“一生”比“永生”更有意義

At a certain age, you may feel as if you’re still at life’s beginning yet also *disturbingly close to the end.

在某個年齡階段，你會感覺自己好像生命才開始，但又會非常不安地覺得生命已走向盡頭。

You feel acutely that there’s much left to do. You were going to win an Oscar, pick up a Nobel Prize in physics and get elected president, but you haven’t even gotten around to auditioning for a film, taking a university physics course or brushing up on your politics.

你強烈地意識到自己還有很多未做之事。你曾想贏得奧斯卡獎，摘取諾貝爾物理學獎的桂冠并當選總統(tǒng)，但現(xiàn)在你甚至還未曾參加過電影試鏡，未選修過大學物理課，也未曾溫習過政治。

It’s almost enough to make you want to live forever. But then isn’t the real goal a life hugely increased not so much in length as in width? A life during which it’s possible to pursue every one of a wide range of concurrent possibilities?

這些欲望幾乎足以讓你希望永生。然而，人生真正的目標難道不是盡可能拓寬生命的廣度而非增加其長度嗎?難道不是要追求一個能夠嘗試大千世界種種可能性的人生嗎?

It’s true, if you were immortal, that you might eventually get to be a philosopher and a *cantor and an actor and a *psychoanalyst and a novelist. But don’t forget: Over that vastly extended period, life would certainly not cease exposing you to still further choices. When you finally entered psychoanalytic training in 2100, you’d have to *forgo any number of other new possibilities that might at that instant present themselves, such as joining an *expedition to Alpha Centauri, or learning to create art with the previously unimaginable colors recently made visible on the *spectrum. You might have crossed one possibility off our list, but you’d have added three more.

的確，如果你能永生，你也許最終會成為一位哲人、領唱、演員、精神分析學家和小說家。但別忘了：在那個無限延展的生命時光里，它當然也會展示給你更多的選擇。當你終于在2100年開始接受精神分析培訓時，你也許不得不放棄同一時間出現(xiàn)的無數(shù)其它新的可能性，比如，加入飛往人馬座阿爾法星的探險之旅，或者學習用以往難以想象但在最新的光譜上卻能找到的新顏色去創(chuàng)作藝術(shù)。你也許嘗試了一個可能，但與此同時你又多了三個新的。

For each new path you took, there would be several others that you’d have to leave for later. And then the overwhelming feeling that there are ever more careers worth pursuing, ever more books worth reading, ever more virtual worlds worth exploring, ever more romantic partners worth experiencing –would intensify over endless time. Hundreds of years in, you’d still feel as though you’d barely moved beyond the opening stages of what life has to offer.

一旦你選擇一條新路，你將會不得不放棄其他的道路。然后，一種壓倒性的感覺——越來越多的職業(yè)值得去追求，越來越多的書值得去閱讀，越來越多的虛擬世界值得去探索，越來越多的戀人值得去交往——會在無盡的時空中增強。幾百年以后，你仍會感覺你好像僅僅徘徊在生活的開場。

Many activities you once loved, meanwhile, would fall out of fashion or out of reach. As an aging mortal, your knees might make it tough to run a marathon, causing you to envy all the healthy racers. As permanently youthful immortal, by contrast, you might remain fit to run marathons over the centuries. But perhaps the beloved urban races of your youth would have long since disappeared, banned because of impossibly hot global temperatures and the fact that future civilizations find *interplanetary relays far more exciting. All of the things you once did have shelf lives. The longer you live, the more of them die, increasing the weight of the time that has flowed through your fingers.

很多你曾鐘愛的活動，都將過時或為人遺忘。作為一個日益衰老的凡人，你的膝蓋可能會阻礙你去跑馬拉松，讓你嫉妒所有健康的跑步者。相反，作為一個長生不老之人，你可能在活了幾個世紀后，還可以健康地跑馬拉松。但或許你年輕時所鐘愛的城市路跑很久以前就消失了，被禁了，因為那無法想象的全球高溫，或者是未來文明發(fā)現(xiàn)星際接力賽更令人神往。你曾經(jīng)做過的一切都有保存期限。你活得越久，過期的東西也就越多，因而增加了穿過你指尖的時間的重量。

As George Burns’ *quip goes: Old age isn’t great but it sure beats the alternative. There’s also truth to the reverse. Death isn’t great, but it sure beats the alternative.

美國著名喜劇演員喬治•伯恩斯曾有妙語：“年老并不美好，但它肯定強過另一種結(jié)果。反之亦然，死亡并不美好，但它肯定好過另一種選擇。”