品味羅素的快樂哲學：《幸福之路》-論疲勞-10

羅素對於生活真的可以稱之為洞察，既有廣度，又有深度。

以下的文字里就深深挖掘了我們每個人都常常體會，卻隱藏得很深很深的感受——疲勞，或者說疲憊。

我發現，書中所提到的一些案例並非個案，事實上在我們現實生活中也普遍存在。比如我們趕早班地鐵時的感受，比如有時面對老闆和工作的感受，又比如夜半失眠的感受等等。

我個人的感覺，其中比較典型的情況就是：當我們遭遇情感障礙或者一些生活困擾的時候，並沒有選擇真正去面對這些問題，而是選擇了逃避，而最常見的逃避方式就是更老婆打電話說：我今天要加班。

或許，他真的在忙乎工作，但這些工作真的有那麼急嗎？工作效率真的高嗎？這很難說，重要的是他逃避了與家人碰面相處時的尷尬和忐忑。

其實，逃避無助於解決問題，如果沒有老天幫忙，只會一天天加重自己內心的負擔，由量變導致質變，直至某一天再也承受不了——情緒崩潰，那根弦斷了！

其實，面對擔憂、恐懼等等，最好的辦法是面對，舉例說明：

1、懼怕演講？

其實對演講的懼怕其實主要來自於兩個方面：

1）的確是缺乏在眾人面前講話的經驗，所以害羞或者恐懼未知，這個只要講的多了自然會好。

2）肚子裡沒貨，或者說準備不夠充分。如果真的滿腹才華，真的做了充分的準備，比如如何開始進行破冰；比如充分了解大家想聽的是什麼，然後提前準備；比如預估大家會有什麼疑問，如何進行解答；比如害怕演講時不妨增加互動等等，有很多的方法可以解決這個問題。

2、因擔憂某些事情而焦慮，甚至無法入眠？

1）真的需要用自我解剖的狠勁面對自己，不逃避，不迴避，確認自己到底在擔心些什麼？

2）確認問題之後，如果是能力欠缺，那麼該提升自己則努力提升；如果是別的不足，也可以有針對性地想辦法解決。

3）自己的努力其實未必能徹底解決問題，但就如羅素說的，其實很多事情沒什麼大不了的。當你真的面對了，反而會釋然。比如，你懼怕女朋友跟自己分手，但如果最終還是分手了，其實也就那麼回事。誰還沒失過戀呢，是吧？哭啊哭的就習慣了，然後慢慢哭的就少了，最後就不哭了。為什麼？淡忘了唄、習慣分開的狀態了唄。說不定交一個新的朋友，一切就忽然變得好起來了。時間其實是個好醫生，能治好很多病，只是治療過程慢了點，治療手法也粗糙了點，有點痛很正常。又比如，缺錢的去想各種辦法賺錢，盡力了就好，實在沒那本事，咱就認了，賺簡單的錢，少賺點，也不會餓死，對不？起碼，咱努力過，這就好。

說到底，人人都該是糙貨，抗折騰，生存本能強大。

一切都會好的，就算不好，也折騰不死，對不？

我們，需要一個好的心態。

以下為正文。

Chapter 5: Fatigue

第五章 疲勞

Fatigue is of many sorts, some of which are a much graver obstacle to happiness than others. Purely physical fatigue, provided it is not excessive, tends if anything to be a cause of happiness; it leads to sound sleep and a good appetite, and gives zest to the pleasures that are possible on holidays. But when it is excessive it becomes a very grave evil. Peasant women in all but the most advanced communities are old at thirty, worn out with excessive toil. Children in the early days of industrialism were stunted in their growth and frequently killed by overwork in early years. The same thing still happens in China and Japan, where industrialism is new; to some extent also in the Southern States of America. Physical labour carried beyond a certain point is atrocious torture, and it has very frequently been carried so far as to make life all but unbearable. In the most advanced parts of the modern world, however, physical fatigue has been much minimised through the improvement of industrial conditions.

