英文自修69：善待老人，就是善待自己

本系列内容英文原文取自BBC Thought for the Day节目网站，朋友们也可以下载节目录音收听。

译者：Young

审读：武太白

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Thought for the Day2014 0502Anne Atkins

Who wants to be hot at a hundred? Last night’s Intelligence Squared discussion pitted cultivating glamour into old age against comfy waistbands and freedom to wear purple. I’m on both sides. The saving grace of pregnancy was my limited maternity wardrobe: I simply couldn’t worry what to wear. And yet when we went through a difficult time a few years ago, one weapon I used to fight the depression dogging us all was a new care of my body and meticulous pride in my appearance.

谁想在一百岁时仍魅力四射？在昨晚智慧平方的讨论中，讨论人员把老年人的魅力养成与戴舒适的腰带和穿紫色衣服的自由对立起来。我对这两者都支持。怀孕的好处就是限定要穿孕妇装：我根本就不用担心穿什么衣服。然而，几年前当我们经历那段艰难岁月时，我用来对抗沮丧的武器就是重新关照我的身体，对自己的外表一丝不苟并引以为傲。

Hands up who agrees that beauty should present as a dangerously idealised, sexualised youth: women as tall as men and skinny as children? Or indeed that the elderly, who can’t possibly conform, deserve to be incarcerated 监禁 in homes where they can be slapped, left for hours in their excrement and referred to as numbers not names?

美应该表现在理想化的、性别分明的青年身上：女性像男人那样高挑，却像孩子那样纤瘦？或者那些不顺从的老人，活该被监禁在家里，被人掌掴，和自己的排泄物呆上几个小时，被别人叫代号而不是自己的名字？同意这个观点的请举手。

Of course we don’t. But how far dare we challenge these ideas of age or beauty?

当然，我们不能这样做。但是在多大程度上我们敢于挑战关于年龄或美的这些想法？

Aging isn’t for the fainthearted. The keepers of the house shall tremble... the grinders cease because they are few... You shall rise at the voice of the bird, and the daughters of musick be brought low, runs the beautiful, evocative poem on old age in Ecclesiastes.

衰老并不专属于懦弱之辈。“看守房屋的发颤…推磨的稀少就止息…雀鸟一叫人就起来，歌唱的女子也都衰微。”这些都是传道书中关于老年的美丽而又令人回味的诗句。

Dignity for the old is enlightened self-interest: we all hope to be there one day. Honour your father and mother, runs the commandment, that all shall go well with you. Respect starts with our own parents. However old we, or they, are. Paul of Tarsus, writing to adults, cites disobedience to parents as among the worst forms of immorality. Do we genuinely hold older people, our own parents, in higher regard than ourselves?

给老年人尊严也是一种明智的利己主义：我们都希望有一天能自身受益。孝敬你的父母，听从他们的吩咐，你和一切都会相处甚好。从尊敬自己的父母做起吧。无论我们多老，无论他们多大年龄。塔尔苏斯的保罗，在给成人的信中把违背父母的意愿作为最不道德的恶劣行为。我们是否真正把上了年纪的人、把父母，看得比自己更重要？

Anne Karpf, one of last night’s speakers, referred to age-apartheid. I believe we inflict this on the young as well as old. Our Pakistani friend and lodger Abdul came from a household of... seventeen, eighteen, depending on who’d just died or been born. We in the West complain of a housing crisis, yet moan if our grown-up children still live with us and leave old people to survive alone. We’re shocked at the abuse in the Old Deanery, in the news this week, but perhaps the real abuse comes from the concept of Care Homes itself? It is a rare Western family, Western meal, even Western party, with more than two generations together.

昨晚的一个演讲者安妮卡普夫提到了年龄隔离。我相信我们和年轻人和老年人之间都有这种隔离。我们的巴基斯坦朋友和房客阿卜杜勒来自一个大家庭，算上新生儿和老去的人，他家里可能有17口或18口人。我们西方人抱怨住房危机，却仍悲叹要子女成年后仍能和我们住在一起，让老人独自生存。本周老年宅邸护理院虐待老人的新闻令人震惊不已，但也许真正的虐待来自护理院这一理念本身？这是一种罕见的西方家庭、聚餐甚至聚会，因为有超过两代人住在一起。

Yesterday my father received a handwritten letter from a head mistress. “So busy,” he marvelled, “and yet she finds time to write to someone over ninety.” Why should this be rare enough to draw comment?

昨天，我父亲收到一位女教师的信。 “她那么忙， ”他惊叹道， “还抽出时间来给我这个90多岁的老头写信。 ”为什么会这封信会这么难得，让父亲发出这样的评论？

Judeo-Christianity, like other faiths, is full of respect: Rise up before the gray-haired and honour the aged. Gray hair is the crown of glory. The honour of the old is their gray hair. Note the glory of age is visual: true beauty perhaps? As Wilde demonstrated brilliantly in Dorian Gray, beauty being ultimately created by character.

犹太教和基督教，和其他信仰一样，充满敬意：看到白发老人要起身，要尊敬老人。白发是荣耀的王冠，是老年人的荣誉。年龄的荣耀真切可见：也许这就是真正的美吧？正如王尔德在《道林·格雷的画像》中所揭示的那样：美终是由品格塑造的。

Indeed. My mother was far more beautiful as a woman of ninety than she was even as a girl of nineteen.

的确如此。我90岁的母亲甚至比她还是十九岁的少女时更美。