周冬雨高清个人写真:跟我的高中驾驶教练学习职业道德

I know this because Bob told me eight years ago. Bob taught me how to drive: Before I could get my license I was required by law to enroll in a behind-the-wheel driver training program and people said his was the best.

我懂得这些道理是因为8年前鲍勃的教导，他教我驾驶：根据法律规定，我必须参加驾驶实践培训才能拿到驾照，那时人们都说，他是最好的教练。

At an appointed time he picked me up in a modest sedan with one of those giant pizza-delivery prisms on the roof that broadcast both the name of his driving school and my dangerous incompetence. We had three sessions of two hours each. I drove around the suburbs and Bob talked nonstop the whole time about the micromechanics of driving and traffic accidents and the role of body language at intersections and the true purpose of the highway shoulder and the way you're supposed to ease the wheel back, after a sharp turn, with a "controlled slip." Then he took me to the DMV for the practical test and I passed.

在约定的时间，他开着一辆普通的轿车来接我，车顶上巨大的棱柱标注着他的驾校名，也提示这我作为一个无驾驶资格新手的危险性。我们的练习分为三次，每次2小时。我开车环绕郊区，鲍勃全程不停向我解说驾驶及车祸的微观力学，肢体语言在路口处的作用，高速公路路肩的真正用途，以及急转弯后回打方向盘“受控滑行”的技巧。而后他带我去了车管所进行考试，我顺利通过。

All of Bob's students passed. For the hardest part, the parallel parking, he had a trick. On his car's back right window he stuck a New Jersey Devils decal. When it came time to parallel park, you were to pull up until the back of the decal was aligned with the parking spot's front left cone. You turned the wheel clockwise as far as it could go, looked out the back windshield, and stopped exactly when another sticker -- I forget what that one was -- was aligned with the back right cone. Finally you spun the wheel fully counterclockwise, eased back, and straightened out.

鲍勃的所有学生都通过了考核，在最难的平行泊车项目中，他耍了个技巧，在车的右后窗上贴了张新泽西魔鬼图案的胶纸。当进行到平行泊车项目，你只需在胶纸后侧与停车点左前角成一线时停车，将方向盘顺时针打到底，透过挡风玻璃向外看，停在另一张胶纸（我记不清这张是什么）与右后角成一线的地方。最后逆时针打方向盘到底，缓慢后退，直到车子走直。

When they gave me my license I left in a hurry, eager as I was to join the legions of bad New Jersey drivers. I thanked Bob. Then I did what everybody who's ever had a driving instructor has done: I forgot about him.

我拿到驾照就匆忙离开了，一心只想马上加入新泽西司机的大军。我感谢鲍勃。然而正如所有曾经接受过驾驶培训的人一样，我很快忘掉了我的教练。

There is a guy who works the register at the pharmacy across the street who regularly makes my day. He doesn't do anything spectacular -- he's just good at his job. He fluently handles cards and cash; he offers you the pen ready to sign, and makes sure your receipt doesn't curl up; he has memorized the prices of things so that you don't have to wait when a barcode is missing. And he's pleasant in a real way, not like a waitress paid to be bubbly, but like a friend in high spirits. When he says "take care" the words are inflected with humanity.

It reminds me of a flight attendant I once saw and this maneuver he had developed, where right before he scooped ice into a passenger's cup, he'd tilt his hand just so, steep enough that the liquid condensation would roll back into the ice box, but not so steep for the cubes themselves to fall. That way there wouldn't be any extra water along with the ice, and the passenger could enjoy her cold soda at full strength.

这使我想起了一位飞机乘务员，在他用勺子向乘客的杯子中加入冰块前，会倾斜他的手至一个合适的角度，以便冷凝的液体倒流回冰盒而冰块并不滚落，这样一来冰块不会带有多余的水分，乘客就能享受到未经稀释的冰苏打。

Why are these little moments of care so delightful? Because they stand out against a backdrop of listless dissatisfaction. Take the staff at my local grocery store. In a typical visit someone will fumble your credit card; forget what's in stock or where it goes; enter the wrong price; or ignore the basics of bagging. When they say "good night" it's on behalf of the store, not themselves, and they clearly don't give a damn.

