離婚相對論 Divorce can galvanise a career as well as ruin one

At dinner the other night with 50 partners in a corporate law firm, I looked around the room and noticed something alarming. I was one of the oldest people in it.

有一天，我和一家從事公司法事務的律師事務所的50位合夥人共進晚餐。環顧四周，我發現了一件令人驚恐的事情——我在裏面屬於年紀最大的一撥。

Where were all the lawyers in their late fifties and early sixties? I put the question to the man sitting next to me, who said they had mostly been eased out. The trouble with the law, he explained, is that it takes its toll on you, and if you’ve been at it for 30 years it is almost impossible to hold on to any sense of urgency. By the time you reach your mid-fifties, it is usually time to start thinking about going.

那些六十歲上下的律師們都去哪兒了？我問坐在我旁邊的人，他說這些人大多都離開了。他解釋道，法律行業的問題就在於它會給人帶來負面影響。如果你已經在這個行業裏幹了30年，那你基本上無法再保持任何緊迫感了。等你到了55歲左右，通常就會考慮離開了。

There was only one exception to this rule, he went on, and that was lawyers in their fifties who had recently been divorced and were starting again with mortgages and young children. They had all the experience of their years — and all the drive of someone 30 years younger. They were propelled by the need to make a vast amount of money but, instead of having a lifetime in which to do it, they had a mere decade. The combination of extreme wisdom and extreme hunger made them unbeatable.

但是這種規律只有一種例外，他接着說，也就是那些剛離婚不久，揹着抵押貸款、帶着年幼子女重新開始的五十多歲的律師。他們不僅有着多年來積累的經驗，還跟比他們年輕30歲的律師一樣幹勁十足。他們被掙大錢的需求驅使着。可是，不像那些年輕的律師有一輩子的時間來掙錢，他們只有10年。極度的智慧與極度的渴求相結合，這讓他們不可戰勝。

I don’t think the man realised quite how well this divorce-is-great-for-your-career argument was going down with me. In the past six months I have a) separated from my husband, b) bought a wildly expensive house, and c) been feeling more than usually keen at work.

我覺得那個人一定沒有想到，這番“離婚有助事業”的論斷如何深得我心。過去的6個月裏，我1）和丈夫分居了，2）買了一套貴得離譜的房子，3）感覺工作熱情不同尋常地高漲。

Until that minute it hadn’t occurred to me that the three things were connected, but then I saw what was perfectly obvious: a) and b) have caused c).

我之前一直沒想到這三件事是聯繫在一起的，但那一刻我發現這再明顯不過了：正是前兩點導致了第三點。

Everyone will tell you that divorce is ruinous to a career. It makes you so unhinged that you can’t think straight. A couple of years ago the hedge fund boss Paul Tudor Jones told a conference that as soon as he hears that any of his managers is going through a divorce he stops them trading. The emotional turmoil renders them too unpredictable to be trusted with anyone else’s money.

每個人都會告訴你，離婚會對事業造成毀滅性打擊。離婚會讓人心智失常，以至於無法正常思考。幾年前，對衝基金老闆保羅圖德瓊斯(Paul Tudor Jones)在一次會議上說，只要他聽說公司任何一個經理正經歷離婚，他就會讓他們暫停交易工作。情感的波動讓他們的言行難以預料，因此無法放心讓他們管理別人的資金。

That may be so. But then again, it may not be. People, marriages and divorces come in many varieties, yet all divorces have one thing in common — they make you poor. Or at least they make you poorer than you were before. To comfortable, middle-aged professionals, feeling a little short of funds can be an unwelcome shock, and the effect of it can, in the right circumstances, be agreeably galvanising.

可能是這樣，但也可能不是。人、婚姻和離婚多種多樣，但是所有的離婚都有一個共同點——讓你變窮。或者至少讓你變得比以前窮。對於過着舒適生活的中年專業人士來說，覺得手頭稍微緊點就可能帶來非常難受的衝擊。在合適的條件下，這種難受會變爲一種有益的激勵。

For me, it has meant that any thought of sloping gently towards retirement is out of the window. And because there is to be no such sloping, I can no longer allow myself the luxury of mild disillusionment. Instead, I am applying myself to the job, and, to my amazement and delight, find that instead of feeling trapped or sorry for myself, I’m rather enjoying it. The work itself has not changed a bit, but I am doing it with more conviction.

