野生问题第8章 如何战胜自己

野生问题第8章 如何战胜自己
How to Get Over Yourself

有一句来历不明的谚语:如果你想走得快，一个人走。 There’s a saying of unknown origin: If you want to go fast, go alone. 要想走得远，就一起走。 If you want to go far, go together. 我从不介意一个人去。 I have never minded going alone.
我和妻子都有诗人达纳·焦亚所说的“独处的能力”。 Both my wife and I have what the poet Dana Gioia calls “a capacity for solitude.”
在当今这个充斥着引人注目的应用程序和屏幕的世界里，这是一种值得培养的能力。 And it’s a capacity worth cultivating in today’s world of attention-grabbing apps and screens.
但在长途旅行中，我和妻子都更喜欢彼此作伴。 But for longer journeys, my wife and I both prefer each other’s company. 这一原则远远超出了婚姻的范畴——我们作为工人、志愿者、快乐的游戏玩家所做的很多事情，都是与他人一起做的。 The principle extends well beyond marriage—so much of what we do as workers, as volunteers, as joyful players of the games that delight us, we do with others.
合作不被重视。Cooperation is underappreciated.

宗教和冥想在最好的情况下不仅让我们接触到我们自己，还能接触到比我们自己更大的东西; Religion and meditation at their best put us in touch with not just ourselves but what is larger than ourselves;
它们让我们体验到超凡脱俗和归属感。 they let us experience the transcendent as well as a feeling of belonging.
在最糟糕的情况下，这些做法可能会演变成一种自我陶醉和自恋，一种内敛和自我中心的形式。 At their worst, these practices can devolve into a form of self-absorption and narcissism, a form of navel-gazing and self-centeredness.
我说的是不同的东西。 I’m talking about something different here.
我说的是要意识到我们所说的和所想的往往是潜意识的。【本能】 I’m talking about being aware that what we say and think is often subconscious.
我们的按钮被当天早些时候发生的事情或与他人的习惯性互动形式所触动，这成为了一种难以摆脱的常规。 Our buttons get pushed by what happened earlier in the day or by a habitual form of interaction with others that becomes a rut that is hard to escape.
例如，在婚姻中，一方可能会对另一方所说的话做出发自内心的反应，这种反应经过时间的磨练已经完全成为潜意识。 In a marriage, for example, one partner might react viscerally to something said by the other, a reaction that has been honed over time to be totally subconscious.
在最好的情况下，冥想、治疗或宗教所能做的就是让你在做出反应之前暂停一下。【拿到 主动权】 At its best, what meditation or therapy or religion can do is to allow a pause before the response.
停顿可以帮助你意识到，语言并不总是能捕捉到真正发生的事情。 That pause can help you realize that what is really going on is not always captured by the words.
暂停可以提醒您可以跳出脚本，否则您可能会陷入其中。【我不按照本能的“脚本”演绎】 The pause can remind you that you can step out of the script that you might otherwise be stuck in.
停顿可以提醒你，你的自然反应是由你自己的恐惧、欲望和需求调节的。 The pause can remin d you that your natural response is mediated by your own fears, desires, and needs.
停顿可以提醒你，你可以跳出你的习惯性反应，更体贴或周到。 The pause can remind you that you can step out of your habitual response and be more considerate or thoughtful.
通过练习，你可以改变你的习惯性反应，使之变得更好。 With practice, you can change your habitual response to a better one.
培养这种自我意识的挑战之一是，它似乎不是自然而然的。 One of the challenges of cultivating this kind of self-awareness is that it doesn’t seem to come naturally.
狭隘的功利主义生活方式使自我意识变得更加困难。 And the narrow utilitarian approach to life makes self-awareness harder.
如果我总是问，这对我有什么好处? If I’m always asking, What’s in it for me?-
我能享受到的好处会大于成本吗? —What benefit will I enjoy, and is it greater than the cost?
-很难注意到我是如何与他人互动的，我的行为方式可能没有考虑到他们可能需要我做什么。 —it’s harder to notice how I interact with others and how the way I’m behaving may not be considerate of what they might need from me.