为什么这些微小的细节如此令人愉悦？因为他们背后是普遍存在的劣质服务。例如本地一家杂货店的职员，笨拙地操作你的信用卡，记不住哪些商品有存货哪些没有，输错价格，忽视包装的细节。当他们说‘晚安’只是代表这个商店例行公事，而不是代表他们自己，显然他们一点也不上心。

On the one hand you sympathize. Bagging groceries is boring; it doesn't pay well; the customers are unpleasantly demanding. That's a brutal trio. It's also fairly common. If bitter torpor seems like the default human operating mode out there in the workaday world, may it not just be that a lot of people have jobs they don't like, jobs they can't like? Who can blame them for that?

一方面你会同情他们，打包商品有够无聊，薪水不高，顾客苛刻————杯具三重奏。如果没有那么多人做着他们不喜欢，喜欢不起来的工作，苦涩麻木如何会成为人类职业社会默认的普遍运作模式？又有谁能够指责他们？

Then I think of the flight attendant and the pharmacy, and a small handful of my friends and colleagues, and I remember that there is such a thing as a work ethic and that the people who have it seem to have it all the time.

当我想到那位乘务员和那家药店，还有我的一些朋友和同事，才记起有这么一种叫做职业道德的东西，拥有它的人似乎从不曾背弃。

It's hard to say "work ethic" without sounding like an asshole. But I think it's worth getting a grip on what it means. It seems to me a bit opaque, perhaps like one of those words -- "skyscraper" or "doughnut," say -- which we are so used to seeing as compound wholes that we forget the components. The cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter would call them "tightly bonded semantic chunks," like "pieces of wax that have melted together in the bright sunlight."

提起‘职业道德’总有几分装逼的意味，但了解它的真正含义还是有价值的。对我而言它的含义有些模糊，就像‘摩天大楼’或是‘油炸圈’————我的意思是，只有这些词的概念而忘记了它们的具体内容。认知科学家道格拉斯·霍夫斯塔特称之为“紧密结合语义块”，如同“在强烈的阳光下混合的蜡块”。

"Work ethic" seems like one of those chunks. It elicits a halo of simple images: a man hunched over a desk, staying late, furrowing his brow. The "work" part dominates. One forgets the word "ethic" is in there.

‘职业道德’似乎正是此类语义块之一，它引出一系列光辉的图像：一个人弓身坐在桌前，工作到深夜，紧锁双眉。‘工作’这个词占据了主导，而‘道德’被人们遗忘了。

But as Thomas Crocker, an associate professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, reminds us, doing a good job, or not doing it, is very much a moral question. Here he quotes Matthew Crawford on Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

但是正如南加州大学副教授托马斯·克罗克提醒我们的那样：做好一项工作，还是不做，是个道德问题。以下是他引自马修·克劳福德对罗伯特·波西格《摩托车维修的艺术与禅意》的评述：

    Here is the paradox. On the one hand, to be a good mechanic seems to require personal commitment: I am a mechanic. On the other hand, what it means to be a good mechanic is that you have a keen sense that you answer to something that is the opposite of personal or idiosyncratic; something universal. ...

这里有一个悖论：一方面，作一个优秀的机修工需要个人全力投入，我是一个机修工。另一方面，作一个优秀的机修工意味着你必须敏锐地认识到你所要解决的问题不是个人的或特殊的，而是普适的......

    Pirsig's mechanic is, in the original sense of the term, an idiot. Indeed, he exemplifies the truth about idiocy, which is that it is at once an ethical and a cognitive failure. The Greek idios means "private," and an idiotes means a private person, as opposed to a person in their public role -- for example, that of a motorcycle mechanic. Pirsig's mechanic is idiotic because he fails to grasp his public role, which entails, or should, a relation of active concern to others, and to the machine. He is not involved. It is not his problem. Because he is an idiot.

波西格所说的‘机修工’，这个词的原始意义是白痴（idiot)。他所解释的正是白痴的状态：同时遭遇道德和认知上的失败。希腊语‘idios’意为‘个人的’，而一个白痴（idiot）的意思是：一个特异的个体，与扮演着公共角色的人完全相反————比如摩托车维修工的角色。波西格的机修工是愚蠢的，因为的他无法掌控他的社会角色，这个角色需要将维修机器与积极关怀他人联系在一起。他没有融入，这不是他的错，因为他是个白痴。

Of course most people are not car mechanics or airline pilots. Most people have jobs where being a "moral idiot," as Crocker puts it, won't kill anyone. Should we really demand that the guy who checks ticket stubs at the movie theater hones his craft?

