为什么“活在当下”这么难
Very many of us suffer from a peculiar-sounding problem: an inability properly to inhabit the stretch of time we call "the present".
我们很多人面临一个听起来颇为特别的问题：无法真正深入地体验我们称之为“现在”的这一时刻。
Maybe we're on a beautiful beach on a sunny day, the skies azure and the palm trees slender and implausibly delicate.
也许我们身处一个阳光普照的美丽海滩，天空湛蓝，棕榈树婆娑且纤细得近乎令人难以置信。
But most of us isn't actually here at all.
但我们却并没有真正投入在此。
It's somewhere at work or in imaginary discussion with a rival or plotting a new enterprise.
我们的大部分注意力或许被工作占据，或是在想象中与竞争对手较劲，或是正在筹划新的事业。
Or maybe we're at the birthday of a child.
又或许，我们正在参加一个孩子的生日派对。
It's enormously significant for her and we love her dearly, but we are elsewhere.
对她来说，这个时刻意义非凡，我们也深深地爱着她，但就是有种身心不在焉的感觉。
Our body is rooted in the now, but our minds are skipping to points in both the future and the past.
我们的身体虽然在此刻，但我们的思绪却在未来和过去之间游离。
What is it that makes the present, especially the nicer moments of the present, so difficult to experience properly?
是什么让体验当下，特别是那些美好时刻，感到如此困难呢？
And why, conversely, can so many events feel easier to enjoy, appreciate and perceive, when they are firmly over?
相反，为什么许多事情结束后，我们会更容易地去享受、欣赏和感受它们呢？
One benefit of the past is that it is a dramatically foreshortened edited version of the present.
过去的一大优点就是，它相当于是对现在精心剪辑并大幅度压缩的版本。
Even the best days of our lives contain a range of dull or uncomfortable moments.
即使是我们生活中最美好的日子，也难免有些乏味和不适的时刻。
But in memory, like skilled editors of hours of raw and often uninspired footage, we can lock on to the most consequential moments.
然而，在记忆中，我们就像熟练的剪辑师处理数小时的未经修饰的影片一样，抓住了那些最触动人心的瞬间。
And therefore construct sequences that feel a great deal more meaningful and interesting than the settings that generated them.
因此，我们构建的记忆片段，往往比真实场景更富有意义，更引人入胜。
Hours of mediocrity can be reduced to five or six perfect images.
几小时的平淡无奇，都能被压缩为五六幅完美的画面。
Nostalgia is the present enhanced by an editing machine.
怀旧情怀是通过编辑机器加工的“现在”。
Much of what ruins the present is sheer anxiety.
很多时候，损害当下的正是无尽的焦虑。
The present always contains an enormous number of possibilities, some hugely gruesome, which we are constantly aware of.
当下总是充满了无数的可能性，其中有些可能性极度令人恐惧，这些都在我们的潜意识里时刻存在着。
Anything could theoretically happen, an earthquake, an aneurysm, a rejection -- which gives rise to a non-specific anxiety that trails around us most of the time: the simple dread at the unknownness of what is to come.
理论上，任何事都可能发生，无论是地震、动脉瘤，或是遭遇拒绝——这些都会激发出一种无时无刻不在我们身边徘徊的普遍焦虑：一种对未知未来的恐惧。
But then, of course, only a very limited range of awful things do ever come to pass and we forget the anxiety at once, or rather, shifted to the new present.
但须知，实际上，真正会发生的坏事有限，而发生时，我们也会立刻忘却那份焦虑，转而专注于新的“当下”。
So when we remember an event, what we leave out of it is how much of that event we actually spent anticipating an appalling future that never came.
所以，当我们回想起某件事情时，我们往往忽视了自己曾投入多少精力去担忧那个从未发生过的恐怖未来。
Our bodies further contribute to our distraction from the present.
我们的身体进一步加剧了我们对此刻的分心。
They have their own moods and itineraries.
它们有自己的情绪和节奏。
They might feel tired and timid at just the moment when the landscape around us would demand grandeur and confidence.
正当我们周遭的景色呼唤起壮丽与自信时，我们的身体却可能感到疲惫与怯弱。
But these dissonant moods also get edited out of memory.
但这些失调的情绪也会被从记忆中抹去。
We'll remember the view over the ocean far longer than the slight queasiness which turned us in on ourselves at the time.
比起当时微弱的不适感，我们更能长久地记住海洋的景色。
Our minds are cavernous, chaotic places.
我们的思维既深邃又混乱。
So much courses through them that has little to do with what is right in front of our eyes.
大量的思绪在我们脑海中涌动，但与眼前的实际情况往往关系不大。
We can end up seeming ungrateful to where we are.
我们可能会显得对所在之处心不在焉，不知感恩。
Someone is telling us an important story, and not from any evil motive, just from the difficulty of having to manage the entity called "I", we digest some regret or other instead.
有人在跟我们讲一个重要的故事时，并非出于恶意，而是忙着掌控名为“我”的这一实体，我们在听的过程中可能会感到后悔或者其它情感。
We are at a beautiful location, but we can barely take in the vegetation and the extraordinary views, so fixated are we on an event that will occur in six months time.
我们身处美丽的环境中，但我们却无法尽情欣赏四周的植被和壮观的景色，因为我们的心思完全被六个月后的某个事件扯得紧紧的。
We need to be prepared for the weird way in which we align with the world and not berate ourselves unduly for our difficulties at doing justice to where our bodies and minds happen to be.
我们需要做好准备，面对我们与世界之间独特的关系，并且不应因为我们难以完全适应身心所处的环境，而过度自责。
We should be ready for this disloyalty in other people too -- at moments when they look strangely worried at a party we've laid on or don't seem to be listening to a story we are telling them.
我们也要对他人的这种态度有所准备——他们在我们筹办的派对上看似忧心忡忡，或者在我们讲述故事时似乎显得心不在焉。
They too may just be experiencing some of the major difficulties of being in the present.
他们也可能正面临着活在当下所带来的重大挑战。
Like us, they'll probably enjoy our encounter with us so much more when the present has safely given way to memory.
和我们一样，当现在变为记忆，他们可能会更加珍视与我们的邂逅。
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