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这又是挺有趣的一章内容：闲情逸致，或者说工作之外的兴趣爱好，这或许不为我们所重视，但这很重要，尤其是与老人相处的时刻。对此，我想说两点，第一是兴趣爱好；第二是格局。 一、兴趣爱好 说真的，家里老人对我很好，我们相处得也很好，但老太太和老头彼此间相处的却不那么好，同时，老人和子女间也难免有生气斗嘴的时候。 怪谁呢？都怪，也都不怪，人嘛，谁没点牢骚，没点脾气？ 我想说，有些老人确实心胸豁达，但很多老人的内心世界其实很小，而且越老越小，小到只能容纳三尺锅台和家长里短，小到时不时会有莫名其妙的脾气。 原因是什么？可能肝火太旺，可能本就脾气不好，可能心理疾病，可能真的老了，但好多时候就是内心空虚，人闲是非多。 试想想，如果老人的内心世界足够丰富，或者每天有无数想要干的事情，人家可能根本就懒得理你。所以，想要跟老人处好，除了好好孝顺之外，真的要在这里想办法，让老人有事可干，觉得自己还能行，也让他们更少时间瞎想。 我家里老人手机里，都给他们安装了戏剧、评书、老歌、老电影，以及社会新闻等等软件，现在他们每天都有大量时间折腾在上面，我总觉得，他们的生活也因此充实了很多。 二、学习与格局 罗素在这本书中屡次提到人对外部世界的兴趣及探索；屡次提到人与自然、人与宇宙的关系；屡次提到学习和思考的重要性。 我想说，对于外部世界旺盛的好奇心、探索欲就代表着对知识永不停歇的渴求，这真的会让人心态年轻，会强化自我的认可，也会帮助人建立起自己的格局——当你专注知识和探索，当你不断充实自己，你真的不会太关注鸡毛蒜皮的家庭琐事，腹有诗书气自华也不是瞎说的。 好，啰嗦话就到这里，下面进入正文—— Chapter 15: Impersonal interests 第十五章 论闲情逸致 In this chapter I wish to consider not those major interests about which a man's life is built, but those minor interests which fill his leisure and afford relaxation from the tenseness of his more serious preoccupations. In the life of the average man his wife and children, his work and his financial position occupy the main part of his anxious and serious thought. Even if he has extra-matrimonial love affairs, they probably do not concern him as profoundly in themselves as in their possible effects upon his home life. The interests which are bound up with his work I am not for the present regarding as impersonal interests. A man of science, for example, must keep abreast of research in his own line. Towards such research his feelings have the warmth and vividness belonging to something intimately concerned with his career, but if he reads about research in some quite other science with which he is not professionally concerned he reads in quite a different spirit, not professionally, less critically, more disinterestedly. Even if he has to use his mind in order to follow what is said, his reading is nevertheless a relaxation, because it is not connected with his responsibilities: If the book interests him, his interest is impersonal in a sense which cannot be applied to the books upon his own subject. It is such interests lying outside the main activities of a man's life that I wish to speak about in the present chapter. 在本章内，我想要考察的并非我们生活所依赖的那些主要的兴趣，而是那些可以丰富我们休闲时光，让我们从各种严肃事务的紧张中放松下来的次要的兴趣。 在普通人的生活中，妻子和孩子、工作和经济地位等等会在他为之焦虑和严肃思考的事情中占据主要的部分。即使他在婚外有一大堆的风流韵事，于他而言也不过浮云而已，而倘若婚外风流影响到他的家庭生活，就会对他产生更为深刻的影响。 暂时来说，我并不将围绕着工作的兴趣视为闲情逸致。比如科学家，他必须时时关注自己研究领域的最新进展，对于这个与他职业相关的、熟悉的领域，他有着温暖而又明朗的情怀， 但如果他读到一些自己并不专业的、完全不同领域的科学研究内容，他就会换一种完全不同的心情来读——不用专业的眼光、不随便挑剔苛责、更加没有偏见。即使他尽量跟随着作者的思想和思路，但无论如何，他的阅读依然是一种放松。这是因为一切与他的职责并不相关：如果这本书吸引了他，他的兴趣在某种意义上也依然是一种闲情逸致，无法与他阅读本领域的书籍相比。我想要讲的正是这种人们生活中主要活动之外的兴趣。 One of the sources of unhappiness, fatigue, and nervous strain is inability to be interested in anything that is not of practical importance in one's own life. The result of this is that the conscious mind gets no rest from a certain small number of matters, each of which probably involves some anxiety and some element of worry. Except in sleep the conscious mind is never allowed to lie fallow while subconscious thought matures its gradual wisdom. The result is excitability, lack of sagacity, irritability, and a loss of sense of proportion. All these are both causes and effects of fatigue. As a man gets more tired, his external interests fade, and as they fade he loses the relief which they afford him and becomes still more tired. This vicious circle is only too apt to end in a breakdown. What is restful about external interests is the fact