疲勞有很多種，其中一些會極大地阻礙你獲得幸福，另一些則不然。

純粹身體上的疲憊，如果不是很過度的話，反而可能變成快樂舒適的起因。疲憊過後會帶給人充足的睡眠和好胃口，讓你對假日裡可能的歡樂充滿興趣。但是，一旦疲勞過度的話，就會產生極大的危害。

除了在高度發達的地方，幾乎所有農村婦女都因過度的辛苦勞作耗盡了精力，很多人30歲就變得衰老不堪，變成了黃臉婆。在工業革命早期，兒童們常常因過度勞累而發育不良，有些甚至因此而夭折。如今，同樣的事情也依然在剛剛步入工業時代的中國和日本發生；而美國南部各州也在某種程度上存在這樣的情況。

一旦超過某一限度，體力勞動就會變成殘酷的折磨，而很多人為了求生卻不得不頻繁地承受着這一切，不得不掙扎在崩潰的邊緣。幸運的是，在現代世界的大多數發達地區，人們身體上的疲憊已經因工業生產條件的改進而大大緩解。

The kind of fatigue that is most serious in the present day in advanced communities is nervous fatigue. This kind, oddly enough, is most pronounced among the well-to-do, and tends to be much less among wage-earners than it is among business men and brain-workers.

如今，發達地區最嚴重的疲勞不再是身體的疲憊，而是神經緊張和精神上的疲憊。奇怪的是，這種疲憊多見於富裕階層，同時，這種情況在工薪階層中出現的情況比之商人和腦力工作者要少很多。

To escape from nervous fatigue in modern life is a very difficult thing. In the first place, all through working hours, and still more in the time spent between work and home, the urban worker is exposed to noise, most of which, it is true, he learns not to hear consciously, but which none the less wears him out, all the more owing to the subconscious effort involved in not hearing it. Another thing which causes fatigue without our being aware of it is the constant presence of strangers. The natural instinct of man, as of other animals, is to investigate every stranger of his species, with a view to deciding whether to behave to him in a friendly or hostile manner. This instinct has to be inhibited by those who travel in the underground in the rush-hour, and the result of inhibiting it is that they feel a general diffused rage against all the strangers with whom they are brought into this involuntary contact. Then there is the hurry to catch the morning train, with the resulting dyspepsia. Consequently, by the time the office is reached and the day's work begins, the black-coated worker already has frayed nerves and a tendency to view the human race as a nuisance. His employer, arriving in the same mood, does nothing to dissipate it in the employee. Fear of the sack compels respectful behaviour, but this unnatural conduct only adds to the nervous strain. If once a week employees were allowed to pull the employer's nose and otherwise indicate what they thought of him, the nervous tension for them would be relieved, but for the employer, who also has his troubles, this would not mend matters. What the fear of dismissal is to the employee, the fear of bankruptcy is to the employer. Some, it is true, are big enough to be above this fear, but to reach a great position of this kind they have generally had to pass through years of strenuous struggle, during which they had to be actively aware of events in all parts of the world and constantly foiling the machinations of their competitors. The result of all this is that when sound success comes， a man is already a nervous wreck, so accustomed to anxiety that he cannot shake off the habit of it when the need for it is past. There are, it is true, rich men's sons, but they generally succeed in manufacturing for themselves anxieties as similar as possible to those that they would have suffered if they had not been born rich. By betting and gambling, they incur the displeasure of their fathers; by cutting short their sleep for the sake of their amusements, they debilitate their physique; and by the time they settle down, they have become as incapable of happiness as their fathers were before them. Voluntarily or involuntarily, of choice or of necessity, most moderns lead a nerve-racking life, and are continually too tired to be capable of enjoyment without the help of alcohol.

