Passage4

Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage.

I was supposed to have been a nice, church-going Swiss housewife, but I ended up a psychiatrist in the American Southwest for my belief in the power of unconditional love that set me to work with AIDS-infected patients.

I was destined to work with dying patients. I had no choice when I encountered my first AIDS patient. I felt called to travel some 250,000 miles each year to bold workshops that helped people cope with the most painful aspects of life, death and the transition between the

two.

Later in my life, I was compelled to buy a 300 acre farm in rural Virginia, and I poured all the money I earned from publishing and lectures into making it a reality. I constructed a healing center where I held workshops, allowing me to cut down on my busy travel schedule. I was planning to adopt AIDS infected babies, who would enjoy however many days remained of their lives in the splendor of the outdoors. After announcing my intention of adopting AIDS-infected babies, I became the most despised (厌恶) person in the whole Shenan?oah Valley, and even though I soon abandoned my plans, there was a group of men who did everything in their power short of killing me to get me to leave, They fired bullets through my windows and shot at my animals.

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. The fields rolled out as far as I could see. Ancient trees offered their silent wisdom.

Then, on October 6, 1994, my house was set on fire. It burned down to the ground and all my papers were destroyed. Everything I owned turned to ash.

I was hurrying through the airport in Baltimore, trying to catch a plane home, when I got the news that it was on fire. The friend who told me begged me not to go home, not yet. But my whole life I had been told not to become a doctor, not to talk with dying patients, not to start an AIDS hospice (临终安养院), and each time I had stubbornly (倔强的) done what felt right rather than what was expected.

That is how I have lived. If I am opinionated and independent, if I am stuck in my ways, so what? That is me.

Believing in the power of unconditional love, the author______