当然，绝大多数人都不是汽车维修工或者飞行员。对于大多数人，在工作中成为一个如克罗克所说的‘道德白痴’并不会杀害任何人。难道我们真的必须要求一个剧场检票员磨炼他的手艺？

Well, yes. No job is too low to not warrant care, because no job exists in isolation. Carelessness ripples. It adds friction to the working of the world. To phone it in or run out the clock, regardless of how alone and impotent you might feel in your work, is to commit an especially tragic -- for being so preventable -- brand of public sin.

是的。 没有什么工作是太过低贱以至无须用心投入，因为没有哪个工作是与世隔绝的。草率粗心工作的恶劣影响会扩散，对整个世界的运转增添了阻力。无论你感到工作多寂寞多没有前途，一旦你这样做，就是让你的可怜品牌背负了公共的罪责。

* * *

A month or two ago I was driving back to Manhattan with three friends in a borrowed minivan that had just over 120,000 miles on it. We were in the middle lane making a loping left turn on the highway. It was raining hard; I had the wipers at their fastest setting. A car crept up from the right to pass.

一两个月前，我和3个朋友朋友开这一辆借来的小货车回曼哈顿，行车里程将近120000英里。那时天下着大雨，我将雨刮器开到最大频率，高速路上我们正准备左转，一辆车缓慢地从右侧超车。

After enough uneventful driving you get the feeling that there is a protective envelope around your car. You forget that you are maneuvering a ton of steel and carbon fiber and moving faster than anything alive on Earth had moved in its first few billion years, in lanes just a few feet on either side.

有过足够多次安全平静的驾驶经历，你会觉得车周围就像罩着个保护套。你会忘记你正在操纵的是一吨多重的钢材和碳纤维，以超越数亿年来世界上任何生物的速度奔驰在仅有几英尺宽的车道上。

It helps not to be at ease in that situation. It helps to be afraid, even -- if only so that when the car on your right makes a quick dash toward your lane your hand is already on the horn and your foot's already on the brake, and you've scanned your mirrors and know your outs. You honk and veer gently leftward. The other car retreats. You return home safely.

这种情形下还是不要过于放松为好。恐惧是有益的，即使当你右侧的车辆正向你的车道飞驰而来，你的手已经放在了喇叭上，脚已踩上刹车，目光扫向后视镜并找到了出路。你按响了喇叭，缓慢左转，另一辆车后退了，你安全回家。

How often this sort of thing has happened, this thing where a tiny moment on the road has brought me to the edge of infinite doom and a dormant instinct brings me back. The difference between this last time and all the others is that for once I remembered where half those instincts came from. I remembered Bob.

这类情况时有发生，生死攸关的细微瞬间总有一种蛰伏的本能使我安然脱险，与旁人不同的是，我记得，这些本能来源于鲍勃。

Getting in touch with Bob was easier than I expected, given that I didn't remember his last name or the name of his driving school. It says something both about his stature in the state of New Jersey and the unnerving reach of Google's intelligence that I was able to type "bob new jersey driving" and see his business as the first result.

联系上鲍勃远比我想象中容易，因为我忘记了他的姓氏和驾校名。由于他在新泽西地区的声名和谷歌搜索可怕的覆盖面，当我输入‘鲍勃 新泽西驾校’，第一个搜索结果就是他。

When he picked me up he was driving a different car than the one I remembered. He explained that he puts on about 60,000 miles per year and so replaces the car once every three. He has been a driving instructor for 32 years. His career began in 1979 when he turned twenty-one and started training under his father. They ran the business out of their house. Young Bob always answered his home phone the same way: "Easy Method Driving School."

他来接我时，开的不是我记忆中的那辆车，他解释说由于每年行车里程约六万英里，每隔三年他就要换一辆车。他担任驾驶教练已经有三十二年。1979年，当他刚满21岁，开始跟着父亲做驾驶培训。那时他接电话头一句一定是“这里是易行驾校”。

If you do the math you discover that he has logged more than two million miles on the job. Along the way he's had just a handful of minor accidents. In every case he was rear-ended by someone else, and in every case the other driver was declared to be at fault, never Bob nor -- remarkably -- one of his students. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that he is one of the best drivers in New Jersey (which if you've ever been on the Garden State Parkway probably sounds like an insult, but it's not meant to be).

