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CONVERSATION LESSON

LAUGHTER AND TEARS

Dan: AC, how are you doing?

Aaron: I’m doing alright. How about you?

Dan: Doing okay, doing okay. Haven’t been crying recently. That’s always a plus.

Actually, maybe not.

Aaron: Well, no, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe a good cry is something positive.

Dan: Cry me a river. Tell me something to cry about.

Aaron: I don’t know, man. I guess there’s a lot to cry about, if you think about it, in the world.

Dan: Crying workshops. What do you think about that?

Aaron: A crying workshop? Explain to me what a crying workshop is, Dan.

Dan: A crying workshop is where we would get together, hopefully as a team, all of team Deep English, and we would watch something sad, like maybe …

Aaron: Your home videos when you were a child? Like that kind of thing?

Dan: Right, right. Then we just let it all out. Just a big, cathartic …

Aaron: Just bawl. Just bawl our eyes out.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Wow, I’ve never done something like that before, but I occasionally cry.

Usually when listening to music.

Dan: Like what kind of music?

Aaron: Just depends, I listen to a lot of different varieties of music and if something moves me I might shed a tear, yeah.

Dan: That’s interesting.

Aaron: Music stimulates all kind of different emotions in me, from excitement to sadness to happiness, all kinds of things. It doesn’t affect you that way?

Dan: Nope, nope. I’m like a robot.

Aaron: You’re cold as ice.

Dan: I’m a robot. No emotions. No, of course, of course. Music’s emotional. I don’t know that music has ever moved me to tears.

Aaron: Really? No movies have ever moved you to tears?

Dan: Oh sure, sure. That’s different. That’s drama. That’s the drama of life on the big screen.

Aaron: What’s a movie that you cried in, that you can remember?

Dan: Now music could heighten the drama, the right kind of background music in a movie. That definitely moves me.

Aaron: Do you know of any movies that you’ve shed a tear in? You can’t remember offhand?

Dan: Give me a second. Not “Old Yeller”.

Aaron: That actually made me cry when I was a kid.

Dan: There was this story of “red” something about a dog that died that made me cry as a kid.

Aaron: Okay, so you had a thing for dogs.

Dan: That’s a little odd. Everybody loves dogs.

Aaron: Yeah, no, dogs are awesome.

Dan: That’s interesting, actually, this Hiroki Terai, in his crying workshops, that’s one of the things they watched was a little short film about a dying pet, which can pull at people’s heartstrings. Other things that they watched were little films about father/daughter relationships.

Aaron: As a means to stimulate people to cry?

Dan: Yes, and one part that I don’t know that we’ve covered, in the story, was part of their business is not just crying, but the head of the workshops are termed “handsome men”.

Aaron: “Handsome men”? And the idea behind that is that … well the way I understood it is that by using handsome men, that they would help encourage other people to think that it’s okay to cry.

Dan: Okay, but why handsome? Shouldn’t it just be like a macho man?

Aaron: Yeah, I would think so. Maybe that’s what they’re conflating. Maybe they’re conflating macho with handsome. I don’t know, but if a handsome, macho man can cry then anybody can cry. It’s totally acceptable to do, right?

Dan: One thing I thought was interesting, in the story, was they did this crosscultural study of which cultures were more likely to cry and which were least likely, and Japan ranked at the bottom of 37 countries studied and America ranked at the top.

Aaron: Well, hang on. When you say they ranked at the bottom, that means they’re least likely to cry?

Dan: They cry the least, yes.

Aaron: See, I find that fascinating because I’m always seeing Japanese crying on TV.

Dan: Yeah, but in real life?

Aaron: Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe not.

Dan: I think there is something to that Japanese psychologist who said it’s a bit of a virtue to be able to restrain yourself and contain yourself.

Aaron: Not just crying and sadness, but all kinds of what would be termed negative emotions, like anger or frustration.

Dan: Yeah, that’s what she said, crying, to be able to restrain your anger or your sadness, is a virtue. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say it’s a virtue here but I think it is respected to be able to restrain yourself to enryo suru for our Japanese listeners.

Aaron: Well, it’s one way to maintain a certain type of outward social harmony.

Dan: So, I mean, that didn’t actually surprise me about Japan. It surprised me that Americans are such big criers.

Aaron: When you say “Americans” you’re talking about the United States?

Dan: Yes, North Americans, and specifically United States of Americans.

Aaron: Those Americans.

Dan: Yeah, I wouldn’t think that, because I think of U.S. culture being kind of macho.

Aaron: Yeah, traditionally, I think we were maybe not actively discouraged from crying but at least that was there in our cultural upbringing, that boys, especially, should be tough and not cry and things like that. “Only girls or sissies would cry,”

that sort of very traditional type of …

Dan: Did your father ever tell you?