在現代生活中，想要從神經性疲勞中逃脫出來是件很困難的事情。

首先，在整個工作時間裡，以及花在單位和家之間、上下班的時間裡，城市勞動者都暴露在噪音籠罩中。這其中大部分時候，他學着有意識地讓自己不要去聽，但反而因為潛意識裡努力逃避噪音而讓自己精疲力盡。

另一種我們還未意識到，但令我們感到疲勞的事情是，陌生的人和事在我們眼前不斷地出現。而人和其它動物都有一樣的本能，習慣於去探究和感受陌生同類，好決定到底要用友好的，還是敵對的態度來面對他。

當人們在高峰期乘坐地鐵時，面對許許多多的陌生人，人們雖然心有猶疑，但不得不壓抑着自己的天性。而約束的結果就是，他們對所有這些陌生者無聲地散發着心中的憤怒——而這些陌生人其實也是被無辜地捲入了與他的潛在的、無意識的接觸。

隨後，人們又急匆匆地去趕早班火車，而這又會讓他消化不良。最後，等趕到辦公室，一天的工作剛剛開始，這位兄弟早已滿臉鐵青，神經緊張，心情煩躁，把整個人類都看作了可惡的、令人厭煩的東西和大麻煩。

其實，他的僱主也會帶着同樣的情緒，對雇員身上的疲勞和壓力視而不見。雇員們因為害怕被僱主解僱，所以強迫自己做出尊敬的樣子，但這種非自然的行為只會加劇神經緊張。

如果僱主允許雇員們每周都有一次機會去拽拽他的鼻子，或者讓雇員們說出自己對於僱主的看法，或許會緩解僱員們的精神緊張狀態。但對於僱主自己來說，他也有自己的麻煩，這並不能解決他的問題。

一般情況下，雇員們怕的是解僱，而僱主害怕的則是破產，但確實有這樣一些人，他們已足夠壯大，所以無須恐懼。但在取得這樣的地位之前，他們一般都經過多年艱難的拼搏。在這期間，他們必須時時注意了解世界各地的情況變化，並不斷擊敗競爭對手的陰謀詭計。所有這一切帶來的結果就是，當成功來臨時，他已經神經過敏了，早已習慣於焦慮狀態，即使已經沒有焦慮的必要，他還是沒辦法擺脫這種習慣狀態。

確實，有些人是富豪的兒子，所以他們生而富裕，但是他們通常也會給自己製造焦慮，就如同倘若他們不是富二代的話所要承受的焦慮一樣。

他們會打賭賭博，令他們的父輩不快；他們會尋歡作樂，通宵達旦，漸漸地弄垮自己的身體。等他們的心性安定下來的時候，他們已經跟之前的父輩一樣，失去了幸福的能力。

不管是出於自願還是身不由己，也不管是自主決定還是無奈選擇，大多數現代人過着神經高度緊張的生活，也因此變得疲憊不堪，如果沒有酒精的幫助，他們就失去了享受快樂的可能。

Leaving on one side those rich men who are merely fools, let us consider the commoner case of those whose fatigue is associated with strenuous work for a living. To a great extent fatigue in such cases is due to worry, and worry could be prevented by a better philosophy of life and a little more mental discipline. Most men and women are very deficient in control over their thoughts. I mean by this that they cannot cease to think about worrying topics at times when no action can be taken in regard to them. Men take their business worries to bed with them, and in the hours of the night, when they should be gaining fresh strength to cope with tomorrow's troubles, they are going over and over again in their minds problems about which at the moment they can do nothing, thinking about them, not in a way to produce a sound line of conduct on the morrow, but in that half-insane way that characterises the troubled meditations of insomnia. Something of the midnight madness still clings about them in the morning, clouding their judgement, spoiling their temper, and making every obstacle infuriating.

把那些愚蠢的有錢人放在一邊，我們來看看那些為了生活不得不承受高強度工作的人，談談他們這些普通人的疲憊。

在很大程度上，他們的疲憊源自擔憂，而這種擔憂可以經由更適合的生活哲學和一定的精神訓練而避免。大多數人非常缺乏對自己的思想的控制，我的意思是，面對自己暫時無法採取行動解決的問題，他們沒辦法控制自己，時不時地總會想起自己擔心的事情。

在夜裡這幾個小時，他們本應恢復疲勞，以獲得新生的力量去應對明天的煩惱，但是男人們還是帶着業務上的煩惱上床休息。躺在床上，他們的腦海里還在翻來覆去地想着問題，而實際上，此時此刻，他們對這些難題也無能無力。他們並沒有為第二天想出可行的行動方案，這僅是失眠時特有的、半瘋狂的胡思亂想。

