30歲退休：如果厭倦，就別再堅持了

Growing up, assuming you came from a decent home, you probably watched your parents haul off to work every day so they could put food on the table, clothes on your back and a roof over your head. Or some variation of that theme.
假設你來自這樣一個小康家庭：你打小就看着父母每天辛勤工作，爲的是能讓這個家能夠吃飽飯、有衣服穿、有地方住。其實，大部分家庭都是這樣的。

But it probably never felt like your parents were stuck in an existential malaise, longing to run off so they could find themselves. They weren’t stricken with the “why me?” disease that it seems everyone under the age of 30 has now.
你可能鮮有感受到他們有想要去尋找真正的自己、被困在“存在究竟爲何“的憂思之中。他們不會像現在 30 歲以下的人那樣會經常問自己“爲什麼是我？”。

That’s because things were different then. Baby-boomers came of age at a time when the idea of having a job at all was a big deal. They stayed employed at their companies for long periods of time. By the late 90s, the economy was booming and companies took care of their employees. Having a career meant you were secure.
時代畢竟不同了。上一次嬰兒潮的那一代，他們最大的想法就是找份穩定的工作。一旦找到，通常他們也會在供職的公司工作上很長一段時間。而到了 90 年代後期，經濟形勢一片大好，公司對員工也很關照，那時，有一份工作對人們來說就意味着安全感。

But in the past twenty years everything has changed. Kids now aren’t taught to find careers. They’re taught to find their ‘passions.’ Then they’re encouraged to pursue them.
20 多年後的今天，一切都變了。孩子們不在被教導說要去尋找一份職業，而是去尋找並追尋他們的“激情”。

Except the world doesn’t bend to everyone’s beckoning whim— it doesn’t really give a shit about your passion— because it needs people to do normal stuff like collect garbage, police streets, put out fires. Here you were, told that you were awesome and that you wouldn’t have to settle for a life of mediocrity, and that’s all you’ve got. That sucks.
過去沒有人在乎你的激情，因爲人們需要做的事情都是非常稀鬆平常的事情，比如清垃圾、做遊警、撲滅火災等等。而現在的小孩從小到大總是被“你很酷！”等各種讚譽之聲包圍，告訴你你沒有必要過一個平庸的生活。

Years ago, when someone was a ‘creative,’ they were off in their own space. If they were successful, if they’d made it, you might have heard about them through word of mouth. Maybe you saw them on television or in a they weren’t posting on their Facebook feed, or updating their Twitter timeLine, constantly telling you about their really cool life. They weren’t digitally showing you whatever it is they were working on while you were sitting in your lowly cubicle, making you feel like a failure.
幾年前，但凡是具有創新精神的人，他們都生活在自己的世界裏。就算他們最終獲得了成功，達成了夢想，你也只能通過電視、雜誌等各種媒體或者口口相傳知道他們。這羣人不會更新 Facebook 狀態，或者隨時發 Twitter，告訴你他們真實的生活是怎樣的。他們不會告訴正窩在小隔間的你他們手頭正在做什麼驚人的項目，讓你覺得自己就是一個失敗者。

Spectating has become a full-time job in and of itself— looking at other people’s LinkedIn pages, their Facebook page, their Wikipedia page— and now we judge ourselves too often by what we haven’t done, instead of what we have.
窺探他人的生活成了一項“永不下班”的工作——看其他人的 LinkedIn 主頁、Facebook 或者 WiKipedia 頁面——其結果就是，我們每天都會通過對比來甚至那些自己沒有做過的事，而非我們究竟做了什麼。And so by age 30, if we haven’t done X, Y or Z, we’re left unfilled. There seems like there’s so much life out to be lived, and we’re called to it… whatever ‘it’ myth of entrepreneurship doesn’t help, either. The American fantasy that you too can make your dreams a reality, all you have to do is try.
而到了 30 歲，如果你還沒有做 X、Y、Z，你會覺得自己的人生不完整，你會覺得自己其實還有很多很多事情沒有做...... 即便你已經成功了，美國夢還是會告訴你，你可以讓更多夢想成真，只要你去嘗試。

But that’s not reality. Reality is that bills need to be paid and life has to be lived, and no matter what you’re doing these days, there is no respite. Your parents left an office at 5 PM and their work was over. It did not begin again until they walked in the next morning.
但事實並非如此。事實的情況是：欠債了就得還錢，生活還是得過。現在，不管你做什麼行當，生活中都不會有喘息的機會。你的父母可能下午 5 點就下班了，直到第二天早上上班，才又開始工作，但你不是。現在很多事情都基於一個假設的：你所做的工作是你所愛。否則你不會半夜回郵件，同手機共枕眠。

Now, it’s almost assumed that whatever it is that you’re doing, you must love it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be answering email at midnight and sleeping with your phone in your as you get older, and have spent years plugged into this matrix where everything is work work work— where your mind is never able to turn off— you age a lot. Maybe not in physical years, like in the sense that you’re 60. But you’re 30 and you’ve somehow managed to squeeze double the amount of work into that period of time.
這種生活方式帶來的結果就是，你會一連花上好幾年完全沉在工作中，幾乎每件事都是工作、工作、工作...... 你的心思完全在工作上。儘管物理年齡可能只有 30 歲，但你的心智可能已經達到了 60 歲的水平。很多人都想着在同樣長的時間內，做雙倍的事情，別人花 30 年，你只想花 15 年。

You’re old. Mentally.
在心智上，你“老”了

Your parents didn’t have to deal with this sort of thing. Rest assured, they had dreams and goals just like you. But they may have been able to spend a few hours on the weekend or in the evening entertaining these pursuits. And they weren’t answering email in the certainly weren’t idle, watching what their old high school friends are doing, making themselves feel like shit in the process. Heck, they probably had to go to their office just to use a computer at all.
同樣，你的父母並不會碰到類似的問題。自然，他們也會有同你一樣的夢想和目標，但是他們會在下班後或者週末的時候，去餵食他們的“夢想”，並且在這個過程中，他們不會回郵件。他們很享受生活，並且過的也不閒散，比如他們會時不時的串串門瞭解下高中同學都在做些什麼，或者做些自己感興趣的事兒。

So being unsettled and wanting more out of life is not a millennial problem or a hipster problem or a ‘whatever new word marketers are using to describe young people’ problem. It’s really a problem of being ‘plugged in’ all the time, and never being given the freedom to shut off.
因此，年輕人現在這種未達“穩定”、時刻想要從生活中獲取更多的心態並非一個”時髦“的問題，而是一個“時刻插電”，從來不給自由和享受生活任何機會的問題。我們好像忘了工作的目的是爲了更好的生活，而不是整個生活就是爲了工作的。

Because society has a problem with leisure. The idea of sitting around doesn’t sound sexy. Winners never quit. Go hard or go home. Always be closing. Or some shit like that.
這是個討厭悠閒的社會。手頭無事，就那麼幹坐着聽上去一點兒都不酷。成功人士是從來不會放棄的：繼續工作還是回家呢？再找點事做吧...

need a break. Just retire. Then start on something new. You may fail. But ultimately you’ll thank yourself later.
你需要休息。或者乾脆退休吧。然後做點新的事情，就算你可能會失敗，但你會對自己當初的決定心存感激。