Americans who stem from generations which left their old people behind and never closed their parents' eyelids in death,and who have experienced the additional distance from death provided by two world wars fought far from our shores are today pushing away from them both a recognition of death and a recognition of the tremendous significance — for the future — of the way we live our lives.Acceptance of the inevitability of death, which, when faced, can give dignity to life,and acceptance of our inescapable role in the modern world,might transmute our anxiety about making the right choices,taking the right precautions, and the right risks into the sterner stuff of responsibility,which ennobles the whole face rather than furrowing the forehead with the little anxious wrinkles of worry.
美國人的先輩們把他們的老人留在了故土，在老人去世時沒有去為他們合上眼睛；加之兩次世界大戰都在遠離我們本土的地方進行，美國人對死亡的感受更加遙遠。而現在，美國人把死亡推得遠遠的，既不想承認死亡，也不想承認我們的生活方式——對未來——有著何等巨大的意義。承認死亡不可避免——這可以在我們面臨死亡的時候賦予生命以尊嚴——并承認我們在現今世界上無法逃避的職責，則可以將我們在作出正確選擇、采取正確的預防措施和冒必要風險前的焦慮化成嚴肅的責任感，這將使我們的整個面容顯得更加尊貴，而不是在前額上留下因發愁而造成的焦慮的細小皺紋。
Worry in an empty context means that men die daily little deaths.But good anxiety—not about the things that were left undone long ago, but which return to haunt and harry men's minds,but active, vivid anxiety about what must be done and that quickly—binds men to life with an intense concern.This is still a world in which too many of the wrong things happen somewhere.But this is a world in which we now have the means to make a great many more of the right things happen everywhere.For Americans,the generalization which a Swedish social scientist made about our attitudes on race relations is true in many other fields:anticipated change which we feel is right and necessary but difficult makes us unduly anxious and apprehensive,but such change, once consummated, brings a glow of relief.We are still a people who—in the literal sense — believe in making good.
空洞的憂慮意味著使人每天都在慢慢死亡。但恰當的焦慮——不是關于那些我們在很早以前沒有做但又回過頭來不斷煩擾我們心緒的事情，而是關于那些必須要做且馬上得做的事情的積極的活生生的焦慮——會以一種強烈的關注心情將人和生活緊緊維系在一起。當今的世界仍然有太多不該發生的事在某些地方發生。但在這個世界，我們現在有辦法可以讓更多的應該發生的事在世界各處發生。對美國人來說，一位瑞典社會學家就我們對種族關系的態度所作出的概括同樣適用于其他許多方面：期待中的變革令我們過度焦慮不安，因為我們覺得這種變革是正確和必要的，但卻又是難以實現的，但這種變革一旦完成，會帶來一陣喜悅和輕松。毫不夸張地說，我們仍然是一個自信會成功的民族。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/daxue/201701/467786.shtml
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