當清晨來臨，夜半時的瘋狂迷亂依然纏繞着他，如迷霧般影響了他的判斷，也讓他的脾氣 變得更煩躁，工作中每一個障礙都會令他感到憤怒。

The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all. I do not mean to suggest that at a great crisis, for example, when ruin is imminent, or when a man has reason to suspect that his wife is deceiving him, it is possible, except to a few exceptionally disciplined minds, to shut out the trouble at moments when nothing can be done about it. But it is quite possible to shut out the ordinary troubles of ordinary days, except while they have to be dealt with. It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times. When a difficult or worrying decision has to be reached, as soon as all the data are available, give the matter your best thought and make your decision; having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

智者只有出於特定目的才會考慮他的煩惱事，在別的時間則思考其他的事情；或者，在晚上的時候則徹底放空自己，什麼都不想。

我並不建議在遇到大的危機，比如說毀滅性危機將來臨，或者有理由懷疑妻子的忠貞時也同樣如此。類似情況是有可能發生的，但除非你經過特別訓練，是特別自律的人，否則在自己無能為力的時刻，你根本做不到將這些煩惱置於腦後。

以上是特殊情況，但除非我們正在處理這些麻煩，否則，我們確實很可能做到將日常的一些小麻煩丟在風裡。

培養有序的思維習慣能夠令人驚異地大幅提升幸福感和辦事效率，由此，人們可以做到在正確的時間思考麻煩事，而非整天胡思亂想。

倘或你需要做出一個困難而令人擔憂的決定，那麼，只要你能夠得到完備的資料，那麼在充分思考之後就針對這難題做出決定。而一旦做出決定就不要輕易改變——除非你發現了新的、足以影響你判斷的事實。

沒什麼比優柔寡斷更讓人精疲力竭的，也沒什麼比猶豫不決更徒勞無功的了。

A great many worries can be diminished by realising the unimportance of the matter which is causing the anxiety. I have done in my time a considerable amount of public speaking; at first every audience terrified me, and nervousness made me speak very badly; I dreaded the ordeal so much that I always hoped I might break my leg before I had to make a speech, and when it was over I was exhausted from the nervous strain. Gradually I taught myself to feel that it did not matter whether I spoke well or ill, the universe would remain much the same in either case. I found that the less I cared whether I spoke well or badly, the less badly I spoke, and gradually the nervous strain diminished almost to vanishing point. A great deal of nervous fatigue can be dealt with in this way. Our doings are not so important as we naturally suppose; our successes and failures do not after all matter very much. Even great sorrows can be survived; troubles which seem as if they must put an end to happiness for life fade with the lapse of time until it becomes almost impossible to remember their poignancy. But over and above these self-centred considerations is the fact that one's ego is no very large part of the world. The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life which is impossible to the pure egoist.

其實，只要你意識到很多所憂慮的事情其實沒那麼重要，你的擔心就會少很多。

我在以往的日子裡做過很多次公開演講，在剛開始的時候看到台下每一個聽眾，我都會感到恐懼和神經緊張，演講效果自然很糟糕。我非常害怕這種折磨，甚至在不得不去演講的時候恨不得打斷自己的腿，所以， 每次演講過後，我都因為精神緊張而覺得精疲力竭。

後來，我慢慢教會自己接受這樣一種感覺，那就是無論我講的好不好，無論演講成功與否，都沒什麼大不了，一切再怎麼糟糕，老天也還是跟以前一樣，不會改變什麼。然後，我發現自己越是不在乎演講的好壞，演講失敗的情況就越少。而漸漸地，這種神經緊張的情況開始減少，到最後幾乎完全消失。

許多種神經疲勞其實可以用這種方法來解決。我們的行為並不像我們自然而然想像的那麼重要，我們成功與否歸根到底沒什麼了不得。就算遭遇巨大的不幸，我們也可以慢慢熬過；就算是那些看起來會終結我們一生幸福的艱難，也會隨着時光的流逝隨風而去，直到最後，我們甚至會徹底將最後一絲心酸也從記憶中抹去。

