"Sustainability" has become a popular word these days, but to Ted Ning,the concept will always have personal meaning. Having endured a painful period of unsustainability in his own life made it clear to him that sustainability-oriented values must be expressed through every day action and choice.

當今，“可持續(xù)性”已經(jīng)成為了一個流行的詞語。但是，對特德寧來說，它對這個詞有著自身的體會。在忍受了一段痛苦的、難以為續(xù)的生活之后，他清楚地認識到，以可持續(xù)發(fā)展為導向的生活價值必須通過日常的活動和做出的選擇表現(xiàn)出來。

Ning recalls spending a confusing year in the late 1990s selling insurance. He'd been through the dot-com boom and burst and, desperate for a job, signed on with a Boulder agency.

寧回憶了在上個世紀90年代末期的某一年，他賣保險，那是一種渾渾噩噩的生活。在經(jīng)歷了網(wǎng)絡經(jīng)濟的興盛和衰敗之后，他非�？释�得到一份工作，于是和一家博德的代理公司簽了合約。

It didn't go well. "It was a really bad move because that's not my passion," says Ning, whose dilemma about the job translated, predictably, into a lack of sales. "I was miserable. I had so much anxiety that I would wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I had no money and needed the job. Everyone said,” Just wait, you'll turn the corner, give it some time.''

事情進展不順，“那的確是很糟糕的一種選擇，因為那并非是我的激情所在，”寧如是說�？梢韵胂�，他這種工作上的窘境是由于銷售業(yè)績不良造成的。“我覺得很悲哀。我太擔心了，以至于我會在半夜醒來，盯著天花板。沒有錢，我需要這份工作。每個人都會說，等吧，總會有轉(zhuǎn)機的，給點時間吧�！�

來源分析：

原文是來自一份雜志，叫“experience life”，出題人做了部分改動，原文和改動的文章如下：

Sustainability has become something of a buzzword(出題人把這個單詞改為popular word) these days, but to Ted Ning, the concept will always have personal meaning. Having endured a painful period of unsustainability in his own life made it clear to him that sustainability-oriented values must be expressed through everyday action and choice.

Ning, director of LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability), the Boulder, Colo.–based information clearinghouse on sustainable living, recalls spending a tumultuous(出題人把這個詞改為了confusing) year in the late ’90s selling insurance. He’d been through the dot-com boom and bust(出題人似乎把這個詞改為burst了) and, desperate for a job, signed on with a Boulder agency.

It didn’t go well. “It was a really bad move because that’s not my passion,” says Ning, whose ambivalence about the job translated, predictably, into a lack of sales. “I was miserable. I had so much anxiety that I would pull alongside of the highway and vomit, or wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I had no money and needed the job. Everyone said, ‘Just wait, you’ll turn the corner, give it some time.’”

Ning stuck it out for a year because he simply didn’t know what else to do, but felt his happiness and health suffer as a result. He eventually quit and stumbled upon LOHAS in a help-wanted ad for a data analyst. “I didn’t know what LOHAS was,” he says, “but it sounded kinda neat.” It turned out to be a better fit than he could have ever imagined.

At the time, the LOHAS organization did little more than host a small annual conference in Boulder. It was a forum where progressive-minded companies could gather to compare notes on how to reach a values-driven segment of consumers — the LOHAS market — who seemed attracted to products and services that mirrored their interest in health, environmental stewardship, social justice, personal development and sustainable living.

In contrast with his disastrous foray into the insurance business, Ning’s new job felt like coming home. Growing up in the foothills of the Rockies outside of Denver, he’d developed a love of the outdoors and a respect for the earth, while his parents provided a model of social activism — the family traveled widely, and at one point his parents created and operated a nonprofit that offered microcredit loans to small businesses in Vietnam and Guatemala. He has three adopted sisters from Vietnam and Korea. He studied international relations and Chinese at Colorado University and slipped easily into the Boulder lifestyle — commuting by bike, eating organics, buying local and the rest — though he stopped short of the patchouli-and-dreadlocks phase embraced by many of his peers. (He opted instead for the university’s ski team and, after graduating, wound up coaching the Japanese development team during the Nagano Olympics in 1998.)

From his ground-level job, Ning moved quickly up the ranks in the organization, becoming its executive director in 2006. “When I got the job, LOHAS was a sleepy conference in Boulder,” says Ning. Today, the forum is booming, the organization is expanding and the market is evolving. Ning has more than grown into the position he stumbled on in the want ads. “I don’t consider this a job. It is really more of a calling.”

Ning, 41, coordinates the conference and oversees the organization’s annual journal and Web site (www.lohas.com), while compiling research on trends and opportunities for businesses. He also travels the country promoting — and explaining — the LOHAS concept and the burgeoning market it represents.

First identified by sociologist Paul Ray in the mid-1990s as “cultural creatives,” the U.S. market segment that embraces LOHAS today has grown to about 41 million consumers, or roughly 19 percent of American adults. But those LOHAS consumers are powerfully influencing the attitudes and behaviors of others (witness the rise of interest in yoga, all-natural products, simplicity and hybrid vehicles). Which is why LOHAS-related products now generate an estimated $209 billion annually.

“Over the last two years a green tidal wave has come over us,” says Ning. Riding that wave, says Ning, is not about jumping on a trend bandwagon. It’s connecting with — and acting on — a set of shared, instrinsic values. “People know what is authentic. You can’t preach this lifestyle and not live it,” he says. He and his wife, Jenifer, live in a solar-powered home, raise organic vegetables in their backyard and drive a car that gets 48 miles to the gallon. He even buys carbon offsets to negate the global warming impact of his cell phone.

Ning emphasizes that there are many different ways of “l(fā)iving LOHAS.” Ultimately, it’s really about finding a way of life that makes sense and feels good — now and for the long haul. “People are looking internally,” he says, “asking themselves, ‘What really makes me happy?’ Is it the fact that I can go out and buy that giant flat-screen TV, or is it that I can have a quiet evening with my family just hanging out and playing a game of Scrabble?”

For Ning, it’s a no-brainer. He’ll take Scrabble every time.

Laine Bergeson is an Experience Life senior editor.