Do you want to go someplace that’s at a distance? You have a number of choices about what machines to use in order to get there. Whatever you decide—car, plane, bus, train, subway, ship, helicopter, or bike—you have confidence that it will work efficiently. Multitudes of people who are now dead devoted themselves to perfecting these modes of travel. Multitudes who are still alive devote themselves to ensuring that these benefits keep serving you.

你想到遠方去嗎？你有著數種交通工作可以選擇來讓你去到想去的地方。不管你的決定是什麼－汽車，飛機，巴士，火車，地鐵，船舶，直昇機，或者是腳踏車－你有信心那工具會有效地作用著。許多人奉獻了自己的生命以使旅行的方式更臻完美。許多人現在正用他們的生命來確保這些交通工具帶給你的效益。

Maybe you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people in the world who has the extraordinary privilege of owning a car. It’s a brilliant invention made by highly competent workers. Other skilled laborers put in long hours to extract oil from the ground or sea and turn it into fuel so you can use your car conveniently. The roads are drivable. Who paved them for you? The bridges you cross are potent feats of engineering. Do you realize how hard it was to fabricate them from scratch?

或許你是世界上數百萬人中的那個可以擁有車子的那數百個具有天殺的優勢的人之一。那車子實在是個由具有高度能力的工作人員製造出來的才華洋溢的發明。其他具備技術的勞工花費了大量的時間從地底或海底提取原油，然後將其轉換成燃料，所以你才能夠很方便的使用你的車子。道路是可以開車的。誰幫你鋪的路？你跨越的橋是強力的工程功績。你可知道從草圖到建構完成那樣的橋有多困難？

You’re aware that in the future shrinking oil reserves and global warming may impose limitations on your ability to use cars and planes and other machines to travel. But you also know that many smart and idealistic people are diligently striving to develop alternative fuels and protect the environment. And compared to how slow societies have been to understand their macrocosmic problems in the past, your culture is moving with unprecedented speed to recognize and respond to the crises spawned by its technologies.

你已經意識到原油儲量的短缺以及地球暖化的效應或許會限制你使用汽車飛機還有其他旅行工具的能力。但是你也知道有許多聰明的理想主義者正勤奮地努力發展替代燃料並保護這個環境。而且，相較於社會上過去對宇宙問題的緩慢了解，你的文化正以史無先例的速度來了解和回應技術引起的危機。

As you travel, you might listen to music. Maybe you’ve got an MP3 player, a fantastic invention that has dramatically enhanced your ability to hear a stunning variety of engaging sounds at a low cost. Or maybe you have a radio. Through a process you can’t fathom, music and voices that originate at a distance from you have been converted into invisible waves that bounce off the ionosphere and down into your little machine, where they are transformed back into music and voices for you to enjoy.

當你行進的時候，你或許會聽音樂。或許你已經有個MP3的播放器，一個讓人難以致信的發明，可以讓你用低價的費用聽到多樣的絕妙音樂。或者，你有著收音機。透過你無法看穿的過程，原本在遠處的音樂和聲音已經被轉換成無法看見的聲波，反射到電離層（知道這是啥的說一下）然後到你的小機器裡面，在那裡面再轉換成讓你欣賞的音樂和聲音。

Let’s say it’s 9:30 a.m. You’ve been awake for two hours, and a hundred things have already gone right for you. If three of those hundred things had not gone right—your toaster was broken, the hot water wasn’t hot enough, there was a stain on the pants you wanted to wear—you might feel that today the universe is against you, that your luck is bad, that nothing’s going right. And yet the fact is that the vast majority of everything is working with breathtaking efficiency and consistency. You would clearly be deluded to imagine that life is primarily an ordeal.

就這樣說吧，現在是早上的九點半。你已經醒來兩個小時，而且已經有數以百計的事情已經在你身邊正確運作。如果這數以百計的其中三件事沒有到位－你的烤麵包機壞了，熱水不夠熱，你想穿的褲子上有個污點－你可能覺得今天整個宇宙都在跟你作對，你的運氣不好，什麼事情都不對。然而，實際上是，那浩瀚的大部分的每一件事情都運作得令人吃驚地有效和一致。很顯然的，你被『生命本來就是個考驗』這樣的想像迷惑著！

From the book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings

記得喔，這是從Rob Brezsny寫的 PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings（Pronoia 是偏執的解毒劑：這整個世界是如何群策群力地傾注祝福給你）這本書裡頭摘出來的。要把我的這個翻譯轉寄給朋友的話，記得把人家的原著出處放上去喔！