如果超越這些僅僅以我們自己為中心的種種思慮，我們會發現，事實上一個人的自我意識相對於這個世界來說只是很小的一塊。一個能夠將自己所有的思想和希望聚焦於超越自我的事情之上的人，也能夠超越日常生活中小小的煩惱，在心中尋得一片安寧的淨土，而這對於一個純粹的利己主義者來說絕不可能。

What might be called hygiene of the nerves has been much too little studied. Industrial psychology, it is true, has made elaborate investigations into fatigue, and has proved by careful statistics that if you go on doing something for a sufficiently long time you will ultimately get rather tired—a result which might have been guessed without so much parade of science. The study of fatigue by psychologists is mainly concerned with muscular fatigue, although there are also a certain number of studies of fatigue in school-children. None of these, however, touch upon the important problem.

所謂神經衛生學並沒有得到多少重視和研究，而產業心理學已經對疲勞進行了詳盡的調查研究，並且已經通過細緻嚴謹的統計證明：如果你在一段足夠長的時間裡連續做某些事情，最終會覺得很累。但這種結果其實根本不需要大量科學知識的炫耀，只需猜想就能得到結論。

另外，在對於疲勞的研究方面，儘管有一定數量也針對學校的孩子們，但心理學家的主要研究方向還是集中在肌肉疲勞方面。這些研究中，沒有一個觸及到真正重要的問題。

The important kind of fatigue is always emotional in modern life; purely intellectual fatigue, like purely muscular fatigue, produces its own remedy in sleep. Any person who has a great deal of intellectual work, devoid of emotion, to do—say, for example, elaborate computations—will sleep off at the end of each day the fatigue that that day has brought. The harm that is attributed to overwork is hardly ever due to that cause, but to some kind of worry or anxiety. The trouble with emotional fatigue is that it interferes with rest. The more tired a man becomes, the more impossible he finds it to stop. One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important. The nervous breakdown which appears to be produced by the work is, in fact, in every case that I have ever known of personally, produced by some emotional trouble from which the patient attempts to escape by means of his work. He is loath to give up his work because, if he does so, he will no longer have anything to distract him from the thoughts of his misfortune, whatever it may be. Of course, the trouble may be fear of bankruptcy, and in that case his work is directly connected with his worry, but even then worry is likely to lead him to work so long that his judgement becomes clouded and bankruptcy comes sooner than if he worked less. In every case it is the emotional trouble, not the work, that causes the breakdown.

在現代生活中，真正重要的疲勞往往是情緒方面的，而純粹的精神疲勞和純粹的肉體疲勞一樣，可以通過睡眠得到恢復。

無論是誰，只要他從事着無須情緒捲入的、大量的腦力工作，比如複雜的計算等等，他都會在每天忙完的時候通過睡眠來緩解工作所帶來的疲憊。

我們將有些傷害簡單地歸因於過度的勞作，但其實並非如此，真正帶來傷害的是某種形式的擔憂和焦慮。

情緒性疲勞的麻煩之處在於，它會影響你的休息。一個人越是疲憊，就越是沒法停下來。接近於神經崩潰的徵兆之一就是偏執地相信自己的工作極端重要，而給自己放個假就會給自己帶來各種各樣無法挽回的災難。

如果我就是醫生，我會給任何一位把自己的工作看得極端重要的病人開一個處方，那就是放假，徹底放鬆，好好休息！

神經崩潰貌似是因為工作而導致的，但事實上，就我自己所知的每一個案例來說，都是由於病人遭遇了情感障礙，但又想要通過工作來排解和逃避，這才是導致神經崩潰的真正原因。

病人之所不願意拋下手裡的工作，不是因為工作重要，而是因為如果真的這樣做，他就再沒有什麼辦法來轉移注意力，讓自己從那些糾纏着自己的、對自己不幸往事的想法中逃離出來，至於這不幸到底是什麼，並不影響他的做法。

當然，他的麻煩可能是對破產的恐懼，這時他的工作就與他的擔憂直接相關了，但是，即使是這樣，這種擔憂有可能使他掉進長時間工作的旋渦，帶來的結果是影響自己的判斷力，而破產到來的時間可能比他很少工作更早。而在所有案例中，導致人們神經崩潰的原因都不是工作，而是情感障礙。