Is just one life enough

Is just one life enough?

At a certain age, you may feel as if you’re still at life’s beginning yet also *disturbingly close to the end.

You feel acutely that there’s much left to do. You were going to win an Oscar, pick up a Nobel Prize in physics and get elected president, but you haven’t even gotten around to auditioning for a film, taking a university physics course or brushing up on your politics.

It’s almost enough to make you want to live forever. But then isn’t the real goal a life hugely increased not so much in length as in width? A life during which it’s possible to pursue every one of a wide range of concurrent possibilities?

It’s true, if you were immortal, that you might eventually get to be a philosopher and a *cantor and an actor and a *psychoanalyst and a novelist. But don’t forget: Over that vastly extended period, life would certainly not cease exposing you to still further choices. When you finally entered psychoanalytic training in 2100, you’d have to *forgo any number of other new possibilities that might at that instant present themselves, such as joining an *expedition to Alpha Centauri, or learning to create art with the previously unimaginable colors recently made visible on the *spectrum. You might have crossed one possibility o ff our list, but you’d have added three more.

For each new path you took, there would be several others that you’d have to leave for later. And then the overwhelming feeling that there are ever more careers worth pursuing, ever more books worth reading, ever more virtual worlds worth exploring, ever more romantic partners worth experiencing –would intensify over endless time. Hundreds of years in, you’d still feel as though you’d barely moved beyond the opening stages of what life has to offer.

Many activities you once loved, meanwhile, would fall out of fashion or out of reach. As an aging mortal, your knees might make it tough to run a marathon, causing you to envy all the healthy racers. As permanently youthful immortal, by contrast, you might remain fit to run marathons over the centuries. But perhaps the beloved urban races of your youth would have long since disappeared, banned because of impossibly hot global temperatures and the fact that future civilizations find *interplanetary relays far more exciting. All of the things you once did have shelf lives. The longer you live, the more of them die, increasing the weight of the time that has flowed through

your fingers.

As George Burns’ *quip goes: Old age isn’t great but it sure beats the alternative. There’s also truth to the reverse. Death isn’t great, but it sure beats the alternative.

文化背景

感觉想做的事情太多但时间却总也不够用，这是现代人的通病。也许你认为求快、求效率并不是什么坏事，但是当你想在同一时间做几件事情时，你可能就超越了正常范围。

美国医生拉里·多塞(Larry Dossey)将这种心理状况用“时间病(Time Sickness)”来形容。他认为患有时间病的人会不停地与时间赛跑，呈现样样都要快的状态。患上这种病的人容易感到紧张、焦虑、失眠、背痛、抑郁甚至是更严重的精神和身体疾病。

时间病易患也易治，方法就是“慢生活”。加拿大作家卡尔·奥诺雷在21世纪伊始发起了“慢生活”运动。他认为生活各个领域不断提速，终于到了物极必反的转折点，“人们已在速度面前迷失了自己”。

在他的倡导下，越来越多的人加入“慢生活”运动，把脚步放慢，希望从容地品味生活，“慢餐饮”、“慢旅游”、“慢阅读”应运而生。

中文翻译

在某个年龄阶段，你会感觉自己好像生命才开始，但又会非常不安地觉得生命已走向尽头。

你强烈地意识到自己还有很多未做之事。你曾想赢得奥斯卡奖，摘取诺贝尔物理学奖的桂冠并当选总统，但现在你甚至还未曾参加过电影试镜，未选修过大学物理课，也未曾温习过政治。

这些欲望几乎足以让你希望永生。然而，人生真正的目标难道不是尽可能拓宽生命的广度而非增加其长度吗？难道不是要追求一个能够尝试大千世界种种可能性的人生吗？

的确，如果你能永生，你也许最终会成为一位哲人、领唱、演员、精神分析学家和小说家。但别忘了：在那个无限延展的生命时光里，它当然也会展示给你更多的选择。当你终于在2100年开始接受精神分析培训时，你也许不得不放弃同一时间出现的无数其它新的可能性，比如，加入飞往人马座阿尔法星的探险之旅，或者学习用以往难以想象但在最新的光谱上却能找到的新颜色去创作艺术。你也许尝试了一个可能，但与此同时你又多了三个新的。

很多你曾钟爱的活动，都将过时或为人遗忘。作为一个日益衰老的凡人，你的膝盖可能会阻碍你去跑马拉松，让你嫉妒所有健康的跑步者。相反，作为一个长生不老之人，你可能在活了几个世纪后，还可以健康地跑马拉松。但或许你年轻时所钟爱的城市路跑很久以前就消失了，被禁了，因为那无法想象的全球高温，或者是未来文明发现星际接力赛更令人神往。你曾经做过的一切都有保存期限。你活得越久，过期的东西也就越多，因而增加了穿过你指尖的时间的重量。

美国著名喜剧演员乔治·伯恩斯曾有妙语：“年老并不美好，但它肯定强过另一种结果。反之亦然，死亡并不美好，但它肯定好过另一种选择。”

Chinese image on the rise

Back in 2011, right before President Hu Jintao’s visit to the US, a one-minute promotional video titled “Experience China” *illuminated New York’s Times Square. Played 300 times a day for a month, the video featured 50 of China’s most famous faces, includi ng basketball superstar Yao Ming and astronaut Yang Liwei.

Fast forward to this year and another video takes over one of New York’s most famous spots. In the wake of the July 12 *tribunal in Hague on the territorial *sovereignty over the South China Sea, a video that gives China’s take on the dispute was broadcast 120 times a day from July 23 to Aug 3.

If the 2011 video was meant to promote China’s image and reel in the tourists, this year’s was to *manifest the country’s standpoint confidently and proudly to the world. There is a huge step between the two, and here are the reasons why.

China’s overall perception is being steadily enhanced, according to the 2015 China National Image Global Survey released on Aug 29 by the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration. The survey saw responses from 9,500 people of 19 member countries of the G20. On a scale of one to 10, China’s overall image scored 6.2 points, which is 0.3 higher than in 2014. Among the respondents, young people (aged 18-35) had the best impressions of China, scoring 6.6, compared to those of higher age groups.

Rich history

The survey also found that people tend to picture China as a huge

Oriental land with a rich history filled with charm, and its people as hardworking, *hospitable and *diligent.

“As Chinese travelers become better educated, they are more aware of how they should behave overseas,” Yu Yunquan, deputy director of the Center for International Communication Studies, told China Daily. “When some behave poorly, the media r eports on them, which has encouraged others to behave even better.”

But there is still a way to go between how China wants to be perceived and how people from abroad see it. For example, even if Chinese giants such as Lenovo and Huawei enjoy visibility in foreign markets, “Made in China” is still more associated with the mass of products the country *churns out instead of individually recognizable brands.

“If China is serious about *grooming local winners to become global winners, it will need to build trust and adopt a long-term strategy to brand building,” Atifa Silk, director of London-based Haymarket Brand Media, told Voice Of America. “[China must] continually and consciously tackle issues such as food safety and quality control in order to compete on a regional or international level.”