英文自修86：生活的偶然

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

------------------------

Thought for the Day 20140523 Rhidian Brook

Last week I received an email from a colleague who I’d not seen for years. It explained how they’d fallen on hard times and contained a request for a specific amount of money. A follow-up email included bank details and the hope that I might be able to help out; it was much in the style of one of those Nigerian legacy scams. I assumed that their email address had been hacked and so I ignored it. But when a further email arrived, explaining a little more and leaving a phone number to call, I began to see it as a genuine if desperate request for help.

上周，我收到了一封多年未曾谋面的同事发来的电子邮件。邮件里说他们生活突遭变故，还请求我给一些钱。随后的邮件里还附上了银行的详细信息，希望我能帮助他们。这很像尼日利亚遗产诈骗的风格。我猜想他们的邮箱地址被非法侵入，就没有理会它。直到我再次收到邮件，邮件里又说明了情况，留了电话号码。我开始认为这件事是真实的，因为求助的请求非常急切。

Before calling I went through the list of reasons not to help: all sound, all sensible:

the money wouldn’t be enough to make a difference; they’ll just fritter 浪费 it away; they’ve got themselves into a hole of their own making; and I’m sure I’m not the first person they’ve asked for help. But that same day, with irritatingly apt timing, I read the bit of scripture where Jesus says: give to one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. When I went back to the text and searched for get-outs and caveats I couldn’t find any.

在拨电话前，我想尽了许多不伸出援手的理由，所有的理由都是那么合情合理：我给的钱并不足以带来什么改变，他们只不过会浪费掉这些钱，他们这是给自己挖了一个坑，还有我肯定不是他们第一个求助的人。但是就在同一天，在令人不耐烦的时机，我读到圣经里耶稣说的话：有求你的，就给他；有向你借贷的；不可推辞。当我再去看这段文字，搜寻逃避和告诫，却一无所获。

All my uming and ahing was rendered academic when I actually spoke to them. They had indeed fallen on hard times. Their life had seemed secure: they’d had steady work, a good relationship, a decent flat in a nice part of town – they were probably in that top 1% that economists talk about. But then they’d fallen off the edge of a cliff. Yes, there were self-inflicted reasons for this plummet. Mistakes made. Personal demons battled. But the descent to ‘living like a dog’ as they put it, had been swift. Poverty, as it says in Proverbs, had fallen upon them ‘like an armed man.’

我和他们在电话里交谈时，我所有的迟疑和感慨都变得那么不切实际。他们确实遭遇不幸，曾经，他们的生活似乎有所保障：有稳定的工作，良好的关系，在镇上的好地段有一套体面的房子—可能他们就是经济学家所说的那1%的上层人。但是后来，他们从悬崖边上摔下。当然，造成这些变故的有他们自身的原因。他们犯错，与个人的邪念较量。用他们的话说，突然地屈尊像狗一样的生活。正如箴言篇里所讲的，贫穷像一个全副武装的人一样扑在他们身上。

As I listened to my colleague’s story, the reasons for their descent seemed not to matter so much; it was the ‘this-could-be–you-ness’ of their plight that struck home. It was much easier to fall off the edge than you’d think. And the thought that it ‘could have just been me’ wasn’t just a platitude 老生常谈. It was and had been me. Over the course of my life had I not been on the receiving end of other people’s financial help? Had not people’s unreasonable generosity got me out of difficulty in the past?

我在听同事的遭遇时，他们生活变差的原因似乎并没有那么重要。他们现在的困境你我都可能会碰到，这一点让我受到触动。从悬崖边上摔落比你所想的要容易的多。“也可能是我” 的想法也并非老生常谈。在我的人生中难道没有过要接受别人金钱帮助的境遇吗？我过去没有在人们极其慷慨的援助下摆脱困境吗？

The sheer competitiveness of life, with people seen as winners or losers, the atomising of community, the widening gulf between rich and poor, makes it seem likely that ever more people will fall off the cliff and not get up again. But, as my colleague’s story shows, the contingent, fragile nature of life is a reality for all of us. It’s a failure of imagination not to be able to picture yourself falling off the edge. And we need to be able to picture it because, in the end, the thing that catches someone’s fall from grace – is someone else’s grace.

生活残酷的竞争让有的人成为赢家，有的沦为输家，导致群体分化，贫富之间的鸿沟变大，好像会有更多的人从悬崖摔落，一蹶不振。但是，我同事的故事说明，生活的本质是偶然和脆弱的，这是摆在所有人面前的事实。不能想象自己跌落的画面就是失败的。因为我们需要这种画面，因为能够挽救一个人免遭失去体面的，是另一个人的慈悲。