Jim在走廊上遇到同事Claire，跟Claire打招呼。

Jim: Hey Claire, you've been really quiet these last few days. Is something wrong?

Claire: I've been really stressed. It's the end of the year and I've got so much stuff to do! I feel like I'm drowning in work.

J: Well, stress is a real thing. It's not an imaginary condition.

C: It's seriously affecting my life! I can't sleep, I don't have much of an appetite and my husband says I've been kind of short tempered. Other people seem to handle stress okay...why am I so weak?

Claire最近一直不太說話，原來是因為到年底了，有做不完的事情，I've been really stressed. 她感覺壓力特別大。Claire說，I feel like I'm drowning in work. Drown, d-r-o-w-n, drown 溺水，在這里是一種比喻的說法，drown in work 意思是自己快要被工作壓垮了。Claire不僅睡眠不好，食欲差，而且還動不動就發(fā)脾氣，short tempered。大家都有壓力，是不是只有Claire承壓能力差呢？ Jim說，

J: You're not weak...you're stressed out! Stress has been a part of the human condition for millions of years. Back when we still lived in the trees we had to watch out for predators...and as you might imagine, that was pretty stressful.

C: Yeah, but I don't see any tigers or leopards roaming around our office. My stress is just about silly paperwork!

J: But you're actually having the same reaction as our tree-dwelling ancestors! It's called the "flight or fight" response. Each time you feel like something's threatening you, your body decides whether to run away or fight...it causes all sorts of chemical reactions in the body.

Jim安慰Claire說，這是身體對過度壓力所做出的反應，就好像原來住在樹上的老祖宗，隨時隨地要watch out for predators警惕捕食者的來襲，雖然現(xiàn)代人壓力的來源變了，但是Claire面對壓力，身體做出的反應還是一樣的，這種反應叫flight or fight response，要在逃跑還是交戰(zhàn)之間做出選擇。Claire似懂非懂。

C: So a deadline will cause that same reaction?

J: It could. Modern humans actually have more "flight or fight" responses than our ancestors did. They just had a couple of close calls every day, but today, we have dozens or even hundreds!

C: So the life of a cave woman was less stressful than my life?

Jim說，跟生活在樹上的老祖宗相比，現(xiàn)代人每天面對的flight or fight的情況更多。他們以前每天可能只有幾次遇到危險，close calls，a close call指險些發(fā)生的厄運，比如 I was almost run over by a car. It was a close call.（我差點沒被車撞到，太懸了）。如果真像Jim說的，現(xiàn)代人比史前人類cave man或是cave woman面對的壓力還大了？我們下次繼續(xù)聽。

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（來源：VOA英語教學 編輯：丹妮）