instrument – typically a bond or loan – goes into default ရႈံးနုိင္ေျခရွိမႈကုိ လက္လႊဲ ေရာင္းဝယ္ျခင္း (သင့္ေလ်ာ္သလုိ နားလည္လြယ္ေအာင္ ဘာသာျပန္ထားျခင္းသာ ျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။)
leverage ~ (n) အရင္းဆပြါးကိန္း (ေငြေၾကးေဈးကြက္မွ စကားလုံးျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။ မိမိဘာသာ သင့္ေလ်ာ္ေအာင္ျပန္ဆုိထားျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ ။ )
hold on ~ (infml) used to tell sb to wait or stop: Hold on a minute while I get my breath back. Hold on! This isn’t the right road.
fishy ~ (adj) that makes you suspicious because it seems dishonest
fishy-looking ~ မသကၤာဖြယ္ရာ ။ မဟုတ္တရုတ္ ။
neither ~ (adv) used to show that a negative statement is also true of sb/sth else: He didn’t remember and neither did I. I hadn’t been to New york before and neither had Jane.
neither ~ (infml) I don’t know. Me neither.
hunches ~ ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ ။
sober ~ (adj) တည္ၾကည္ေသာ ။ တည္ျငိမ္ေအးေဆးေသာ ။ သင့္တင့္ေလွ်ာက္ပတ္ေသာ ။ အလြန္အကြ်ံ မဟုတ္ေသာ ။
chutzpah ~ (n) behaviour, or a person’s attitude, that is rude or shocking but so confident that people may feel forced to admire it သဲထိတ္ရင္ဖုိ ၊ ရင္တုန္ပန္းတုန္ ။
profound ~ (adj) 1. very great; felt or experienced very strongly: profound changes in earth’s climate 2. showing great knowledge or understanding: profound insights; a profound book 3. needing a lot of study or thought: profound questions about life and death 4. (medical) very serious; complete: profound disability
indulge ~ (v) (~ in sth)(~yourself with sth) to allow yourself to have or do sth that you like, especially sth that is considered bad for you: They went into town to indulge in some serious shopping. Indulge myself with a long hot bath. အရသာေတြ.သည္ ။ က်ဴးလြန္သည္ ။ ေမြ.ေလ်ာ္သည္ ။ အလုိလုိက္သည္ ။
naysayer ~ (n) a person who habitually express negative or pessimistic views: Despite a general feeling that things were going well, a few naysayers tried to cast gloom.
full-blown ~ (adj) fully or completely developed; an idea expanded into a full-blown novel
appeal to sb ~ (phr v) to attract or interest sb စိတ္ကုိ စြဲေဆာင္နုိင္စြမ္းရွိသည္ ။