选择作品：The “Busy” Trap  by Tim Kreider

         “没有人喜欢这样的生活，正如没有人愿意在堵塞的车流中寸步难行，在拥挤的体育馆里动弹不得，或在残酷的高中时代互相倾轧——但集体却迫使彼此这样去做。”

         “理想中的生活，应介于自我目中无人的悠闲懒散和世人永无止境的狂乱奔忙之间。”

         克瑞德用生动幽默的语言为我们揭露了21世纪当下美国“忙碌”的社会现状。一些人表面上埋怨自己的忙碌，实则是在隐隐地炫耀。他们沉迷于忙碌，并且为无所事事而感到不安。克瑞德观察着身边朋友们的忙碌和疲惫，心中却向往着不受俗务所累的懒散生活。他相信，人生苦短，最好将时间花在喜欢的人和事上；临终之际，与其后悔当初没能努力工作，不如再跟三两好友喝杯啤酒，散散步，痛痛快快地大笑一场。

内容干货：

1. 作者简介，本文概要

         作者简介：Tim Kreider is an essayist and cartoonist. Born and educated in Baltimore, Maryland，Kreider lives in New York City and an Undisclosed Location on the Chesapeake Bay. He currently has a regular column at Medium, and has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker’s “Page-Turner” blog, al Jazeera, Vox, Nerve, the Men’s Journal, The Comics Journal, Film Quarterly, and Fangoria. His cartoons have been collected in three books by Fantagraphics Books. The New York Times Book Review once commented Kreider as “a curious and compassionate observer and a fantastic wit”.

        Notable Works: Pain: When Will It End? (2004), Why Do They Kill Me? (2005), We Learn Nothing (2012), I Wrote This Book Because I Love You (2018),

        作品梗概：Written as part of a series on anxiety in the New York Times opinion pages in 2012, this essay displays that resent-day American society is fast-paced and constantly moving forward. With so many things to do in such little time, busyness and stress seem to take over our lives. Tim Kreider believes that we are subconsciously falling into the “busy trap”. We submit to the busyness that overtakes our lives without even realization. He also argues that a carefree and relaxed life is more ideal instead of keeping a busy life.

2. 单词词组，地道表达

        （1）忙碌代表着一种existential reassurance，a hedge against 空虚；如果你非常忙碌，completely booked，每时每刻都被人需要，那么你的生活显然就称不上愚蠢、trivial、或毫无意义。

        （2）我认为理想中的生活介于my own defiant indolence和 the rest of the world’s endless frenetic hustle之间。我的角色只是提供坏影响，就像那个站在教室窗外，对端坐在书桌前的你making faces的小孩，催促你make some excuse溜出课堂，去外面玩耍。我本人的resolute idleness与其说是virtue，倒不如说是一种luxury，但我在很久以前就有意识地做出了决定，the best investment of my limited time on earth是把时间花在喜欢的人身上。Life is too short to be busy.

3. 散文佳句，沉浸赏析

       ▶ Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in.

         “内卷”究竟出自个人还是集体？

       ▶ It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school— it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

         理想的生活，应是“闲看庭前花开花落”，“漫随天外云卷云舒”。

       ▶ On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?

4. 主旨哲思，流连赏玩

       ▶ 表面忙碌，实则空虚

        More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.

       那精疲力竭的模样，究竟是忙碌所致，还是为了掩饰我们所做之事并不重要的事实……

       ▶ 人生苦短，予之于爱

        My own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, but I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth was to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.

        懒散悠闲，与爱人朋友相携相伴，未尝不是一件美事……

        你可曾抱怨过生活太过忙碌？你理想中的生活又是什么样的？“忙碌”的陷阱是否就发生在你身边？克瑞德认为，人生苦短，与其忙忙碌碌，不如与爱相伴、悠闲度日。面对短暂的人生，你又会怎么选择？