《瓦尔登湖·第二章·我居住的地方，我为何而活·Where I Lived, and What I Lived For》第11节
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire,—or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me any thing new that has happened to a man any where on this globe,”—and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里诊断的，是一种比懒惰更隐蔽的现代病：不是什么都不做，而是做得太多、太快、太无意义。他劈头就问，为什么我们要在饥饿到来之前就急着挨饿？这是一句刻意的悖论。他要拆穿的正是那种看似勤勉实则自我消耗的生存方式。谚语说“一针及时省九针”，本意是防患于未然，但梭罗把它扭过来：人们为了省去明天的九针，今天就缝了一千针。焦虑把预防变成了强迫，生活变成了一项永…