也许这是一种解脱--你终于明白自己永远不可能真正主宰生活，而且做这样的努力只会徒增挫折感。你最多只能尽力把握好你所要经历的生活历程。生活是一所你永远不能毕业的全日制学校，因而正是这个学习过程带来了生存的真正价值。这里的挑战在于欣然接受你的角色，即你是生活这所学校的终身学生。若要欣然接受终身学生这一角色，你就要学会屈服和灵活的课程，否则，你永远不可能开阔你的思想、心灵和情致，足以使自己学到生活所要传授的一切。 / It may come as a relief to finally understand that you never actually master life, and that striving to do so will only lead to frustration. The best you can do is to strive to master the process by which you experience it. Life is a year-round school from which you never actually graduate, so it is the learning process itself that brings true value to existence. The challenge here is to embrace your role as a perpetual student of life. In order to embrace your role as perpetual student, you need to learn the lessons of surrender and flexibility. Without these important lessons, you will never be able to open your mind, heart, and spirit wide enough to allow yourself to take in all that life has to teach you.
屈服即超越自我和摆脱束缚。屈服于生活中所出现的教训，就是顺生活之势而为，而非反其道而行之。若能屈服于人生旅途上的巅峰和低谷，你就能轻轻松松穿越。/ Surrender is the transcendence of ego and the release of control. When you surrender to your lessons that arise, you allow yourself to flow with the rhythm of life, rather than struggling against it. The peaks and valleys that mark your personal path become easier to traverse when you surrender to them.
坦然接受自己作为终身学生这一角色，其关键在于屈服于现实状况，而非一味试图创造你所想像的世界。如果生活中你总在抵制、顽抗，那么屈服就是你必修的一课。如果你属于那种凡事都要按照自己的意愿，或是自我意识很强、很固执的人，那么在你的眼里屈服似乎就是失败。然而，屈服只在战事中代表失败，在生活中则意味着超越。当然，这并不是说你应该放弃努力，被动地接受生活中所发生的一切，而是，你需要学会屈服于那些你根本无能为力的情形。如果你屈服于事实，不再抵制或试图控制生活，你将惊喜地发现生活变得非常轻松，而且你可以顺势而为，实现生活目标。 /The key to coming to peace with your role as a perpetual student lies in surrendering to what is, rather than trying to create what you envision should be. If resistance has been a theme throughout your life, then surrender will appear in your curriculum. If you are one of those people who always have to do things his way or who possess a strong, willful ego, then surrender will seem like defeat to you. But surrender only signifies defeat in war. In life it signifies transcendence. This is not to say that you should remain passive and just let life happen to you. Rather, you need to learn to surrender to those circumstances over which you never really had any control anyway. If you surrender to the fact， you will be amazed how much easier life gets when you stop resisting and controlling it, and ride the waves toward the fulfillment of your destiny.
灵活意即善于应变。在你的一生中，你必须学会顺从和应变种种新的形势，因为固执、执拗将会使你错失各种新的机会和可能。世事无常，你要顺势而为。如果你的公司要改革重组，你就得另谋生计。如果你的配偶决定放弃你们的婚姻，你也得面对。技术将不断进步、更新，你必须不停地学习、适应，否则就有成为恐龙的危险，被时代所淘汰。如果你能灵活变通，你就可以沉着应对生活中的任何意外和变故，决不会因此而惊慌失措。 /Flexibility  is defined as being adaptable to change. In the course of your lifetime, it is essential that you learn to bend and flex around every new circumstance, as rigidity deprives you of the opportunity to see new possibilities. Paradigms change over time, and so must you. Your company may restructure, and you will have to survive. Your spouse may choose to leave the marriage, and you will have to cope. Technology will continue to advance and change, and you must constantly learn and adapt or risk becoming a dinosaur. Flexibility allows you to be ready for whatever curve lies ahead in life instead of getting blindsided by it.
从1900年到1967年，瑞士人一直是世界上头号钟表制造者。1967年，瑞士人已经获取了数字技术的专利权，但瑞士的钟表制造商却对此不屑一顾，依然钟情于沿用了几十年的传统制造方法。然而，不幸的是，世界却迎候这一技术进步。当时，一家日本公司--精工引进了这一数字技术，几乎一夜之间就成了世界第一钟表制造商。因为拒绝这一新兴技术，瑞士67000家钟表制造商中，有50000家关门大吉。这可真是一个致命的错误，瑞士因此遭受了重创。几年后，瑞士人凭着新型的斯沃奇系列表追赶上来，重新获得市场领先地位。   /From 1900 to 1967, the Swiss were the leading watchmakers in the world. In 1967, when the digital technology was patented by the Swiss, they rejected it in favor of the traditional techniques they had been using to make watches for decades. Unfortunately, however, the world was ready for this advance, and Seiko, a Japanese company, picked up the digital patent and became the leading watch manufacturer in the world almost overnight. Fifty thousand of the 67,000 Swiss watchmakers went out of business because they refused to embrace this new technology. This was really a fatal mistake and brought a heavy blow to the Swiss. It was not until years later that the Swiss caught up and regained their leading position in the marketplace with the creation of Swatch watches.

    学会灵活变通，你就能自如地应对生活道路上的意外与变故。 /Learn to be flexible; it makes the curves in your life path much easier to maneuver.