that they do not call for any action. Making decisions and exercising volition are very fatiguing, especially if they have to be done hurriedly and without the help of the subconscious. Men who feel that they must “sleep on it” before coming to an important decision are profoundly right. But it is not only in sleep that the subconscious mental processes can work. They can work also while a man's conscious mind is occupied elsewhere. The man who can forget his work when it is over and not remember it until it begins again next day is likely to do his work far better than the man who worries about it throughout the intervening hours. And it is very much easier to forget work at the times when it ought to be forgotten if a man has many interests other than his work than it is if he has not. It is, however, essential that these interests should not exercise those very faculties which have been exhausted by his day's work. They should not involve will and quick decision, they should not, like gambling, involve any financial element, and they should as a rule not be so exciting as to produce emotional fatigue and preoccupy the subconscious as well as the conscious mind. 人们之所以感到苦恼、疲惫、精神压力，其中一种原因就在于他无法对与自己生活没什么重要关联的东西产生兴趣。结果就是，大脑无法从一些乱七八糟的事情中脱身出来休息一下，而这些事情中的每一种都可能带给人焦虑或担忧。除非入睡，大脑永不停歇下来，无法让潜意识的想法自然而然地孕育其智慧，而结果就是容易兴奋、缺乏智慧、敏感易怒、缺乏判断轻重缓急的能力。 所有这一切既是疲劳的原因，也是疲劳的结果：一个人越是觉得疲惫，他对于外界的兴趣就越是渐渐丧失，导致他无法获得放松和宽慰，而这又使得他更加疲惫，这一恶性循环很容易以人的精神崩溃而告终。 之所以说对外部的兴趣令人放松，这是基于这样一个事实，那就是他不需要任何的回应动作。做出决断和运用人的意志力都是很容易让人疲惫的，特别是需要仓促间做出决定，且没有潜意识帮忙的情况下更是如此。 那些认为在做出重大决定前必须先“睡上一觉”的人是非常明智的，但并非只有在睡眠中潜意识的心理过程才会起作用。当人们头脑清醒，却被别的事情占用的时候，潜意识一样能发挥作用。那些在工作完成后就将其忘到脑后，直到第二天重新开始工作才再次想起的人，比起那些一晚上都在辗转反侧想着工作的人，他们更加可能更出色地完成工作。比起那些没有爱好的人，那些除了工作之外还有很多兴趣爱好的人更容易在该忘记的时候忘记工作。然而，需要注意的是，这些兴趣绝不应运用那些已经被整天的工作耗尽的官能，也不应让意志和决断力掺和，更不应该涉及赌博等跟经济因素相关的活动，而且它们通常不应该让人太过兴奋，导致精神疲惫，让潜意识和意识领域都劳累不堪。 A great many amusements fulfil all these conditions. Watching games, going to the theatre, playing golf, are all irreproachable from this point of view. For a man of a bookish turn of mind, reading unconnected with his professional activities is very satisfactory. However important a worry may be, it should not be thought about throughout the whole of the waking hours. 许多娱乐活动都符合以上这些条件，从这个角度来说，观赏比赛、去剧院、打高尔夫等等活动都是无可厚非的。对一个嗜书如命的人来说，读一些与自己的职业无关的书是非常令人满足的。不管这烦恼有多重要，都不该让它占据你所有的清醒时间。 In this respect there is a great difference between men and women. Men on the whole find it very much easier to forget their work than women do. In the case of women whose work is in the home this is natural, since they do not have the change of place that a man has when he leaves the office to help them to acquire a new mood. But if I am not mistaken, women whose work is outside the home differ from men in this respect almost as much as those who work at home. They find it, that is to say, very difficult to be interested in anything that has for them no practical importance. Their purposes govern their thoughts and their activities, and they seldom become absorbed in some wholly irresponsible interest. I do not of course deny that exceptions exist, but I am speaking of what seems to me to be the usual rule. In a women's college, for example, the women teachers, if no man is present, talk shop in the evening, while in a men's college the men do not. This characteristic appears to women as a higher degree of conscientiousness than that of men, but I do not think that in the long run it improves the quality of their work. And it tends to produce a certain narrowness of outlook leading not infrequently to a kind of fanaticism. 