你略加计算就会知道，他工作中的驾驶里程已超过200万英里。只出过几次小事故，每次都是他被其它车辆追尾，每一次都是其它司机的过错，而不是鲍勃或他的学生。毫不夸张地说，他是新泽西最好的司机之一（如果你曾见过花园州公园大道高速上的恶劣交通，会感到这个说法像是在侮辱鲍勃，但我不是这意思）。

The student we were going to pick up had never driven before. First timers account for the larger part of Bob's business. For the most part they are all exactly the same age -- just turned 16 -- though he has taught adults as well. He said there was a big influx of East Germans when the Berlin Wall came down. "What's the first thing you want to do when you flee the Soviet bloc?" he asked. "Drive. Really be a free person."

我们要去接的学员没有过驾驶经验，鲍勃的学生大部分是这样的新手，其中绝大多数刚满十六岁，也有一些成年人。他说，柏林墙倒塌时大批东德人涌入西德，那时他问他们：“你们逃脱苏联的封锁后想做的第一件事是什么？”“开车，做一个真正自由的人。”

I had forgotten that driving for the first time is a big deal. I was in the back seat when we pulled up to the girl's house, an Indian-American high schooler wearing a hoodie that said "Chatham Fussball" on it. She and her mother were standing on their doorstep. The girl couldn't stop smiling. Her mother's arms were folded. As Bob spoke both of them nodded, the daughter eagerly, the mother less so. Bob mimed grabbing the wheel and making a big turn, his hands at ten and two o'clock; they all laughed. A little sister poked her head out the front door.

我几乎忘了，新手第一次驾驶是件大事。我坐在后排车座上，和鲍勃开车来到那位女孩家，她是一个美籍印度裔高中生，穿着印有“查塔姆足球队”字样的风帽衣，和她母亲一起站在门前的台阶上，脸上一直带着笑容。她的母亲双臂交叉。当鲍勃说话时，她们频频点头，女儿充满了急切的期待，母亲则略显平静。鲍勃打着手势模拟握住方向盘急转弯，双手放在钟面指针十点和两点的角度，她们哈哈大笑，小女儿闻声从前门里探出头来。

One forgets how overwhelming the road can be. Bob was telling me before we pulled up for the lesson that "driving is about seeing." "Your eyes get there first," he said. The hardest part for a new driver is knowing where to look. I didn't believe him until we got to the student's first loop around a cul-de-sac: Instead of looking out her left window, toward where she was wheeling the car, she kept looking in the opposite direction to keep an eye on the curb, or worse, on her own hands.

人们可能忘记行车上路面临的巨大考验。在我们发车前，鲍勃告诉我驾驶是一门‘看’的学问。“你的目光先于车子到达那里。”对于新手，最困难的是不知道该看哪儿。我开始并不相信他的话，直到学员第一次开车环绕死角，我发现了：她目光直视相反方向的路沿甚至自己的双手，而非看向左窗口外行车的方向。

It's quite jarring. You spend your entire life being driven around and it seems rather natural. But then you take the wheel and suddenly you have to pay attention -- actually pay attention -- to all the moving parts. For someone who's been at it a while it's mostly automatic. But consider: There is the problem of controlling the car, getting a feel for its weight, the sensitivity of the wheel, the brake, accelerator, and so on. There is the world inside: your adjustable seat and steering column, your posture and sightlines, all those cupholders and compartments, the radio, clock, your phone, your fellow passengers. The dashboard has its own meters and messages that must be checked every so often; so too with your mirrors. There are the other drivers on the road. There are the signs, speed limits, potholes, detours, construction sites, and other unpredictable exceptions to the regular rules of the road, and on top of that the general problem of knowing where you are, and on top of that whatever you happen to be thinking about.

这是很令人震惊的，你终生习惯了驾驶，一切则都显得很自然。而当你握住方向盘，突然必须集中注意力于所有运动的部分。对于有经验的人，就像自动进行的。但是想想：控制车子，感觉它的重量，方向盘，刹车，油门，等等各种各样的问题。车里的世界是这样的：你的可调节的坐位，方向盘轴，你的姿势与视线，茶杯架，车厢，收音机，钟表，你的电话和你的乘客。仪表盘有它自己的分度和信息，必须时常查看，后视镜也是如此。路上还有其它车辆的驾驶员，有信号标识，速限，路面洞坑，弯道，施工区域，还有无法预料的特殊交通规则，此外最主要的问题是知道你身在何处，脑子里碰巧在想些什么。

The first-timer is too wrapped up in fearful tunneled focus to do much beyond the basic work of not running into stuff. "Did you see that sign?" Bob would ask. "Watch your speed." "It's probably a good idea to check your mirrors every five to eight seconds." "See that one kid? Where's his friend?"

