-- Is life always this hard, or is it just when you are a kid?
-- Always like this.
——《这个杀手不太冷》
人生实在是……太艰难了
作者：
Ralph Jones
译者：刘 蕊
校对：刘 璠
策划：倪凌晖
Why is life so hard? You asked Google – here’s the answer
人艰不拆？问问谷歌——答案在这里
本文选自
The Guardian
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Nestle up. Sit on my knees, pull a blanket over the both of us, and proffer that little ear of yours. I’ll let you in on a secret.
来，坐过来，坐我膝盖上，毯子盖好了，耳朵伸过来，我有个秘密要和你说。
Life … is hard.
人生实在是…太艰难了。
How much less painful might your futile quest for meaning have been if, in your formative years (ideally between six months and a year), someone had pulled you aside and whispered those three words? But they didn’t. They did no such thing. They
swaddled you in cotton wool
, fed you Calippos and asked you to pin down the whereabouts of a wandering man known only as Wally. As the Rembrandts sang: “So no one told you life was gonna be this way – clap, clap, clap, clap.” You were not prepared, not in the slightest, for the burns inflicted by the carpet we call life.
如果在成长阶段，有人把你拉到一旁，偷偷告诉你这句话，那么日后（通常半年到一年内）你在探求人生意义却徒劳无获的时候，得到的痛苦是不是就会少一些？但没有人这么做过，人们根本不会这么做。他们会
让你生活在温室之中
，给你吃点可丽波（Calippos），然后叫你找一名叫做威利的流浪汉的下落（译者注：威利是英国插画家Martin Handford创作的儿童书籍《威利在哪里？》主人公。阅读这本书的目标就是在一张人山人海的图片中找出一个特定的人物——沃利。）正如伦勃朗乐队（the Rembrandts）的歌中所唱道的那样：“没有人告诉你生活会是这样的（拍手、拍手、拍手、拍手）”，对于生活这件“长满虱子的华丽袍子”，你毫无准备。
swaddle
/
'swɒdl/to wrap a baby tightly to keep it warm and protect it 用襁褓包裹〔婴孩〕
And the fact that no one warned you – the fact that, as you farted and giggled your way through babyhood and then childhood, you were blind to life’s clenched fist – is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, yes, you must have led a charmed, strawberry existence; but in adulthood it all comes as a bit of a shock when the cotton wool begins to tear, the Calippos make your teeth hurt, and you realise Wally sold his soul to go and work in PR.
事实上，没有人警告过你人生如此艰难。事实上，你就这么放着屁、傻笑着度过了整个幼年和童年时代，并不知道生活正攥紧着它的拳头，准备随时给你一击——这是一种幸福，也是一种不幸。一方面，你度过了草莓般甜蜜又美好的时光，但长大后，温室突然开始崩塌，可丽波吃多了开始牙疼，你才意识到沃利早已出卖了自己的灵魂，开始在公关部门工作。
Perhaps someone did tell you. But how could you have listened? At such a tender age the human mind may be simply incapable of handling existential information of that magnitude. As you grow up, however, you get it: life is hard – for an overflowing bucketful of reasons. It’s hard to find something you’re good at, and enjoy – and get paid to do; it’s hard to keep in constant harmony the precarious desires and mood swings of two autonomous human beings; it’s hard to feel as though you are making a difference in a world that is indifferent and incomprehensibly vast. This is a question whose answers are beyond the scope of one article, however esteemed the publication.
或许有人确实曾经告诫过你，但你真的能听进去吗？在那样一个柔软的年纪里，内心想是很难处理这一能级上的信息吧。日渐长大以后，你逐渐开始明白：人生着实艰难，理由纷繁复杂。难以找到自己喜爱擅长且能以此谋生的事物；难以在两个独立个体危险的欲望和起落的情绪之间保持平衡；难以在这个冷漠又复杂的世界里感受到自己的与众不同。这个问题的答案虽然很难在一篇文章之中阐述清楚，却还是值得提出来供大家讨论。
But let me, for the purposes of concision, lay the blame squarely at the colossal feet of one particular giant: the entertainment industry.
