每日一词一文

The future is not an empty room we will one day enter; it is a guest already seated at our table, though we cannot see its face. Every decision we make today is a sentence written in a language that generation will have to read. The debt we owe the future is not money; it is foresight, the willingness to be inconvenienced now for someone else's comfort later.

未来不是一间我们终将进入的空房间，而是一位已经坐在我们桌边的客人，只是我们看不见它的脸。我们今天做的每一个决定，都是用那个时代必须去读的语言写下的句子。我们欠未来的不是钱，而是远见：是愿意现在就麻烦一点，好让以后的人过得舒服些。

We are good at loving what we can see and poor at loving what we can only imagine. A child in the room moves us; a child not yet born asks for a different kind of attention, one that must be given without applause. To act for the unseen is to be the ancestor someone will one day thank, though the thanks will arrive long after we are gone.

我们擅长爱看得见的东西，却不擅长爱只能想象的东西。屋里有个孩子会打动我们；尚未出生的孩子要求的是一种不同的关注，一种注定没有掌声的关注。为看不见的人行事，就是去做某个将来会感谢我们的祖先，尽管那声感谢要等我们离世很久之后才会到来。

Some debts are paid with action; others are paid with restraint. We owe the future the forests we did not clear, the water we did not poison, the species we did not crowd out of existence. Restraint is invisible virtue, and it leaves no monument, only a world that is still able to begin again, which is the only monument that matters.

有些债用行动偿还，另一些债用克制偿还。我们欠未来的，是我们没有砍掉的森林、没有污染的水、没有被我们挤到灭绝边缘的物种。克制是一种看不见的美德，它不留下纪念碑，只留下一个仍能重新开始的世界，而这正是唯一重要的纪念碑。

There is a comfort in small obligations done faithfully. Plant a tree you will never sit under; mend a road you will never drive; teach a skill to a child you will never see grown. These acts ask for no receipt, and that is exactly why they are trustworthy. The future is built less by grand plans than by unglamorous habits repeated until they become the shape of the world.

老老实实履行小小的义务，其中自有一种安慰。种一棵你永远不会在下面乘凉的树；修一条你永远不会驾车经过的路；教一个你看不到他长大的孩子一门手艺。这些行为不索取收据，正因如此，它们才值得信赖。未来与其说由宏大的计划建成，不如说由不起眼的习惯建成，这些习惯被反复练习，直到成为世界的形状。

What we owe the future, finally, is the same thing we owe the past: honesty about what we inherited and what we leave behind. No generation finishes the work; each one only improves the odds for the next. To owe is human. To pay a little, on schedule, without complaint, is what turns obligation into dignity.

说到底，我们欠未来的，与我们欠过去的，是同一件事：诚实地对待我们继承了什么、又留下什么。没有哪一代人能做完这项工作，每一代人只是为下一代提高胜算。有所亏欠，是人情之常；按时、毫无怨言地偿还一点，才把义务变成了尊严。