新手往往太过紧张以至于难以顾全基本的操作，“看到那个标识了吗？”鲍勃会提示到，“注意你的速度。”“最好每隔5~8秒看一下后视镜。”“看到那个孩子了么？他的朋友哪儿去了？” 

The poor girl never had a ready answer. She admitted to missing every single sign on the road. Bob says that students frazzled and exhausted after two hours of driving will often blow right by their own houses.

那个可怜的女孩从未顺利答上这些问题。她承认忽略了路上的所有标识。鲍勃说，学员开车超过两小时就会精疲力尽，以至于偏离正确的操作。

The market for driving instruction is crowded with part-timers looking to make a little extra income from their car, perhaps to defray the increasing cost of gas. The business has attractively low barriers to entry: mostly just a background check and a few hundred dollars in processing fees.

驾驶培训行业中有许多兼职人员，试图用他们的车子赚些额外的收入，或许是为了支付日益增涨的油价。从事这一行业的门槛很低，大多只需通过背景考核和支付几百美元的运作费用。

Which is roughly what you'd expect, I think. Driving instruction seems more like the sort of thing a high school teacher would take on after hours to round out his day, like coaching, than a lifelong home for the dedicated specialist. It doesn't feel worthy of the time and attention. Who would want to make a career out of driving kids around?

也许你已经想到了，驾驶培训就像一个高中教师打发额外时间的补习班，而不是一个勤勤恳恳的专业人员终生从事的职业。它看似并不值得花费时间和精力。谁会愿意把成天带着孩子们开车作为一生的事业？

Bob is the exception that proves the rule. As art is central to an artist's life so driving is to Bob's. What's strange is that he's not even a car guy -- he doesn't follow NASCAR, he doesn't tinker under the hood. What he's passionate about is the safe operation of motor vehicles.

鲍勃是个例外。驾驶对于鲍勃就像艺术对于一个艺术家那样重要。奇怪的是，他甚至不是一个车迷，不关注纳斯卡赛车，也从来不曾维修发动机，他的热情只限于安全地驾驶机车。

Like many long-time residents of a niche, Bob sees the world in a peculiar way. After a digression into the state's turn-on-red laws, for instance, he continued: "But then again, I've driven around here enough times to know every light, to know when you're allowed to turn on red and when you're not allowed to turn on red. I'll tell you, when I go someplace, like Boston -- you can turn on red there. I've been to Boston. I've turned on red." That was all he had to say about the trip.

就像许多长期从事同一项工作的人一样，鲍勃对这个世界有着特别的看法。从  “但是，我在这里开车已有足够长的时间，很清楚哪里可以打红灯哪里不能，比如波士顿就可以，我曾经去过波士顿，我在那儿打过红灯。”这就是他关于那次旅行要说的全部。

Bob notices things that I suppose only a long-time driving instructor could notice, like how you could tell that a driver was from Hoboken by the way the screws framing their license plates are scratched and worn from having parked so many times in the city's tight, unmarked spaces. He has an uncanny memory for driving situations. He is constantly telling these insanely detailed and tedious stories, like the one about a student who back in 2006 took the curve too fast on Summit Avenue just north of Hillcrest -- Bob said the student had a tendency to accelerate into turns -- and nearly skidded off the road, but managed to stick it out because the town council had recently repaved the street with an expensive grippy top-coating. There are no climaxes in these stories. In fact they're not so much stories as nerdy shoptalk, the thinking-out-loud of an intensely interested man.

