Growing up, assuming you came from a decent home, you probably watched your parents haul off to work every day so they could put food on the table, clothes on your back and a roof over your head. Or some variation of that theme.

　　假设你来自这样一个小康家庭：你打小就看着父母每天辛勤工作，为的是能让这个家能够吃饱饭、有衣服穿、有地方住。其实，大部分家庭都是这样的。

　　But it probably never felt like your parents were stuck in an existential malaise, longing to run off so they could find themselves. They weren’t stricken with the “why me?” disease that it seems everyone under the age of 30 has now.

　　你可能鲜有感受到他们有想要去寻找真正的自己、被困在“存在究竟为何“的忧思之中。他们不会像现在 30 岁以下的人那样会经常问自己“为什么是我?”。

　　That’s because things were different then. Baby-boomers came of age at a time when the idea of having a job at all was a big deal. They stayed employed at their companies for long periods of time. By the late 90s, the economy was booming and companies took care of their employees. Having a career meant you were secure.

　　时代毕竟不同了。上一次婴儿潮的那一代，他们最大的想法就是找份稳定的工作。一旦找到，通常他们也会在供职的公司工作上很长一段时间。而到了 90 年代后期，经济形势一片大好，公司对员工也很关照，那时，有一份工作对人们来说就意味着安全感。

　　But in the past twenty years everything has changed. Kids now aren’t taught to find careers. They’re taught to find their ‘passions.’ Then they’re encouraged to pursue them.

　　20 多年后的今天，一切都变了。孩子们不在被教导说要去寻找一份职业，而是去寻找并追寻他们的“激情”。

　　Except the world doesn’t bend to everyone’s beckoning whim— it doesn’t really give a shit about your passion— because it needs people to do normal stuff like collect garbage, police streets, put out fires. Here you were, told that you were awesome and that you wouldn’t have to settle for a life of mediocrity, and that’s all you’ve got. That sucks.

　　过去没有人在乎你的激情，因为人们需要做的事情都是非常稀松平常的事情，比如清垃圾、做游警、扑灭火灾等等。而现在的小孩从小到大总是被“你很酷!”等各种赞誉之声包围，告诉你你没有必要过一个平庸的生活。

　　Years ago, when someone was a ‘creative,’ they were off in their own space. If they were successful, if they’d made it, you might have heard about them through word of mouth. Maybe you saw them on television or in a magazine.But they weren’t posting on their Facebook feed, or updating their Twitter timeline, constantly telling you about their really cool life. They weren’t digitally showing you whatever it is they were working on while you were sitting in your lowly cubicle, making you feel like a failure.

　　几年前，但凡是具有创新精神的人，他们都生活在自己的世界里。就算他们最终获得了成功，达成了梦想，你也只能通过电视、杂志等各种媒体或者口口相传知道他们。这群人不会更新 Facebook 状态，或者随时发 Twitter，告诉你他们真实的生活是怎样的。他们不会告诉正窝在小隔间的你他们手头正在做什么惊人的项目，让你觉得自己就是一个失败者。

　　Spectating has become a full-time job in and of itself— looking at other people’s LinkedIn pages, their Facebook page, their Wikipedia page— and now we judge ourselves too often by what we haven’t done, instead of what we have.

　　窥探他人的生活成了一项“永不下班”的工作——看其他人的 LinkedIn 主页、Facebook 或者 WiKipedia 页面——其结果就是，我们每天都会通过对比来甚至那些自己没有做过的事，而非我们究竟做了什么。

　　And so by age 30, if we haven’t done X, Y or Z, we’re lt unfilled. There seems like there’s so much life out to be lived, and we’re called to it… whatever ‘it’ is.The myth of entrepreneurship doesn’t help, either. The American fantasy that you too can make your dreams a reality, all you have to do is try.

　　而到了 30 岁，如果你还没有做 X、Y、Z，你会觉得自己的人生不完整，你会觉得自己其实还有很多很多事情没有做...... 即便你已经成功了，美国梦还是会告诉你，你可以让更多梦想成真，只要你去尝试。

　　But that’s not reality. Reality is that bills need to be paid and life has to be lived, and no matter what you’re doing these days, there is no respite. Your parents lt an office at 5 PM and their work was over. It did not begin again until they walked in the next morning.

　　但事实并非如此。事实的情况是：欠债了就得还钱，生活还是得过。现在，不管你做什么行当，生活中都不会有喘息的机会。你的父母可能下午 5 点就下班了，直到第二天早上上班，才又开始工作，但你不是。现在很多事情都基于一个假设的：你所做的工作是你所爱。否则你不会半夜回邮件，同手机共枕眠。

　　Now, it’s almost assumed that whatever it is that you’re doing, you must love it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be answering email at midnight and sleeping with your phone in your bed.So as you get older, and have spent years plugged into this matrix where everything is work work work— where your mind is never able to turn off— you age a lot. Maybe not in physical years, like in the sense that you’re 60. But you’re 30 and you’ve somehow managed to squeeze double the amount of work into that period of time.

　　这种生活方式带来的结果就是，你会一连花上好几年完全沉在工作中，几乎每件事都是工作、工作、工作...... 你的心思完全在工作上。尽管物理年龄可能只有 30 岁，但你的心智可能已经达到了 60 岁的水平。很多人都想着在同样长的时间内，做双倍的事情，别人花 30 年，你只想花 15 年。

　　You’re old. Mentally.

　　在心智上，你“老”了

　　Your parents didn’t have to deal with this sort of thing. Rest assured, they had dreams and goals just like you. But they may have been able to spend a few hours on the weekend or in the evening entertaining these pursuits. And they weren’t answering email in the process.They certainly weren’t idle, watching what their old high school friends are doing, making themselves feel like shit in the process. Heck, they probably had to go to their office just to use a computer at all.

　　同样，你的父母并不会碰到类似的问题。自然，他们也会有同你一样的梦想和目标，但是他们会在下班后或者周末的时候，去喂食他们的“梦想”，并且在这个过程中，他们不会回邮件。他们很享受生活，并且过的也不闲散，比如他们会时不时的串串门了解下高中同学都在做些什么，或者做些自己感兴趣的事儿。

　　So being unsettled and wanting more out of life is not a millennial problem or a hipster problem or a ‘whatever new word marketers are using to describe young people’ problem. It’s really a problem of being ‘plugged in’ all the time, and never being given the freedom to shut off.

　　因此，年轻人现在这种未达“稳定”、时刻想要从生活中获取更多的心态并非一个”时髦“的问题，而是一个“时刻插电”，从来不给自由和享受生活任何机会的问题。我们好像忘了工作的目的是为了更好的生活，而不是整个生活就是为了工作的。

　　Because society has a problem with leisure. The idea of sitting around doesn’t sound sexy. Winners never quit. Go hard or go home. Always be closing. Or some shit like that.

　　这是个讨厌悠闲的社会。手头无事，就那么干坐着听上去一点儿都不酷。成功人士是从来不会放弃的：继续工作还是回家呢?再找点事做吧...

　　Whatever.You need a break. Just retire. Then start on something new. You may fail. But ultimately you’ll thank yourself later.

　　你需要休息。或者干脆退休吧。然后做点新的事情，就算你可能会失败，但你会对自己当初的决定心存感激。

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