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忙碌的生活中，我们时常会忽略一些微小的瞬间，这些瞬间或许只是一次短暂的交流，但却可能带来出乎意料的情感共鸣。我们常常被过分追求宏大改变的想法所限制，觉得只有在改变世界的尺度上才能有所作为。微小的、看似不重要的交流反而被我们忽略了。叔本华说：任何时刻，我们都无法确定我们周围的人，有没有人正考虑结束自己的生命。因此，我们任何一个人都有可能成为别人绝望生活中的最后一道防线。从与陌生人的微笑、邻居间的问候，到与路过的人短暂的对话，一个简单的问候、一次小小的同情表达，甚至是一句幽默的话语，都可能改变他人的情绪。让我们停下脚步，用一颗温暖的心去对待生活中那些小小的瞬间，因为小小的事情也许正是真正的改变和意义的源泉。Taking time to have small chats about nothing in particular with people we don’t know and are unlikely ever to meet again can – from some perspectives – seem like the height of absurdity. 让我们抽出时间与素不相识且不太可能再次见面的人闲聊，即使是聊一些毫无关联的话题，从某些角度看，似乎是非常荒谬的行为。Maybe we’re in a coffee shop and someone is preparing us a drink. Perhaps we’ve crossed a neighbour in the hallway while getting our post. Or we’re on a train, waiting for the doors to open. Why would we bother to hold up our day for a few moments, given how many things we already need to do and how many good friends we already have that we haven’t seen in far too long?也许我们在咖啡店，服务员正在为我们准备饮品。或者我们去取件时，刚好在走廊遇到了邻居。又或者我们坐在火车上，等待着车门打开。鉴于我们已经有很多事情需要做，也有很多好朋友已经很久没见了，为什么还要花费几分钟去跟陌生人闲聊呢？We may also have a more high-minded defence for our silence: we aspire to be profound people and there is no way that we can get anywhere meaningful with a near or complete stranger in a compressed amount of time. We shun the smaller chats because – in the back of our minds – we tell ourselves that we are already sufficiently deeply committed to the long and consequential ones.我们可能还有更高尚的理由来解释我们的沉默：我们渴望成为深刻的人，然而在短暂的时间里，与陌生人交流几乎不可能有什么意义可言。我们回避琐碎的聊天，是因为在我们心底，我们告诉自己，我们已经足够深入地投入在长期且重要的交流中了。But this is to miss the point – and the opportunities – presented by minor social exchanges. They stand, in relation to lengthy friendships, rather as haikus do next to 1,000-page novels; there are things a tiny poem can do that a comprehensive narrative will miss. There are single sentences that can mark us as much as entire volumes. There are pictures that can stick with us in a way that a three-hour film won’t. We can be disproportionately and yet powerfully touched by so-called minor things. 但是我们忽视了次要社交交流所带来的意义和机会。闲聊与长时间的友谊相比，就如同俳句与千页小说相对；短小的诗词能够弥补长篇累牍所忽视的东西。有些单句能够像整卷的著作一样影响我们。有些图片能够镌刻于心，而三小时的电影却做不到。我们可能会因为不起眼的琐事受到不成比例但强烈的触动。Small sympathetic chats matter above all because few of us are ever very far from sadness and despondency. There are so many reasons to dislike ourselves, to be paranoid about what other people think and to regret mistakes we’ve made. When we are in a febrile or fragile mood, a short kindly exchange can be all that is needed to start turn around a deeply dark day. An enormous amount of sympathy and fellow-feeling can be compressed in the most miniscule dialogue. 'They make them like that to torture us, don’t they?’ we might say to a parent struggling to close the zip on a child’s jacket in a sudden downpour, thereby sending a modest sign that we know how difficult things can be – and that we have in some ways been there – or somewhere like there – ourselves.这些小而富有同情心的聊天之所以至关重要，因为我们几乎没有人能逃得过悲伤和沮丧。我们有很多原因不喜欢自己，对别人的看法过度担忧，对自己犯过的错误感到后悔。当我们情绪激动或脆弱时，一次简短友好的交流就足以扭转至暗的一天。最微小的对话也可以蕴含巨大的同情和情感共鸣。比如，我们可以对在突如其来的倾盆大雨中正奋力给孩子的外套拉上拉链的父母说：“服装厂家是刻意折磨我们吗？” 从而传达出我们理解有时事情可能会多么困难，而且在某种程度上，我们曾经处在那种艰难情境下，或类似的情境下。Or we might – on our way to a station – exchange one or two sympathetic words with a taxi driver about their elderly mother who, we learn, has just gone into a care home after having a fall. The chat won’t change anything in an already tricky situation, but the humanity on display might just. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer remarked that we can never know for sure who around us may, at any particular moment, be thinking of ending their own life. The thought usefully puts into relief what might be at stake in any exchange; we may – at points and without any obvious warning – be the last thing between someone and their decision to despair.或许在前往车站的途中，我们会与一名出租车司机交流一两句同情的话语，我们得知他他们年迈的母亲，刚刚因为摔倒而入住疗养院。这番简短交谈并不能改变已经棘手的局面，但所展现的人性或许能够起到作用。哲学家阿瑟·叔本华曾经提到，任何时刻，我们都无法确定我们周围的人，有没有人正考虑结束自己的生命。这句话掷地有声地凸显了任何交流可能面临的风险；在某些时刻，毫无明显警告的情况下，我们可能是某人和他们绝望决定之间的最后一道防线。A charge often made against small chats is that we can surely only be 'pretending’ to be friendly. Yet this is to miss out how much, and how deeply, our hearts may go out to people whose lives we merely brush against. We can imagine our way into pains whose details we will never know. We can – if it doesn’t sound too paradoxical – love a stranger, and, even more oddly, for only a minute or two.有人常常经常指责说，闲聊肯定只是表面上“假装”友好。然而，这种指责就忽视了，我们的心灵可能会对我们仅仅与之擦肩而过的人倾注多少、多么深刻的情感。我们可以设身处地地感受到那些我们永远不会了解细节的痛苦。我们可以，如果这听起来不太矛盾的话，爱上一个陌生人，甚至更奇怪的是，只需要一两分钟。We are – in all this – so often held back by unhelpfully grand ideas of what it means to change the world. We imagine the requirements for improvement on such a large scale that – along the way – we end up grievously neglecting what it is actually in our powers to achieve right now, today, the next time we go out. We suffer from an upside-down view of where significance can lie. We are assembled out of small things – and may live or die by their presence or absence. We have in our hands a very potent weapon already: the power to say a warm, gentle, sympathetic hello.我们常常在很多情况下，被不太有益的关于改变世界的宏大想法所束缚。我们常常把问题设想得非常宏大复杂，无从下手，以至于在前进的过程中，我们严重忽视了我们实际上有能力在当下、在今天、在我们下次外出时能够做到的事情。颠倒了什么事情是重要的把我们害惨了。我们是由微小的事物构成的，可能会因微小事物的存在或缺失而生存或消亡。我们手中已经有一把非常有用的武器：传递一次温暖、柔和、同情的问候。 译制：良哥 source: The School of Life
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