2020屆高考英語閱讀理解之主旨大意題復習

  mom and dad were happily talking about the chain of events that had led them to this place. “that surgery,” her mo m whispered. “was a real miracle. i wonder how much it would have cost?”
  tess smiled. she knew exactly how much a miracle cost…one dollar and eleven cents…plus the faith of a little child.
43. it can be inferred that andrew’s operation would have been ______________.
 a. costly     b. dangerous   c. serious   d. difficult
3.【金華一中XX屆高三上學期期中考試 c】
who’s in control of your life? who is pulling your string? for the majority of us, it’s other people—society, colleagues, friends, family or our religious community. we learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. we were brainwashed. we discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. as oscar wilde puts it, “most people are other people. their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry(模仿), their passions a quotation.”
so when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. we long for this good feeling like a drug. therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to. just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix (一劑毒品). we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.
but, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. the price of the approval drug is freedom—the freedom to be ourselves. the truth is that we cannot control what other people think. people have their own agenda, and they come with their own baggage and, in the  end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. the person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.
so how can we take back control? i think there’s only one way—make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. we should guide ourselv es by means of a set of values---not values imposed（強加）from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. if we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.