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  3. When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that

When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that

游客2025-04-07  45
问题     When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming "I wanted to spend more time with my family".
    Curiously, some two-and-a-half years and two novels later, my experiment in what the Americans term "downshifting" has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of "having it all", preached by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the page of She magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything.
    I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of She after a build up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of "juggling your life" ,and making the alternative move into "downshifting" brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12 hour working days, pressured deadlines, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on "quality time".
    In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle is a well-established trend. Downshifting — also known in America as "voluntary simplicity" — has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed anticonsumerism. There are a number of best-selling downshifting self-help books for people who want to simplify their lives; there are newsletters, such as The Tightwad Gazette, that give hundreds of thousands of Americans useful tips on anything from recycling their cling-film to making their own soap; there are even support groups for those who want to achieve the mid-’90s equivalent of dropping out.
    While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline — after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late ’80s—and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle-class down-shifters of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives.
    For the women of my generation who were urged to keep juggling through the ’80s, downshifting in the mid-’90s is not so much a search for the mythical good life — growing your own organic vegetables, and risking turning into one—as a personal recognition of your limitations. [br] "Juggling one’s life" probably means living a life characterized by______.
选项 A、non-materialistic lifestyle
B、a bit of everything
C、extreme stress
D、anti-consumerism
答案 C
解析 本题可参照文章的第3段。从中可知，我发现，放弃那种“快节奏生活”的教条而选择“放缓节奏”的做法带来的回报要比金融方面的成就和社会地位的提高丰厚得多，正如Kelsey在经受长期的巨大压力后，多次公开宣称辞去《她》杂志编辑职位后可能发现的那样；什么也说服不了我重过Kelsey过去倡导的、我曾经喜爱过的那种生活了——每天工作12小时的工作日、令人觉得压抑的最后期限、办公室管理中令人胆怯的作风以及在“最佳年龄”成为父(母)的限制。据此可知，“Juggling one’s life”可能指的是一种紧张、压抑的生活。C项与文章的意思相符，因此C项为正确答案。
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