Dreams are a fascinating subject. Many psychologists today say
that dreams are the bridge between our conscious and unconscious
mind. They suggest that you try to write down the dreams that you
remember as soon as you wake up. Then, you can try to interpret
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them by comparing the dream with situations in your life.（Most
dreams relate to things that happened in the past 24 to 48 hours.）
Sometimes dreams may explain things you are trying to suppress;
other times they might relate to things that are troubling or depressing
you. In general, dreams relate to familiar events and have reasonable
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explanations. If you are receptive to this kind of analysis, answers will
tend to emerge. Most researchers also agree that the dreamer
himself will usually come up with the best interpretation of his dream
since no one else has had his exact experiences.
There are many typhoons in Taiwan in summer. They usually
__1__ a lot of damage because many things are destroyed by fierce
wind and heavy rain. Therefore, the government always reminds
people __2___ the importance of prevention. For example, people
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should often clean the gutters __3__ floods. Moreover, houses should
not be built on a mountain slope. They will fall apart very easily
provided it rains too much. When a typhoon __4__ come, people
should prepare some food, water and batteries to stay home for
safety.
Almost every language has its share of proverbs. “Too many
cooks spoil the broth”—so goes a proverb that is familiar to most
Americans. People in Iran expressed the same thought with different
words: “Two midwives will deliver a baby with a crooked head.” So do
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the Russians: “With seven nurses, the child goes blind.” The
Japanese: “Too many boatmen run the boat up the top of the
mountain.”
These lean, didactic, aphoristic statements, so varied in their
languages, seem to distill a universal wisdom. Is it possible that all
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human beings share certain feelings about life in common and thus
produce like-sounding proverbs? In the Samoan fishing culture,
which is dependent on the canoe, islanders would have no difficulty
in recognizing the kinship of the English proverb, “It never rains but it
pours”, to one of their own: “It leaks at the gunwale, it leaks in the
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keel.” An old saying of the Nandi tribe in Africa goes: “A goat’s hide
buys a goat’s hide and a gourd a gourd.” This is equivalent to the
Biblical injunction, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
They say that the best proverbs—no matter what the
language—have certain characteristics in common: they all are
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concerned about life in general and cover a vast range of human
endeavor—love and war, birth and death, sickness and health, and
work and play. But it remains a mystery why some civilizations are
rich in proverbs and others are not.
