The following text is an extract from a short story by the writer Zadie Smith. In the extract, the narrator is on a family holiday in Spain. What is the solution to life? How can it be lived 'well'? Opposite our loungers are two curvaceous girls, sisters. They arrive very early each morning, and instead of the common plastic loungers used by the rest of us they manage to nab one of the rare white four-poster beds that face the ocean. These sisters are eighteen and nineteen years old. Their outdoor bed sports gauzy white curtains on all four sides, to protect whoever lies upon it from the sun. But the sisters draw the curtains back, creating a stage, and lie out, perfecting their tans. The reason I bring them up is that, compared to everyone else here, they are unusually active. They spend more time on dry land than anyone else, principally taking pictures of each other on their phones. For the sisters, this business of photographs is a form of labor that fills each day to its limit. It is an accounting of life that takes as long as life itself. Personally, I am moved by their industry. No one is paying them for their labor, yet this does not deter them. Like photographers' assistants at real photo shoots, first they prep the area, cleaning it, improving it, discussing the angle of the light, and, if necessary, they will even move the bed in order to crop from the shot anything unsightly: stray trash, old leaves, old people. Prepping the area takes some time. Because their phones have such depth of image, even a sweet wrapper many yards away must be removed. Then their props are gathered: pink flower petals, extravagant fruit cocktails with photogenic umbrellas protruding from them, ice creams (to be photographed but not eaten), and, on one occasion, a book, held only for the duration of the photograph and – though perhaps only I noticed this – upside down. As they prep, each wears a heartbreaking pair of plain black spectacles. Once each girl is ready to pose, she hands her glasses to her sister. It is easy to say they make being young look like hard work, but wasn't it always hard work, even if the medium of its difficulty was different? At least they are making a project of their lives, a measurable project that can be liked or commented upon. What are we doing? Later, in the evening, another pair – identical twins, Rico and Rocco, with oily black curls and skinny white jeans, twin iPhones wedged in their tight pockets – have just finished their act and are packing up their boom box. 'We come runner-up “X Factor” Spain,' they say, in answer to our queries. 'We are Tunisia for birth but now we are Spain.' We wish them well, and good night, and divert our children's eyes from the obscene bulge of those iPhones, the existence of which we have decided not to reveal to them for many years, or at least until they are twelve. At the elevators, we separate from our friends and their children and ascend to our room, which is the same as their room and everybody's room, and put the children to bed and sit on the balcony with our laptops and our phones, as we have every night since January. Here and there, on other balconies, we spot other men and women on other loungers with other devices, engaged in much the same routine.