對我而言，這意味着混日子等退休的想法都不在考慮之列了。因爲不會再有混日子的事情，我也就不能再允許自己沉浸於輕微的幻滅之中。相反，我投入到工作之中。讓我感到驚訝和喜悅的是，我非但沒有覺得自己受縛於工作或很可憐，反而覺得很享受。工作本身一點也沒有變，但是我工作的時候更深信不疑了。

This may not alter the quality of the finished product, but it does affect how it feels to be making it. Every time I am offered an additional piece of paid work, I no longer think: I’m not sure I can be bothered; I think: let me at it.

這可能不會改變工作成果的質量，但的確改變了工作時的感覺。每當我被指派一份額外的有償工作時，我不會再想：我不確定自己願不願意費那個麻煩；而是會想：讓我來做吧。

I am not saying that everyone in their sixth decade should ditch their spouse to give their flagging careers a bit more oomph. Neither am I suggesting that everyone who gets divorced can look forward to this kind of professional dividend. Some people are so poleaxed by the misery of it all that they can hardly crawl into the office, let alone feel relatively gung-ho once they get there.

我的意思不是說，每個人都該在六十多的時候拋棄他們的配偶，來給他們日漸衰微的事業注入一點熱情。我也不是說每個離婚的人都有望在職業上獲得這樣的意外好處。有些人被這些痛苦徹底擊垮，幾乎連勉強去辦公室上班都做不到，更不用提感到工作勁頭更足了。

Instead, what this proves is that the link between boredom, money and motivation is not what I thought it was. I used to think it was obvious why people in their fifties felt stale— it was because 30 years was simply too long to be doing the same thing.

相反，這正證明了無聊、金錢和動力這三者之間的聯繫不是我之前所想的那樣。我過去一直認爲五十多歲的人感到厭倦的原因很明顯——30年做同一件事實在太長了。

I now discover it is more complicated than that. People in professional jobs work for three reasons: money, status and the interest of the work itself. The main reason those in their fifties become sluggish is not that their minds are going, nor that the work itself has become too monotonous. It is that neither money nor status move them as they used to and the interest of the job is not enough to keep them going on its own.

可現在我發現，事實比這更復雜。專業人士爲了三個原因工作：金錢、地位和對工作本身的興趣。他們在五十多歲變得懈怠的主要原因，既不是因爲他們的腦力在減退，也不是因爲工作本身變得太單調乏味，而是不管金錢還是地位都不能像從前那樣驅使他們了，而只靠對工作的興趣並不足以支撐他們繼續保持對工作的熱情。

You would have to be a most peculiar person to be prepared to stay up all night doing the legal slog on an M&A deal for the sheer fun of it. And even though journalism is arguably more enjoyable than corporate law, it is not so fabulously entertaining that I would consider doing it if I didn’t have to.

如果一個人僅僅是爲了其中的樂趣而徹夜工作，處理一樁併購案相關的法務工作，那這個人一定怪到家了。雖然可以說記者工作比公司法工作更有意思，但是也沒有有趣到哪怕沒有必須做的原因，我也會考慮做着玩。

Almost all the scientific studies will tell you that money doesn’t motivate. Yet when you have just parted company with your nest egg and lost some of the financial security you thought you had, every pay cheque becomes a minor cause of celebration — and the same old, same old work suddenly seems as fresh and full of possibility as it ever did.

幾乎所有的科學研究都告訴你，金錢不是動力。然而，當你剛剛失去了一筆儲蓄，失去了一些你本以爲享有的經濟保障時，每一筆收入都能成爲小小慶祝一下的理由——同樣一成不變的工作突然就會像曾經那樣，變得充滿新鮮感和各種可能性。