2012年06月11日 06:10 AM

全家出游的意义

The family holiday ‘challenge’

英国《金融时报》专栏作家 西蒙?库柏

 

As a student of human nature, I often wonder why anyone goes on family holidays. I pondered the matter again recently, when we took the kids to southern Italy. Naturally, it rained almost solidly every day. There were moments familiar to any parent, like the deflating sound of an exhausted child waking up at 6.20am; the attempt to explain Pompeii to a three-year-old; or the evening we walked forever to the restaurant we’d read about, ordered food, and then watched the children fall asleep at table before the meal arrived. Yet by the time easyJet landed us home, I think I’d figured out why people take family holidays – and, by extension, why they have families.	作为一个对探究人性感兴趣的人，我常常想不通一个问题：为什么会有人举家出游？最近，我们带几个孩子去意大利南部度假的时候，我再次思考了这个问题。几乎每天都下雨，这是意料之中的。还有每个家长都很熟悉的事情：比如早上6点20分，本来筋疲力尽的孩子就已经醒了，吵得你无法继续睡；比如跟一个三岁的小朋友解释庞贝古城；又比如晚上我们长途跋涉，来到书中介绍过的餐馆，点了菜，却眼睁睁地看着小朋友们在菜上来之前就倒在桌上睡着了。然而，当易捷航空(easyJet)载着我们回到家的时候，我想我已经知道为什么会有人带孩子出游了，我甚至理解了他们为什么要孩子。
The “challenges” of family holidays are well-known. It’s hard enough getting on with your spouse and kids at home, let alone when cooped up with them for days. Susan M. Shaw, expert on leisure at the University of Waterloo in Canada, thinks the term “family leisure” is problematic. “Research suggests that such activities do not always live up to the leisure ideal,” she writes, darkly. Brian Viner in his Cream Teas, Traffic Jams and Sunburn: The Great British Holiday describes one seaside holiday when he shared a bedroom with his parents, it rained all week, he cut off clumps of his hair from boredom, his mother smacked him and then, as a finale, they heard on the car radio on the drive home that Robert Kennedy had been shot dead.	全家出游的困难是众所周知的。就是在家里，要想跟伴侣和孩子相安无事都够难了，更别提连着许多天跟他们绑在一个陌生的地方。加拿大滑铁卢大学(University of Waterloo)休闲问题专家苏珊?M?肖(Susan M. Shaw)认为，“家庭休闲”这个说法本身就是有问题的。她悲观地写道：“研究显示，此类活动基本上不能算理想的休闲活动。”在《奶油茶点、堵车和晒伤：伟大的英国假期》(Cream Teas, Traffic Jams and Sunburn: The Great British Holiday)一书中，作者布里安?瓦伊纳(Brian Viner)描述了自己小时候跟父母在海边度过的一个假期。小瓦伊纳跟父母共住一间房间，在那一周里，雨连绵不停，他无聊得剪自己的头发玩，还挨了妈妈一巴掌。最后，在开车回家的路上，听到广播里说，罗伯特?肯尼迪(Robert Kennedy)遇刺了。
Family holidays probably don’t add much to the sum of human happiness. However, as an economist friend of mine likes to argue, people don’t have children for happiness. It’s a cliché of happiness research that parents are less happy than childless people. Rather, says my friend, having children is best understood as a biological urge. You have them not for the present but for the future, to perpetuate your genes when you are gone. And likewise, you go on family holidays not for the present but for the future.	带孩子出游或许不是一件乐事。然而，正如我一位经济学家朋友喜欢说的，人不是为了寻开心才要孩子的。关于幸福感的研究早已得出这样的结论：有孩子的人比没孩子的幸福感更低。我那位朋友说，关于人为什么要孩子的最佳解释是：这是一种生物本能。人要孩子，不是为了现在，而是为了将来，是为了让自己的基因在自己生命结束之后继续延续。同样，带孩子出游，也不是为了现在，而是为了将来。
Families try to live up to the ideal of family life while struggling with an often disappointing reality. The aim, much of the time, is to stock up good memories: to leave all family members with snapshots of happiness that they can look back on after the family ceases to exist. When the kids leave home, the family effectively dissolves, even in cases where the parents are still alive and together. That means parents have only just over a decade to create happy memories: from the time the kids are about five, and have any memories at all, until they are in their late teens and heading for the exit. Family holidays are the parents’ best shot at creating those memories.	许多家庭都试图向理想的家庭生活靠拢，而实际情况往往不尽如人意。大多数时候，人们希望为家人创造美好的记忆：为家人留下一些快乐的瞬间，大家各奔东西之后，也有这些瞬间可供追忆。孩子们长大离家之后，家庭实际上就解体了，即便孩子们的父母还在世、还是夫妻。这意味着家长们只有十来年的时间来创造快乐的记忆：从孩子们5岁左右会记事起，到他们十八九岁准备离家时止。全家出游是家长创造这种记忆的最好方法。
