夜读，偶遇David Brooks的Ted演讲。虽然并不完全同意，但是反主流文化的，都有意义。我节选翻译了演讲的一部分，与大家分享。没有视频的演讲节选，就如闭着眼睛听演唱会 - 你会听到很多细节，包括瑕疵。But it doesn't make it bad. It makes it real。一种缺憾的美。
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And loneliness, unexpectedly, came to me in the form of -- it felt like fear, a burning in my stomach. And it felt a little like drunkenness, just making bad decisions, just fluidity, lack of solidity. And the painful part of that moment was the awareness that the emptiness in my apartment was just reflective of the emptiness in myself, and that I had fallen for some of the lies that our culture tells us.
孤独不知怎么找到了我，就像一种恐惧感，一种胃里的不适。就像喝醉了一样，失去了判断力，随波逐流。那一霎那的痛苦，是一种突然的清醒，意识到自己空旷的公寓，其实只是我内心空虚的倒影。一直以来，那些社会上流行的谎言蒙蔽了我的眼睛。
The first lie is that career success is fulfilling. I've had a fair bit of career success, and I've found that it helps me avoid the shame I would feel if I felt myself a failure, but it hasn't given me any positive good.
第一个关于人生的谎言，就是事业有成能让人满足。我的事业不可谓无所成，然而这所谓的成功仅仅让我避免了挫败感，但也没有给我任何正能量。
The second lie is I can make myself happy, that if I just win one more victory, lose 15 pounds, do a little more yoga, I'll get happy. And that's the lie of self-sufficiency. But as anybody on their deathbed will tell you, the things that make people happy is the deep relationships of life,the losing of self-sufficiency.
The third lie is the lie of the meritocracy. The message of the meritocracy is you are what you accomplish. The myth of the meritocracy is you can earn dignity by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love, you can "earn" your way to love. The anthropology of the meritocracy is you're not a soul to be purified, you're a set of skills to be maximized. And the evil of the meritocracy is that people who've achieved a little more than others are actually worth a little more than others. And so the wages of sin are sin.And my sins were the sins of omission-- not reaching out, failing to show up for my friends, evasion, avoiding conflict.
第二个谎言，是我凭自己就可以让自己快乐，不需要别人。如果我可以实现一个小目标，比如减掉15磅，又或者做个瑜伽，我就会快乐。其实，那只是一个关于自我独立的谎言。任何一个垂死的人都会告诉你，真正让人快乐的，是生命中那些最真挚醇厚的感情 - 拥有这些感情，恰恰也意味着放弃自我的独立。
第三个谎言，是每个人都可以凭实力成功。也就是说，你努力获得的一切都是理所当然的。实力主义的假象，是那些标签可以给你尊严；实力主义的感觉，是爱是有条件的，是你打拼“挣”来的；实力主义的社会涵义，是你并不是一个需要洗涤的灵魂，而只是一设等着被削尖、利用的刀具；实力主义的罪恶，是成功的人比不成功的人重要。因此，原罪的成效本身就是原罪。我的原罪，是自我封闭：孤僻、缺席、逃避、回避争执。
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And ... how do you get out of a valley?The Greeks used to say, "You suffer your way to wisdom." And from that dark period where I started, I've had a few realizations. The first is, freedom sucks. Economic freedom is OK, political freedom is great,social freedom sucks. The unrooted man is the adrift man. The unrooted man is the unremembered man, because he's uncommitted to things. Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in, it's a river you want to get across, so you can commit and plant yourself on the other side.
如何才能爬出低谷？古希腊人曾说，“卧薪尝胆，终得所悟”。在我生命里黑暗的时期，我有了一些领悟。首先，自由无用。一个无根的人是飘渺的，意识形态的绝对自由可有，社会生活的绝对自由可无。一个无根的人只是一个过客，因为他从没有留下任何印记。自由不是让人畅游的海洋，而是我们要淌过的河流。到了彼岸，你才能扎根、开花、结果。
The second thing I learned is that when you have one of those bad moments in life, you can either be broken, or you can be broken open. And we all know people who are broken. They've endured some pain or grief, they get smaller, they get angrier, resentful, they lash out. As the saying is, "Pain that is not transformed gets transmitted." But other people are broken open. Suffering's great power is that it's an interruption of life. It reminds you you're not the person you thought you were.
第二个领悟，是当生命中遇到了困难的时候，或者崩溃，或者涅槃。我们都知道有很多人被生活压弯了腰，变得心胸狭隘，愤世嫉俗。俗话说，“痛苦如果不自我消化，就会传导他人”。但也有人选择敞开心扉。痛苦之美，在于它打断了生活的日常，提醒你，其实你并不是那个你每天看到的镜子里的人。
The theologian Paul Tillich said what suffering does is it carves through what you thought was the floor of the basement of your soul, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below, and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below. You realize there are depths of yourself you never anticipated, and only spiritual and relational food will fill those depths. And when you get down there, you get out of the head of the ego and you get into the heart, the desiring heart.
神学家Paul Tillich说，苦难触及到你灵魂的最深处，还不断地刨根揭底，直到你意识到，这是你深深埋藏着的本我。这里的裂缝，只有精神的食粮和真挚的情感可以填充。在这里，你超脱了自我，走进了心灵深处，那个期待被安抚的心灵。
The idea that what we really yearn for is longing and love for another, the kind of thing that Louis de Bernières described in his book, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin." He had an old guy talking to his daughter about his relationship with his late wife, and the old guy says, "Love itself is whatever is leftover when being in love is burned away. And this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it. We had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we discovered that we are one tree and not two." That's what the heart yearns for.
我们真正渴望的，是一种归属感，和互相的爱慕。在Louis de Bernieres的小说《战地情人》里，那个老人和女儿谈及他的故妻。“爱是爱情耗尽之后的残留。这是一门艺术，也是一次幸运的意外。你妈妈和我有过。我们的根在地下交互盘绕。当花儿落尽时，我们才发现，我们是一棵树，而不是独立的两棵”。这种归属感，才是我们心之所向。
The second thing you discover is your soul. Now, I don't ask you to believe in God or not believe in God, but I do ask you to believe that there's a piece of you that has no shape, size, color or weight, but that gives you infinite dignity and value. Rich and successful people don't have more of this than less successful people. Slavery is wrong because it's an obliteration of another soul. Rape is not just an attack on a bunch of physical molecules, it's an attempt to insult another person's soul. And what the soul does is it yearns for righteousness. The heart yearns for fusion with another, the soul yearns for righteousness. And that led to my third realization, which I borrowed from Einstein: "The problem you have is not going to be solved at the level of consciousness on which you created it. You have to expand to a different level of consciousness."
然后你就会找到你的灵魂。我并不是在问你是否相信上帝。我只是在问，你是否相信，你的一部分，是无形、无味、无相的，但却给予你尊严和价值。有钱的成功人士并不比不那么成功的人拥有更多的灵魂。奴役是对于别的个体的灵魂的毁灭；强暴并不是物理分子的侵犯，而是企图侮辱另一个个体的灵魂。灵魂向往的，是它对公平正义的渴望。这也是我的第三个觉悟。借用爱因斯坦的话来说，“你现阶段的认知并不能解决你面对的问题。你必须升华到更高层次的认知”。
