The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work - Alain de Botton

On Maldive Bureaucracy:
有關馬爾地夫的官僚主義﹕

On our way out, he hands us a set of his business cards, allowing us to flash them at anyone who might cause us trouble on our peregrinations around his heavily policed island fiefdom. Unsure of how to pitch my gratitude, I suggest we have tea the next time he is in London.

我們正要告退﹐他拿出一疊名片給我們﹐表示在這警衛森嚴的島上要是有誰給我們麻煩﹐就出示他的名片來解決困難。不知該如何展現我的感謝﹐我建議他下次來倫敦時一起吃個下午茶。

On a tall and bearded Career Counsellor who looked as if he could wrestle a wolf to the ground, but (his) physical might belied the patient manner of a priest:
有關一個高壯滿臉鬍渣﹐看上去能赤手屠狼﹐卻謙和如神父的就業輔導師﹕

so kindly were his eyes, he seemed like someone who would be open to confessions of the most unusual sort. Not even the most extreme quirk of the mind appeared liable to surprise him or elicit humiliating judgement. I harbared a confused wish for him to be my father.

他的眼神如此溫柔﹐像是能接受任何違背倫常的告解。就算是最極端最奇異的思想也不會令他驚訝、或發出傷人的評論。我開始有些混亂地渴望他成為我的父親。

On Interview with CEO:
有關訪問總裁﹕

After twenty minute of this, I am tempted to ask when he was last troubled by his bowels in a meeting. But perhaps he speaks like this not so much because he wishes to keep secrets as because years of circumnavigating the earth, breathing conditioned air and headlining conferences, have hollowed out his personality. It may have been a decade since he was left alone in a room with nothing to do. I feel my boredom turn to pity for someone who one might otherwise imagine had precious little to be pitied for.

在這樣二十分鐘的問答後﹐我開始有種衝突想問他最後一次在開會的時候肚子痛是什麼時候。我想他這樣說話並不是因為他想保有什麼秘密﹐而是這些年的環球旅程﹐呼吸空調裡吹出來的空氣﹐在講座裡開場的所有經驗﹐慢慢地挖空了他真正的個性。或許他已經許久不曾一個人在房間裡無事可做。我感到我的無聊漸漸地變成了同情﹐同情這個誰也不認為有什麼需要同情的人。

On Accountant after work:
會計師下班後﹕

For this particular combination of tiredness and nervous energy, the sole workable solution is wine. Office civilisation could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol. The final approach will be made under the benign guidance of a Chilean Cabernet and the hypnotic, entirely untroubling retelling of the day's misdemeanours and cataclysms on the evening news.

對這種揉合疲倦和緊張的壓力來說﹐唯一的解決方法便是酒。辦公室文明之所以存在﹐無非是靠著咖啡和酒精促成的起飛和著陸。最後﹐智利紅酒會溫和地帶領著我們聆聽晚間新聞﹐催眠地、無慮地復述今日世界上的大小災難。

On Work:
有關工作﹕

If we could witness the eventual fate of every one of our projects, we would have no choice but to succumb to immediate paralysis... our work will at least have distructed us. it will have provided a perfect bubble in which to invest our hopes for perfection, it will have focused our immeasureable anxieties on a few relatively smallscale and achievable goals, it will have given us a sense of mastery, it will have made us respectably tired, it will have put food on the table. It will have kept us out of greater trouble.

如果我們能目睹手上所有項目的終極命運﹐我們只有立即麻痺了... 工作至少能讓我們分心﹐製造一個完美的泡泡﹐讓我們投資所有追求完美的希望。讓我們將所有難以算計的焦慮投注在一些小規模、可以達成的目標上﹐感覺我們能掌握什麼。讓我們疲倦得很驕傲。維持生計。工作讓我們避開其它更嚴重的憂慮。

The impulse to exaggerate the significance of what we are doing, far from being an intellectual error, is really life itself coursing through us... To see ourselves as the centre of the universe and the present time as the summit of history, to view our upcoming meeting as being of overwhelming significance, to neglect the lessons of cemeteries, to read only sparingly, to feel the pressure of deadlines, to snap at colleagues, to make our way through conference agendas marked '11:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.: coffee break', to behave heedlessly and greedily and then to combust in battle - maybe all of this, in the end, is working wisdom. It is paying death too much respect to prepare for it with sage prescriptions. Let it surprise us while we are shipping wood pulp across the Baltic Seas,... Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.

那種對我們的工作舉輕若重的衝動﹐決非理解錯誤﹐而是生命本身與我們擦肩而過... 視我們自己為宇宙中心、視此時如歷史之巔、像再來的那個會議有多麼重要、忽略死亡所能教導我們的課題、少量並謹慎地閱讀、感覺作業期限逼近的壓力、對同事發飆、會一個又一個開過去、在記事本寫上“十一點到十一點十五分﹕咖啡休息時間。” 貪婪而自私﹐在爭鬥中燃燒 - 或許這一切﹐都是工作的意義。我們多麼尊重死亡﹐不惜以鼠尾當藥單。讓死亡給我們一個驚喜﹐在我們正運送木屑穿過波羅的海... ﹐讓死亡找到我們時﹐看見我們正努力拼湊火柴棒以抵擋它的巨浪。