2018年职称外语考试综合类阅读素材10

 　　People often talk as if shyness is a disease or mental condition that can be cured. I prefer to think of it as an emotional disability. It's something we are born with and something we carry with us in our entire lives. There are too many people, however, who seem to be determined to find some way of doing away with their shyness. In my opinion, It's a waste of time. I don't mean that we should do nothing about it; quite the contrary, I think we need to separate the basic fact of our shyness from our ability to function in a social environment.

　　Look at one of the most famous shy people of them all, Johnny Carson. This man is painfully shy, yet for decades he made a living talking and associating with different people every night, in front of a national audience. Carson has never done away with his shyness, but he had successfully found a way to deal with it to that extent that he could be, not just a talk show host, but a legend among talk show hosts. Look also at Sally Fields, who has recently admitted her problem with shyness. This is a woman who has appeared in many films, TV shows, interviews yet in her early years she was so shy that she turned down a lunch invitation from Jane Fonda because she was terribly afraid of meeting her.

　　I guess that our shyness is there because each of us is born with some insecurity and this insecurity prevents us from reaching out to others the way people with a more open personality(个性)do. As we grow up and become adults, we have allowed our social skills to grow and develop. But we are still stuck in kindergarten(幼儿园)or elementary school or wherever it was that our shyness first took root in our psyches(心灵).