Aaron: No, no they were pretty cool about that. But I heard a lot of that from teachers and peers and things like that. I played a lot of sports so I was around a lot of athletes and crying was not really encouraged, to say the least.

Dan: Now, that just reminded me my daughter, who goes to preschool here in Japan, she cries all the time at home. She’s a little cry-baby.

Aaron: Well she lives with you. I mean, I’d be crying all the time if I was living with you, too, man.

Dan: Yeah, she’s got to look at this mug. But she told me … I once asked her if she ever cries at school and she was like “no. There’s no crying. Uta Sensei says no.” Her teacher says no crying in school. She says it with pride, she says “I never cry at school.” She says “some of the other kids, they cry. But not me.”

Meanwhile, she cries every day at home. She doesn’t get her candy when she wants it, she doesn’t get to watch TV.

Aaron: There are many things to cry about, there’s no doubt about that. I sometimes cry when I’m a bit stressed out. But not like curled up on the floor with my finger in my mouth or something like that, but it does release some tension and you feel better afterward. No doubt about it.

Dan: Yeah, I totally buy that part of the research saying that it’s cathartic for many people. It certainly is for me. I can’t remember the last time I cried. I think I get a little teary-eyed around Father’s Day. My father passed away on Father’s Day, so that’s always an emotional day for me, but it’s maybe a little moisture around the eyes, it’s not like just, unleash …

Aaron: It’s not a deluge of …

Dan: Which maybe would be a good thing.

Aaron: Yeah, could be. And then there’s laughter. Laughter is the best medicine.

Dan: That’s what they say. “Patch Adams”, did you ever see that movie?

Aaron: Yeah, I did. I can’t remember the name of the movie, was it “Patch Adams”? The actual name of the movie?

Dan: I think so.

Aaron: Yeah, it was with Robin Williams, who recently passed away.

Dan: Yeah, there was a character; what a funny guy who brought so much joy into so many people’s lives, and he suffered from really bad depression and ended up killing himself. A very sad story.

Aaron: The irony of it all. But I love laughing. I like to laugh. I like watching funny movies, I’m constantly joking around with my kids and my wife and it’s just …

Dan: I was thinking about the part in the story where he talks about how, just like humans, animals seldom laugh, or pant in a laughing sort of way when they’re alone. They don’t do that, it’s built-in. Laughter is a form of communication or camaraderie. I was watching the Dave Chappelle special last night.

Aaron: He’s an American comedian.

Dan: It was hilarious and I don’t think I laughed out loud maybe more than once, even though I watched like an hour. It was funny, and if I was with people I probably would have.

Aaron: Have you ever been in a room of people where, they call them laughing meditations or laughing exercises where …

Dan: Laughing clubs.

Aaron: Is that what they’re called? Laughing clubs?

Dan: Well, sometimes, yeah. Laughing yoga, laughing clubs.

Aaron: Okay, laughing yoga. I’ve been in big rooms where the yoga teacher will just start laughing in a big belly laugh and then eventually a few other people start laughing and you kind of fake laugh at first just to get the sound, but then it turns into real laughter and you can’t stop. That’s kind of fun.

Dan: I think we did a Deep English lesson on laughter yoga.

Aaron: Yeah, we probably did at some point. Yeah.

Dan: Do you know who Osho is?

Aaron: Yeah, he’s the spiritual guru from India, perhaps?

Dan: Right, well he’s not alive anymore.

Aaron: Okay, he passed away.

Dan: Maybe 20 years ago, or so, but he had a big following in India and he moved his commune to the U.S. and had a big western following and anyways, he had some very radical, out there, meditation techniques. One of his more famous ones was called The Mystic Rose.

Aaron: Okay, I’ve never heard of that.

Dan: I hope I don’t get this wrong, but I think it’s three days of laughter. You just laugh like wild. Again, there’s no jokes, it’s like the laughter yoga.

Aaron: To me that just seems … how can that be possible? How can you laugh for three straight days?

Dan: Why not?

Aaron: Because you would lose your voice. I mean, how could you do that? How could you laugh out loud for three days without stopping? Your tonsils would just deteriorate.

Dan: Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe it’s not three days, maybe it’s one day.

I’m going to look it up right now, as we’re talking. Then it’s three days of crying, I think, as far as I remember. Then it’s three days of silence.

Aaron: Okay, but usually when you cry, I guess and when you laugh, you just can’t sustain it. Is it just like fake laughing and fake crying? Or is it …

Dan: You’re ruining my story.

Aaron: I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand it.

Dan: I think it is fake. Oh, I got it totally wrong. Here, I’m reading it: the Osho mystic rose meditative therapy lasts for three hours a day for three weeks. The first week, laughing. Three hours of laughing for, I guess, seven days. Then, the second week, three hours of crying. That, you could probably sustain, even though it would still be hard.