请允许我简单粗暴地将责任归咎于一个规模庞大的产业上面：娱乐行业。
I am no less immune to the charms of the entertainment industry than you, but I believe it has a lot to answer for. Without it, your life would be a great deal less painful. The claws of the industry (and here we can include films, TV shows, porn, magazines, advertising billboards, and social media) are embedded deeper in your back than you may realise. Your romantic expectations are moulded by
romcoms
only to be demolished by reality; the fragile lilo of your self-esteem is punctured by 50-foot ads making you feel two feet tall; and the internet does its level best every day to trick you into believing that you will one day live off the riches of your viral stardom. (Viral stardom is that most holy of holy grails: a simple solution to an unimaginably complex problem.)
娱乐行业对我的吸引力并不亚于你们，即使如此，我仍然认为娱乐行业对回答人生为何如此艰难这个问题要负起大部分责任。如果没有娱乐行业，人生可要美好的多。娱乐行业（包括电影、电视节目、黄片、杂志、广告牌和社交媒体）所带来的负面影响远比你意识到的要严重得多。
浪漫爱情剧
塑造了你对爱情的浪漫幻想，却被现实打击得体无完肤；高高矗立的广告牌刺破了你那脆弱又虚无的自尊心，让你觉得自己无比渺小。网络则每天玩弄着自己最擅长的把戏，使你相信自己终有一天会成为超级巨星，坐享财富。（成为超级巨星的人将是最终的人生赢家，因为用如此简单的方式就可以解决一个复杂到难以想象的问题。）
romcom
/ˈrɒmˌkɒm/a film or television comedy based around the romantic relationships of the characters 浪漫戏剧影片; 浪漫电视戏剧
As the narrator of Fight Club, the Chuck Palahniuk novel, says: “We’ve all been raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” The irony inherent in watching Fight Club, of course, is that we all wish we could be Brad Pitt but we slowly learn that we won’t. And we’re very, very pissed off.
正如恰克·帕拉尼克（Chuck Palahniuk）在小说《搏击俱乐部》（Fight Club）中说道：“我们从小看电视长大，相信自己有一天会成为富翁、明星或摇滚巨星，但事实并非如此。我们逐渐意识到这个现实，并对此感到非常愤怒。”观看《搏击俱乐部》的可笑之处在于，我们都希望自己是布拉德·皮特（Brad Pit），但我们逐渐意识到我们不会是，所以我们对此非常愤怒。
Now look, sure, the entertainment industry cannot be held accountable for all life’s woes (although would Donald Trump really be president if not for The Apprentice?). And it is true that life sucked and people suffered long before TV was a glint in civilisation’s eye – Hamlet’s cry of “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!” is not a complaint about the
pernicious effect
of Photoshop in modelling. But Hamlet only had to grapple with the demons in his head; if he’d also had to deal with an inferiority complex brought on by Instagram envy, “To be or not to be?” would have been the last we heard of him.
当然，娱乐行业并不是生活中所有苦难的罪魁祸首（但是如果没有《学徒》的播出，唐纳德·特朗普还会成为总统吗？）。而且早在电视出现之前，生活就已是如此让人饱受折磨。哈姆雷特曾呼唤道：“我生活的世界是多么的萎靡、无趣、沉闷、无用啊！”，这可不是在抱怨模特行业中PS盛行的
危害性
。但是，当时哈姆雷特要做的只是与脑海中的恶魔作斗争，如果说他还得面对Instagram上由嫉妒引起的自卑情结，那么“生存还是毁灭”可能就会是他留给我们的最后一句话了。
pernicious
/pə'nɪʃəs
,pɚˋnɪʃəs
/
very harmful or evil, often in a way that you do not notice easily 很有害的〔通常不容易察觉〕
While it has in a sense brought people together, the entertainment industry has also made it possible for us to reflect on the many ways in which our lives are not as interesting as we would like. In the shadow of the industry’s glittering facade, our careers are uninspiring, our conversations dull, and our partners unattractive. The starker these facts become, the likelier we are to run crying into the warm arms of that very same industry for a shot of escapism. God dam it, they’ve got us right where they want us.