鲍勃懂得很多只有入行多年的驾驶教练才懂得的事，比如如何通过汽车牌照上充满划痕破旧的螺钉判断出其驾驶员来自霍伯顿，因为它必然多次停靠在霍伯顿拥挤无标

识的停车场。他对驾驶状况有着神奇的记忆力，经常谈论起诸如此类疯狂的细节和乏味的故事，例如2006年，有个学员在希尔克雷斯特北部的萨米特大街转弯过快————鲍勃说他总是倾向于在转弯时加速————差一点滑出公路，但最终成功刹住车，因为该镇议会此前刚刚用昂贵的上等强摩擦力封层重铺了路面。这些故事从来没有高潮，事实上这些不过是乏味的职业八卦，兴趣单一的人脑子里装着的东西。

I'm reminded of how chess grandmasters can recall legal board positions with far greater fidelity than people who don't play, but perform about equally when the pieces are arranged in ways they'd never see in a real game. The difference is that a legal board position means something to the GM -- it's laced with strategic features like "pawn strength" and "control of the center," and composed of familiar scenarios like "the Sicilian opening" or "Queen's gambit" -- where to a layman it's still just a jumble of pieces.

这让我想起了国际象棋大师能够比外行更准确地记住棋盘上的棋子排布，即使是他们不曾亲眼看过的比赛。区别是一个规范的棋盘排布对于象棋大师是有意义的————涉及某些战术如“小兵突击”，“中盘控场”或是组成一些熟悉的残局，如“西西里开局”“皇后开局”等等，然而对于门外汉就是一堆杂乱的棋子集合。

Traffic is Bob's chess board. Where we see a mess of metal and nitwit drivers, he sees the interplay of tiny narratives: turns attempted and aborted, inelegant merges, a canny lane-switch in a roundabout. Three decades of this work have rejiggered his perceptual apparatus.

交通道路就是鲍勃的棋盘，我们看到的是混乱的金属和愚蠢的司机，他看到的则是情节的交互：试图转弯又停止，粗野的车流融合，绕行处机敏地变换车道。三十年的驾驶工作经历已重塑他的感知系统。

One incident stands out in particular. We were about an hour into the lesson and had just graduated from the backroads of the student's hometown to a two-lane street with steady traffic. The car in front of us had slowed down, signaled, pulled over toward the shoulder, and made a smooth right turn into a shopping complex. Bob was impressed. "See how nicely he positioned that car?" He explained to the girl that that was exactly how it was done. And then a while later, long after the moment had passed, he said quietly, more to himself than to either of us, "I really liked the way he did that." It had the ring of nostalgia to it.

却曾经有过一次特别的小插曲，那时我们已训练了将近一小时，离开学员家乡的乡村道路，进入拥有稳定车流的双行道。前面的一辆车减慢车速，发出信号，开上路肩，顺利右转开进商业区。这给鲍勃留下了深刻印象，“看到他的车走位多么漂亮了么？”他开始向女孩解释那是如何做到的。过了很长时间，他静静自语道：“我真的很欣赏他的技巧。” 类似乡愁的语气。

There is no zealot like a convert. These days I am obviously in Bob's corner, but my impression as a 16-year-old was quite a bit different. He wore the same thing then that he was wearing when I saw him a few weeks ago: a short-sleeved button-down shirt, khakis, and a tan adjustable baseball cap with his business's name and phone number. He looked young for his age but not in a particularly good way. Maybe he still lived at home? He seemed to ramble, wrapped up in weird minutiae. He emanated George Costanza. I kept thinking of how Jerry would on occasion tease George by calling him "Biff," a reference to the son of the failed salesman Willy Loman. I imagined that Bob would fit in with the Lomans.

如今我显然是鲍勃的粉丝。而16岁时的我却有着不同的印象，他穿着和我几周前见到他时同样的衣服————老土的短袖衬衫，卡其裤，黄褐色可调大小的棒球帽，上面

印着驾校的名字和电话号码。他看上去比实际年龄年轻，却显得不特别好。也许他是个宅男？东拉西扯，专注于古怪的细枝末节。我一直在思考为什么杰里有时取笑乔治，称呼他为“比夫”，这是那个失败的商人威利·洛曼的儿子的名字。我猜想鲍勃与洛曼是一类人。

What changed is simple: At some point in the last eight years I realized that I'm an idiot, a moral idiot, and the chief symptom of my festering insecurity about work is a visceral contempt for indifference and a deep admiration of its opposite.

让我转变看法的原因其实很简单，过去八年里的某些时候，我发现自己是个白痴，道德白痴，我对工作越来越强烈的不安全感带来的主要症状就是：对冷漠的本能蔑视和对其反面的极度羡慕。

Ever since I graduated from college in 2009 I have been lucky enough to have a good job. I work as a computer programmer. My skills are in high demand. The trouble is, programming is a craft and I am not a craftsman. I sincerely believe that close enough is good enough. I do not live in the details. I'm not sure what the hell is wrong with me but I'm happy with code that mostly works. If I were to build a bridge that bridge would eventually collapse.

