编者按：一支笔，可以仅写寥寥数字，亦可完成长篇杰作，更可尘封不动，静待笔水蒸发；可以慢慢计划，字字斟酌，亦可信马由缰，任笔驰骋；可以写尽世间百态，可以娱人娱己，可以随心所欲，可以……但如果，给你一段人生呢？这篇小小的英文短文，就用这样一种假设，引起我们对人生的深思。

Suppose someone gave you a pen — a sealed, solid-colored pen. You couldn’t see how much ink it had.

It might run dry after the first few tentative words or last just long enough to create a masterpiece (or several) that would last forever and make a difference in the scheme of things. You don’t know before you begin.

Under the rules of the game, you really never know. You have to take a chance!

Actually, no rule of the game states you must do anything. Instead of picking up and using the pen, you could leave it on a shelf or in a drawer where it will dry up, unused.

But if you do decide to use it, what would you do with it? How would you play the game?

Would you plan and plan before you ever wrote a word?

Would your plans be so extensive that you never even got to the writing?

Or would you take the pen in hand, plunge right in and just do it, struggling to keep up with the twists and turns of the torrents of words that take you where they take you?

Would you write cautiously and carefully, as if the pen might run dry the next moment, or would you pretend or believe (or pretend to believe) that the pen will write forever and proceed accord glee?

And of what would you write: Of love? Hate? Fun? Misery? Life? Death? Nothing or Everything?

Would you write to please just yourself? Or others? Or yourself by writing for others?

Would your strokes be tremblingly timid or brilliantly bold? Fancy with a flourish or plain?

Would you even write? Once you have the pen, no rule says you have to write. Would you sketch? Scribble? Doodle or draw?