Aaron: Well, if I was around you, man …

Dan: Then three days of silence. Or no, the third week is silence.

Aaron: That’s maybe easier to do, I suppose, physically anyway. Interesting. Well, we could try that, I suppose.

Dan: I don’t know if I’ve got time for that. It’s interesting.

Aaron: The laughter part I can probably get into. I don’t know about the crying part.

Dan: I mean, if there was something to laugh at, I don’t know if I could do the fake laughing for three hours.

Aaron: Well you could just put on comedy, like just keep watching comedy. I don’t know.

Dan: But I’m sure it just transforms your whole connection with these emotional outbursts that we have.

Aaron: I think, also, that these type of activities, crying and laughing, probably affect your chemical makeup. Your biology. Maybe the very act of doing that stimulates …

Dan: That’s studied. That’s fact. Cortisol, which is related to stress, goes down.

Dopamine, which does a lot of things, but it’s associated with good feelings, goes up. I’m sure, in terms of stress and blood pressure and your immune system, it’s not just laughter, but crying also.

Aaron: Yeah. This one researcher, I don’t know if I’m going to get his name right: Jaak …

Dan: Panksepp.

Aaron: Panksepp. Is he Dutch? It sounds like a Dutch name.

Dan: I don’t know, he’s a professor at a U.S. university.

Aaron: Anyway, he studies the neuroscience of emotions.

Dan: Yeah, and animals.

Aaron: And animals. Well, one of the main things that he states is that, really, we’re very, very similar, like on a precognitive level, when it comes to emotions.

We’re very, very similar to animals; even animals as distant from us as chickens.

We share many of the same biochemical neural pathways that are related to emotions. We’ll see many of the same patterns, many of the same systems, and that by stimulating certain areas of the brain, we can actually bring these emotions into being.

He mentions the case that sometimes in surgery, if some part of the brain gets stimulated, someone can get very angry and et cetera. So I find that very, very interesting because it sort of insinuates that if, in the future, if we really understand these neural pathways, we can develop technologies in the form of, perhaps, drugs, or maybe it’s not a drug. Maybe it’s some way of stimulating these areas of the brain to bring about happiness and to maybe get away from things like depression and anxiety. I just find that really interesting.

Dan: That’s the story of “The Matrix”. The artificial intelligence creates all of this emotional life for us when, in reality, we’re just plugged into this machine and the robots are using humans for harvesting energy. Perhaps we lose some of our humanity if we are able to artificially encourage only the positive, only the highs.

Without the lows, perhaps the highs are not meaningful.

Aaron: Yeah, they’re meaningless, perhaps. But, in severe cases of depression or anxiety, it could be a means of bringing people away from the precipice, or away from the abyss and back to hope. So, that could be a positive part of that. Very interesting that we may share a lot in common with animals when it comes to emotions. When you observe dogs, or monkeys, or cats, other mammals, yeah, you can totally feel that. You can make sense. But when you get into reptiles and it starts to get a little distant, it’s hard to kind of understand what’s going on, at least for me. But I thought that was interesting: chickens. The sadness of chickens.

Dan: We share a lot with chickens. Chickens are sad?

Aaron: Well, apparently. Their neural pathways of sadness are very similar to ours. According to Jaak.

Dan: Elephants. There’s some very sad videos on the internet of elephants crying…

Aaron: Oh, right of them crying over dead loved ones and protecting their bodies and mourning for days on end.

Dan: I was looking into this story that we cite, which is about an elephant who was separated from its mother, who started crying. It was a really sad story. It was a newborn. You know elephants are very intelligent, but there seemed to have been something wrong with this mother elephant. She gave birth and she tried to kill her baby, which I’m sure is very unusual. They’re a very loving pack animals.

Aaron: Especially for a mother.

Dan: I guess there was something wrong with this mother and she tried to kill the baby and so they separated the baby from the mother and they allowed them …

tried to reintroduce the mother and the mother tried to kill the baby again. So they separated them again and this newborn baby was crying, tears streaming down her face because she was separated from her mother and she was just new to this world. It was really said, and apparently there’s lots of stories of crying elephants. I think we once did a story about elephants. They have funeral rituals.

Aaron: Yeah, that’s right. We did do a story on that. A long time ago.

Dan: Yeah, they will hang near the body and I think they’ll do something like put brush, like sticks and wood, around it as if they’re consecrating the ground and they’ll stay with the body and cry for some significant amount of time. Yeah, elephants are …

Aaron: There’s a lot to learn from elephants.

Dan: Well, on that note, until next time.

Aaron: Yeah, I hope you have lots of laughter.

Dan: Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

Aaron: Because if you do, you’ll be crying.

Dan: That’s right. That expression has no connection with this conversation at all, I just like chickens.

Aaron: Just wanted to throw that out there. Just in case.

Dan: Alright, see you later.

Aaron: See you.