Never ran this hard through the valley

never ate so many stars

——Door in the Mountain, Poet, Jean Valentine

从未如此艰难地跑过山谷

从未吞咽过如此多的星辰

——《山中之门》吉恩·瓦伦汀，诗人

Is Life a Story or a Game?

By David Brooks

I'm a liberal arts type, so I see life as a story. Each person is born into a family. Over the course of life, we find things to love and commit to — a vocation, a spouse, a community. At times, we flounder and suffer but do our best to learn from our misfortunes to grow in wisdom, kindness and grace. At the end, hopefully, we can look back and see how we have nurtured deep relationships and served a higher good.

Will Storr, a writer whose work I admire enormously, says this story version of life is an illusion. In his book "The Status Game," he argues that human beings are deeply driven by status. Status isn't about being liked or accepted; it's about being better than others. Even when we are trying to do good, Storr asserts, we're playing the "virtue game," to show we are morally superior to others.

I think Storr is in danger of becoming one of those guys who give short shrift to the loftier desires of the human heart, to the caring element in every friendship and family, and then says, in effect, we have to be man enough to face how unpleasant we are.

But I have to admit, the gamer mentality he describes pervades our culture right now. Social media, of course, is a status game par excellence, with its likes, its viral rankings and its periodic cancel mobs.

The status-mad world that Storr describes is so loveless — a world I recognize but not one I want to live in. Ultimately, games are fun, but gaming as a way of life is immature. Maturity means rising above the shallow desire — for status — that doesn't really nourish us. It's about cultivating the higher desires: The love of truth and learning and not settling for cheap conspiracy theories. The intrinsic pleasure the craftsman gets in his work, which is not about popularity. The desire for a good and meaningful life that inspires people to commit daily acts of generosity.

How do people gradually learn to cultivate these higher motivations? To answer that, I'd have to tell you a story.

在《大问题：简明哲学导论》（The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy）一书中，作者罗伯特·所罗门总结了人们定义人生意义的一些通用框架。其中就包含了本文标题中所说的“故事”和“游戏”这两种：有人把人生当作一个故事或者一段旅程，有人则把人生视作一场游戏甚至一场竞赛。这也代表了两种截然不同的人生态度。