自从2009年大学毕业，我有幸找到了一个好工作，担任程序员，我的技术需求量很大。麻烦在于，编程是一门手艺，而我不是个手艺人。我不擅长于细节。也不知道究竟是怎么回事，但我只喜欢能够成功运行的代码。如果让我去建座桥，它一定会塌掉。

This didn't so much matter when I started, because when I started my projects were small and unambitious. But I am moving up in the world. I'm on applications now with lots of users, people who will depend on the stuff I build to do important work. When I do a half-assed job -- which is the same thing, I am now realizing, as not going out of my way to do an excellent job -- I am making their actual lives more difficult. I have seen this happen. Just last week my minor crimes of indolence cost two companies about eighty man-hours. People were on edge because of me; they were tired and unpleasant because of me.

当我刚入行的时候，这些还不是大问题，因为起初我做的都是些小项目。但随着升职，我如今在从事涉及大量用户的应用程序开发，用户们会利用我的软件做重要的工作。如今我才意识到，当我没想改变态度去做出优秀的工作时，我做出的垃圾东西会给我的客户增加多少麻烦。我见过这样的事，就在上周，我的懒惰导致两家公司多花费了八十工时。因为我，他们烦躁，疲倦，愤怒。

This brand of occupational atrophy is no better for happening inside an office than its equivalent out there in restaurants and retail stores. In fact it's probably a lot worse. After all, one reason the guys on the 50th floor are paid more than the guys on the first is that their work, on the balance, is thought to have more impact -- a double-edged sword if there ever was one. How many unscrupulous investment bankers does it take to fuck up a global economy?

发生在办公室里的职业性退化并不比餐馆杂货店里的好多少，甚至可能更糟糕。毕竟一个在50层大楼里工作的年轻人能拿到比所谓底层工作者更高的薪水，是因为他们的工作影响力更大————这是双刃剑。岂非几个不择手段的银行家就能毁掉整个世界经济？

I came around on Bob because that's the road I'm on and it scares the crap out of me. I want to care about something the way he cares about driver safety. I want to be the opposite of a moral idiot, but I don't know how, and I'm fascinated by people who do. Bob oozes concern; he wants to infect the state of New Jersey with good driving habits. He respects his public role, the fact that the minute he's done with these kids they head straight for their parents' car keys and out onto the roads we share. When I asked him what he likes to do outside of work, he laughed: "This is my life."

我向鲍勃求助，正是因为现状让我恐惧。我要像他对待驾驶安全一样对待我的工作，我不想成为一个道德白痴，但我不知该怎样做，我被知道怎样做的人们深深吸引。鲍勃总是充满关切，他试图让整个新泽西的司机们都拥有良好的驾驶习惯。他尊重自己的公共角色，从他与学员共度的每一分钟都能看出这一点。当我问他工作之余喜欢什么，他大笑：“这就是我生活的全部。”

His reward is the pleasure of depth itself. He's an expert; his brain has been reshaped, perhaps literally, by decades of close attention. The fact that he dove deep into K-turns and lane changes seems infinitely less important than that he dove deep at all. It's at once devastating and inspiring, devastating because I expect I'll never get there, and inspiring in the way that the old Calvin and Hobbes strip is inspiring, the one where Calvin, knee-deep in the dirt, shovel in hand, is approached by Hobbes: "Why are you digging a hole?"

他的回报是钻研本身带来的乐趣。他是个专家，数十年的专注驾驶重塑了他的大脑。这既是可怕的又是励志的，所谓可怕，是我相信我永远也达不到他的境界，所谓励

志，就像老漫画凯文与虎不思的剧情：

凯文站在齐膝的尘土中，手里拿着铲子，虎不思走进问道：

“为什么你在挖洞？”

"I'm looking for buried treasure!"

“我在寻找埋藏的宝物！”

"What have you found?"

“你找到了什么？”

"A few dirty rocks, a weird root, and some disgusting grubs

"On your first try?"

“这只是你第一次挖到的东西？”

"There's treasure everywhere!"

“不，任何地方都能找到这些宝藏~!”