人生苦短，何须太忙？

If you live in America in the 21st century youve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. Its become the 1）default response when you ask anyone how theyre doing： “Busy！”“So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is， pretty obviously， a boast 2）disguised as a complaint. And the 3）stock response is a kind of congratulation： “Thats a good problem to have，” or “Better than the opposite.”

Even children are busy now， scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and 4）extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the 5）latchkey generation and had three hours of totally 6）unstructured， largely unsupervised time every afternoon， time I used to do everything from surfing the 7）World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one anothers eyes， all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

生活在21世纪的美国，你很可能已经听过太多人说自己有多忙了。问起某人近况时，“忙啊”、“太忙了”、“忙疯了”已经成为了大家的默认回答。很明显，这些话看似在抱怨，实质上却是在炫耀。于是得到的无非就是一些恭维的客套回应：“忙可是件好事啊”、“忙总比不忙好”。

现在，连小孩子也忙。他们的日程被精确到以半小时来计算的各种课程和课余活动所填满。晚上回到家里，他们和大人们一样精疲力尽。而我小时候则是众多“挂钥匙儿童”中的一员，每天下午都有三个小时完全无安排无人管的时间。在那些时间里，我干过各种各样的事情，例如翻阅《世界百科全书》、制作动画片、和伙伴们到树林里玩，甚至还互相把土块直接砸到对方的眼睛里。这些经历让我掌握了不少重要的技能，让我长了见识，令我至今依然获益匪浅。儿时那些自由时光也成为了我希望度过余生的模式。

The present 8）hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life； its something weve chosen， if only by our 9）acquiescence to it. Not long ago I Skyped with a friend who was driven out of the city by high rent and now has an artists residency in a small town in the south of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done， but it doesnt consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college—she has a big circle of friends who all go out to the cafe together every night. She has a boyfriend again. （She once ruefully summarized dating in New York：“Everyones too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”） What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality—driven， 10）cranky， anxious and sad—turned out to be a 11）deformative effect of her environment. Its not as if any of us wants to live like this， any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the 12）hierarchy of cruelty in high school—its something we collectively force one another to do.

现代人的这种“忙碌歇斯底里症”其实并非生活所必需，也不是生活之必然。忙，只是我们默认接受的一个选择而已。不久前，我和一个朋友通过语音通信软件Skype聊天。她因为受不了高房租，从城里搬了出来，现在，她落脚法国南部一个小镇安居，搞自己的艺术。她对我描述说，这么多年来，她头一次感觉到自己那么的快乐和轻松。如今她还是要工作，但却无需耗尽她一天的时间和精力了。她形容现在的生活就像上大学时那样：有一大帮朋友，每晚都一起出去泡咖啡馆。她还交了新男友。（她以前曾这样悲观地总结在纽约时的恋爱：“每个人都太忙，人人都想自己更出色。”）她曾误以为自己性格冲动、暴躁、焦虑、忧郁，现在看来，那都是被她原先所处的环境所扭曲改造出来的。并不是我们都想要这样的生活，并不是我们都想被堵在马路上，都挤到体育场互相践踏，或者陷于高中生那些冷酷欺凌之中——这些都是我们集体无意识地迫使彼此过上的生活。

But just in the last few months， Ive 13）insidiously started， because of professional obligations， to become busy. For the first time I was able to tell people， with a straight face， that I was “too busy” to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint； it makes you feel important， 14）sought-after and put-upon. Except that I hate actually being busy. Every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve. It got more and more intolerable until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which Im writing this.

Idleness is not just a vacation， an indulgence or a vice； it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body， and deprived of it we suffer a mental 15）affliction as disfiguring as 16）rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole， for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration—it is， paradoxically， necessary to getting any work done.“Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do，” wrote 17）Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes“18）Eureka” in the bath， Newtons apple， 19）Jekyll & Hyde and the 20）benzene ring： history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers， 21）goldbricks and noaccounts arent responsible for more of the worlds great ideas， inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

然而，就在最近几个月，因为专业职责的缘故，我在不知不觉中变得忙碌起来。我第一次可以板着脸对别人说，我“太忙”了，他们希望我去做的这事那事，我都没时间去做。我明白到了人们为何如此乐于抱怨自己很忙，因为这样会让他们自我感觉很重要、很抢手、能帮得上忙。只可惜我对忙碌实在深恶痛绝。每天早上，我的收件夹里都塞满了邮件，内容要么要求我做些我不想做的事，要么丢给我一些得马上解决的问题。我越来越不耐烦，最后，我逃出了城，逃到了一个隐秘之地，就在这里，我写下了你眼前的这篇文章。

空闲并不单纯是休假，不是放纵，更不是恶习。它不可或缺，它对大脑的意义犹如维生素D对身体那般重要。剥夺空闲的权利，我们就会遭受精神苦楚，其扭曲杀伤力与患软骨病无异。空闲营造的空间和宁静是一种必要的环境，让我们可以后退一步审视生活的全貌，建立意想不到的联想，等待灵感如夏日的闪电般袭来。这听起来很夸张，但确实，要事有所成，空闲必不可少。托马斯·品钦在他的散文中曾这样描述空闲：“闲着做做梦往往对我们的工作来说是最重要的。”阿基米德泡澡时发现了浮力定律，牛顿因苹果发现了万有引力，还有《化身博士》和苯环的由来——灵感来自闲暇和梦境的故事，历史上数不胜数，不由得让你怀疑：世界上那些最伟大的思想、发明和杰作更多是出自工作狂，还是那些好吃懒做、游手好闲、一无是处的人？