Much of what we remember of our families comes from holidays. On holiday, the family exists more clearly than at any other time: all together for once, without work, school or friends. Because holidays distil the essence of family, they would be unbearable if they lasted more than a week or two. Indeed, less can still be fatal, as witness the number of Britons who check into mental hospitals after Christmas.	我们对家庭的许多记忆都来自假期。在度假的时候，我们最能感受到家庭的存在：全家人都在一起，大人不用工作，孩子不用上学，也没有与外人的社交活动。假期浓缩了家庭的精华，因此，如果假期超过一两周，就会变得让人无法忍受。事实上，即便假期不到一两周，也可能非常要命——你只用看看每年圣诞节后有多少人去看精神科医生就知道了。
On holiday, you imbibe your family. The exotic setting imprints itself on the child’s mind. All those holiday photographs reinforce the effect. In fact, the photos themselves are perhaps the main aim of the holiday: that’s where the memories get laid down, and then rubbed in over the decades. Louis Begley recently recalled his prewar childhood in the New York Review of Books. “At the core of my first memories of Poland,” he wrote, “is a summer in the remote countryside where my grandparents had a small property.” And he proceeded to describe that Polish summer, in 1938 when he was four, in minute detail. Above the article is a photo of the child Begley beaming into the lens at an outdoor meal table, with behind him the adults over whom the catastrophe was about to unfold.	在假期里，你整天泡在家庭氛围里。那种奇异的假日氛围在孩子心上留下了印记。假期中拍的那些照片也会加强这个效果。事实上，拍照本身可能就是假期的主要目的：照片将记忆定格，在以后的几十年里，看到照片，就会回忆起当年。路易斯?贝格利(Louis Begley)最近在《纽约书评》(New York Review of Books)上撰文，回忆二战前他的童年时期。“在我对波兰最早的记忆中，”贝格利写道，“最清晰的部分就是在一个偏远的乡下地方消暑的经历。祖父母在那有一处小小的房产。”他接着极其详细地描述了那个夏天的情景。那是在1938年的波兰，当时他4岁。在那篇文章上方，有一张他小时候的照片。小贝格利在一张户外餐桌旁对着镜头微笑，身后还有些大人。在照片拍摄后不久，灾难就将降临在这些人身上。
That holiday was Begley’s Madeleine. A few decades from now, perhaps the main thing anyone will remember about me is my son’s memory of my pushing him on the swings during a long-lost holiday in Sorrento. That’s what you’re doing it for: not for the children’s happiness in Sorrento this week, but for their memories. Your children’s memories give meaning to the otherwise day-to-day of your own life. If nobody remembered us, a philosopher friend once explained to me, much of the point would be gone.	那个夏天是勾起贝格利旧日回忆的东西。几十年后，如果还有人记得我的话，他们对我的主要印象可能会来自我儿子的记忆——很久以前，在索伦托度假时，我曾推着他荡秋千。这就是我组织全家去索伦托的意义：不是为了孩子们那一周的开心，而是为了给他们一份记忆。孩子们的记忆赋予你自己的生活以意义，否则，你不过是在一天天混日子。一位哲学家朋友曾告诉我，如果没有人记得我们，人生就没有多大意义了。
A family holiday is for memories. Once you’ve grasped that, it’s just a matter of enduring it. I vividly remember, about 30 years ago, returning from an Italian vacation to our handsome brick house with the fir tree in front. As we opened the front gate, my mother said, “That’s the best part of a holiday: coming home.” At the time I didn’t know what she meant.	组织全家出游是为了给日后留下一份回忆。明白了这个道理，旅途中的种种不便也就可以忍受了。我还清晰地记得约30年前全家从意大利度假归来时的情形：漂亮的红砖房子和门前的冷杉树再次出现在我们眼前。打开家中大门的时候，母亲说：“度假最美妙的部分就是：回家。”那时候，我还不懂这句话的意思。