美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'F*ck No!', Sarah Knight Suggests You Do Less And Live More

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Sarah Knight¹ has built a career saying no, specifically, "[Expletive] No!" She is the author of the "No [Expletive] Given Guides," which include the books "Calm The [Expletive] Down" and "The Life Changing Magic Of Not Giving A [Expletive]." And Sarah Knight's latest book, which I referenced at the top, offers advice on how to do what she calls mental decluttering in order to pare down life to the essentials. It's something we've all had to learn to do a lot more of recently. NPR's Samantha Balaban has this profile.

SAMANTHA BALABAN, BYLINE²: At the end of a long, winding³, tree-lined highway about two and a half hours outside of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic...

SARAH KNIGHT: This is my very favorite end of the beach - Las Ballenas beach in Las Terrenas.

BALABAN: There's a little beach town called Las Terrenas.

KNIGHT: (Speaking Spanish). A snack?

BALABAN: And that's where Sarah Knight sits, looking at the ocean eating fried plantains - or tostones.

KNIGHT: We've already got a friendly beach dog on the approach. This one's around here all the time.

BALABAN: Las Terrenas is a fishing village, and unlike other beachside towns in the country, there are few all-inclusive resorts here. It's cozy⁴ and isolated⁵. For Sarah Knight, it's idyllic⁶.

KNIGHT: I wake up when I wake up. I never set an alarm unless I have an appointment. Maybe I sit outside, depending on how hot it is. And if I'm working on a book or if I'm working on an article or something like that, I usually get started around noon.

BALABAN: Knight has written two self-help journals and four books here. She's working on a fifth right now.

KNIGHT: So walking back toward my house along the beach, it's about a half an hour walk from end to end.

BALABAN: She lives about a five-minute walk from the water with two feral cats named Gladys Knight and Mr. Stussy (ph) and her husband. They moved here almost four years ago.

KNIGHT: I was a senior editor at Simon & Schuster in New York. I'd been there for five years and at the other big six publishers for 10 years before that.

BALABAN: And she'd achieved a lot of success - award winners, bestsellers.

KNIGHT: And so I was at a real peak - or at least I was, you know, rising in terms of my professional life. But I just - every day, it was a struggle to get up, to get ready, to put on makeup⁷, to put on heels, to get on the subway, to go to work. I started having a lot of panic attacks and some depression and some just real big questioning - existential - what am I doing with my life? And can I continue doing it in this place for these people until the end of time? And the answer was no.

BALABAN: So she saved up for a year and quit her job. In the process of clearing out her office, Knight brought home a copy of Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up."

KNIGHT: And I read it. And it really resonated. And it allowed me to explore this concept of mental decluttering, which is the core that runs through all of my books.

BALABAN: She describes mental decluttering as a two-step process, discarding and organizing.

KNIGHT: And you have to really sift⁸ through it all and go, why am I doing this? Why am I spending my time, energy and money on these things that I don't want to do with people I don't like with time I don't have? And after that, you organize your life around whatever's left. Part of what I've discovered and what I've heard from - you know, from readers over the last few years is that nobody was taking the time to just think for a second before saying yes and also thinking about if you really quote, unquote, "have" to do something.

BALABAN: Meeting her, you get the sense that Sarah Knight is someone who practices what she preaches. She says no all the time - to working for less money than she feels her time is worth, letting friends with kids stay at her house, pub trivia.

KNIGHT: I kept making excuses for years. And then finally, I said, you know what? Instead of just kind of weirdly⁹ batting back and forth¹⁰ excuses and things or saying yes and ending up spending, you know, six hours of a night doing something I don't want to do, I'll just say no. And then they're cool with it. And then it's fine, and your life goes on. If you are saying all of these yeses, then you're stretching yourself too thin, and you're not having fun. You're not enjoying yourself, and you're not being the best version of yourself among other people. I really would like to make sure that people understand this is not about just saying, [expletive] off, I don't care, I'm opting¹¹ out of life. This is - it's really about opting in.

BALABAN: Sarah Knight is much happier since saying no to her old life and moving to the Dominican Republic. But she understands that, under normal circumstances, saying no even on a smaller scale can be really, really hard for a lot of people. Like everyone else, she's been quarantining for the past month and a half. And she's been thinking a lot about how having to social distance, not being able to go out, to say yes to things, to overbook ourselves is kind of like taking a crash course in her books. And maybe that's a silver lining¹².

KNIGHT: You know, I'm hopeful that we're all going to come out of this with some better perspective on what's important, what isn't. We're all going to have had some time to take a crack at cleaning out our mental barns, you know, and putting some things in the joy column and a lot of things in the annoy column and not letting them back in when the world opens up again. You know, I'm hopeful that we can just go out there and say no.

BALABAN: Sarah Knight says if this pandemic puts her out of business, so be it. Samantha Balaban, NPR News.

1 knight   

n.骑士，武士；爵士

参考例句：

• He was made an honourary knight.他被授予荣誉爵士称号。
• A knight rode on his richly caparisoned steed.一个骑士骑在装饰华丽的马上。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

• A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
• The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。

4 cozy   

adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的

参考例句：

• I like blankets because they are cozy.我喜欢毛毯，因为他们是舒适的。
• We spent a cozy evening chatting by the fire.我们在炉火旁聊天度过了一个舒适的晚上。

5 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

6 idyllic   

adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的

参考例句：

• These scenes had an idyllic air.这种情景多少有点田园气氛。
• Many people living in big cities yearn for an idyllic country life.现在的很多都市人向往那种田园化的生活。

7 makeup   

n.组织；性格；化装品

参考例句：

• Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
• Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗？

8 sift   

v.筛撒，纷落，详察

参考例句：

• Sift out the wheat from the chaff.把小麦的壳筛出来。
• Sift sugar on top of the cake.在蛋糕上面撒上糖。

9 weirdly   

古怪地

参考例句：

• Another special characteristic of Kweilin is its weirdly-shaped mountain grottoes. 桂林的另一特点是其形态怪异的岩洞。
• The country was weirdly transformed. 地势古怪地变了样。

10 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

11 opting   

v.选择，挑选( opt的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• What courses are most students opting for? 多数学生选什么课程？ 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Wells doesn't rule out opting out and then re-signing with Houston. 威尔斯没有排除跳出合同再与火箭重签的可能。 来自互联网

12 lining   

n.衬里，衬料

参考例句：

• The lining of my coat is torn.我的外套衬里破了。
• Moss makes an attractive lining to wire baskets.用苔藓垫在铁丝篮里很漂亮。