在这方面，男人和女人有很大的差异，男性总体上比女性更容易忘却自己的工作。对于在家里工作的女性来说，这是很自然的，因为她们的工作地点是不变的，她们不像男性那样，有机会在离开办公室的时候换换情绪。 但如果我没弄错的话，在这方面，在外工作的女性与男性的差别几乎与在家工作的女性没什么差别。她们发现自己很难对那些没什么实用价值的东西感兴趣。她们的目的控制着她们的思想和行动，同时，她们也很少专注于那些完全不用费什么心思的兴趣。当然，我并不否认例外的存在，但我所说的对我来说似乎是普遍的规律。 例如，在一所女子学院，如果没有男性出现的话，她们会三句话离不开本行；而在男子学院，一切截然不同。这一特性说明女性比男性更认真尽责，但我并不认为从长远来看这可以改进她们的工作质量，恰恰相反，它会让人的视野变得狭隘，并导致一种偏执，而这种情况并不罕见。 All impersonal interests, apart from their importance as relaxation, have various other uses. To begin with, they help a man to retain his sense of proportion. It is very easy to become so absorbed in our own pursuits, our own circle, our own type of work, that we forget how small a part this is of the total of human activity and how many things in the world are entirely unaffected by what we do. Why should one remember this? You may ask. There are several answers. In the first place, it is good to have as true a picture of the world as is compatible with necessary activities. Each of us is in the world for no very long time, and within the few years of his life has to acquire whatever he is to know of this strange planet and its place in the universe. To ignore our opportunities for knowledge, imperfect as they are, is like going to the theatre and not listening to the play. The world is full of things that are tragic or comic, heroic or bizarre or surprising, and those who fail to be interested in the spectacle that it offers are forgoing one of the privileges that life has to offer. 除了诸如放松这样的重要性之外，所有这些闲情逸致都有着各种各样的其它用途。 首先，它有助于人们保持自己判断轻重缓急的能力。我们很容易专注于自己的追求、圈子或者工作之中，而忘记了这对于整个人类行为来说是多么渺小的一部分；忘记了这个世界上有多少事情完全不受我们所做的这一切的影响。 你也许会问，为什么人们要记得这些？有好几种不同的回答：首先，我们应该拥有一幅与自己的（工作、生活等）必要活动相匹配、相融合的、这个世界的真实图景。在这个世界，我们中的每一个人都不会活太久时间，而在生命这有限的若干年里，我们应该了解这个陌生的星球，了解它在宇宙中的位置，获得我们想要知道的无论什么东西。无视我们获取知识的机会，不管这知识有多么不完美，都犹如进入了剧院却不曾欣赏戏剧。世界充满了悲喜剧，到处是英雄豪杰或奇人异事，那些对世界所给予的壮丽景象不感兴趣的人，无疑是放弃了生活所赋予的特权。 Then again a sense of proportion is very valuable and at times very consoling. We are all inclined to get unduly excited, unduly strained, unduly impressed with the importance of the little corner of the world in which we live, and of the little moment of time comprised between our birth and death. In this excitement and over-estimation of our own importance there is nothing desirable. True, it may make us work harder, but it will not make us work better. A little work directed to a good end is better than a great deal of work directed to a bad end, though the apostles of the strenuous life seem to think otherwise. Those who care much for their work are always in danger of falling into fanaticism, which consists essentially in remembering one or two desirable things while forgetting all the rest, and in supposing that in the pursuit of these one or two any incidental harm of other sorts is of little account. Against this fanatical temper there is no better prophylactic than a large conception of the life of man and his place in the universe. This may seem a very big thing to invoke in such a connection; but apart from this particular use it is in itself a thing of great value. 其次，分寸感或者说主次观念是很有价值的，有时也能起到很大的安慰作用。 我们都倾向于过度的兴奋、过度的紧张，也过分地铭记着我们所生活的这个世界的某个小小的角落、我们从生到死之间某个短短的时刻，而过度的兴奋和对自身重要性的过高估量其实是不可取的。的确，它可能会令我们工作更加努力，但它不会令我们工作得更加出色。虽然那些过着艰苦生活的信徒们不这样想，但如果你做了一大堆工作，却换来了一个糟糕的结果，那就还不如只做了一丁点工作，却收获了好的结局。 那些过分关注自己工作的人总是面临着陷入狂热的危险，这种狂热本质上就是只记得一两件可取的事情，但却忘记了所有其它的事情，并且假设在追求这一两件事情的过程中，对其它事物附带的伤害都是无足轻重的。 想要对付这种狂热的倾向，最好的办法莫过于建立起对于人类生活及其在宇宙中的位置的概念。将这些联系起来似乎是一件很大的事情，但除了这特殊的作用之外，它本身就具有很大的价值。 |
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