我们如何才能摆脱我们一遍又一遍地重复的脚本，就像自动驾驶一样，这些脚本扼杀或毒害了我们的关系? How can we break free of the scripts we repeat over and over as if on autopilot, the scripts that deaden or poison our relationships?
我们该如何重写我们的个人叙述，我们所谓的人生故事，以一种能帮助我们克服自我的方式? How might we rewrite our personal narrative, what we might call the story of our life, in a way that can help us get over ourselves?
我们习惯了对自己的描述——受害者、英雄、超级明星、失败者，以及介于两者之间的一切。 We get used to the narratives we have of ourselves—victim, hero, superstar, loser, and everything in between.
不可避免地，我们把自己视为自己真人秀的主角。 Inevitably, we see ourselves as the main character of our own reality show. 作为主角，你要面对生活中的重大决定——住在哪里，做什么工作，和谁结婚，等等——这些都是你生活中的疯狂问题。 As the main character, you face those big life decisions—where to live, what job to take, who to marry, and so on—the wild problems of your life.
在这个过程中，就像在任何好的戏剧中一样，生活以各种典型和意想不到的方式介入，情节的转折使故事变得有趣。 Along the way, as in any good drama, life intervenes in all kinds of typical and unexpected ways, the plot twists that make a story interesting.
你生病了; You get sick;
你期待的工作机会没有到来; a job offer you’re expecting doesn’t come through;
一次浪漫的机会以拒绝告终。 a romantic opportunity ends in rejection.
或者你得到了意想不到的荣誉; Or you receive an unexpected honor;
朋友创业，给你意想不到的待遇; a friend starts a business and makes you an offer you never expected;
那次和朋友的旅行变成了爱情。 that trip with a friend turns into love.
在这一切中，你有坚持也有放弃，有微笑也有哭泣，有跳舞也有旁观，有计划也有阴谋，有希望也有梦想。 Through all of this, you persevere and give up, smile and cry, dance and sit on the sidelines, plan and plot, hope and dream.
你幻想着过去的成功和未来的成功。 You daydream about the successes of the past and the ones you can imagine in the future.
你会庆幸自己的情节转折很好，你经常(但不总是)记得更黑暗的情节，甚至一整季不太愉快的情节，尽管你尽了最大的努力，事情还是不太顺利。 You congratulate yourself on the plot twists that turned out well, and often, but not always, you remember darker episodes or even a whole season of not-so-cheerful episodes, where things hadn’t gone so well despite your best efforts.
过去是一个不断增加的故事档案——你带到未来的记忆——而未来拥有你希望创造的所有故事。 The past is an ever-increasing archive of stories—the memories you take with you into the future—and the future holds all the stories you hope to craft.
因为我们本能地更多地考虑自己而不是别人，所以我们有一场名为“我的生活故事”的内在戏剧，在我们内心的视频屏幕上全天候地播放。 Because we’re hardwired to think about ourselves more than we think about others, we have this internal drama called “the story of my life” going 24/7 on our inner video screens.
所以，把自己想象成人生大戏的主角，周围的人都是配角，这很正常。 So it’s normal to think of yourself as the main character of the drama that is your life and everyone else around you as the supporting cast.
这种叙事充斥着我们的头脑，反过来又影响着我们如何体验日常生活。 This narrative fills our headspace and in turn affects how we experience our day-to-day lives.
它是我们理解发生在我们身上的事情以及我们希望未来会发生什么的方式。 It is the way we make sense of what happens to us and what we hope will happen in the future.
这些叙述不可避免地不完整。 These narratives are inevitably incomplete.
作为编剧，我们倾向于以一种不一定准确的方式，以一种专注于我们自己的方式来塑造我们的内心故事。 As the scriptwriters, we tend to fashion our inner narratives in ways that focus on ourselves, and in ways that are not necessarily accurate.

亚当·斯密意识到，我们如何看待自己并不总是符合我们的真实情况。 Adam Smith was aware that how we see ourselves doesn’t always correspond to how we really are.
人们说，他是一位大胆的外科医生，在给自己动手术时，他的手不会颤抖; He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; 同样大胆的是，他会毫不犹豫地揭下自我欺骗的神秘面纱，从他的观点来看，这层面纱掩盖了他自己行为的缺陷。 and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct.
作为自己故事的作者，我们常常很难看到主人公的真相。 As the authors of our own narratives, we often struggle to see the truth about the main character.
“自我欺骗的神秘面纱”很难揭开。 The “mysterious veil of self-delusion” is hard to lift.
在过去，人们大概认为自己是自己小说的作者。 In the old days people presumably saw themselves as the authors of their own novels.
我们现代人更喜欢电影。 We moderns are more cinematic.
所以从我的角度来看，我的人生故事就像《楚门的世界》，我扮演楚门这个角色。 So from my perspective, my life story is something like The Truman Show with me in the role of Truman.
观众少得多。 With a lot fewer viewers.
嗯，实际上，只有一个观众。 Well, actually, just one viewer. 我。
Me. 我是主角，
我几乎是唯一一个这样看待故事的人，但大多数时候我从来没有注意到。 I’m the main character and I’m pretty much the only one who sees the story that way, but most of the time I never notice.
我忙着考虑剧本和之前的剧集，以及如果续订的话还会出现的剧集。 I’m too busy thinking about the script and the episodes that have come before and those that are still to come if the series gets renewed.
有一种不同的方式来思考我们的生活。 There’s a different way to think about our lives.
不是讲故事的部分，这和以自我为中心的部分是密不可分的，而是主角的部分。 Not the storytelling part, which is pretty much hard-wired alongside the self-centered part, but the main character part.
不可避免地，如果你把自己视为自己真人秀的主角，而把周围的人视为配角，你就会错过生活的很大一部分，错过了你经历生活时可以成为的人。 Inevitably, if you see yourself as the main character of your own reality show and people around you as part of the supporting cast, you miss a big part of life and who you can be as you experience it.
我们把自己视为主角的自然冲动，不可避免地给我们周围的人分配了不那么重要的角色。 Our natural impulse to see ourselves as the main character inevitably assigns less important roles to those around us.
想象一下中学演出的《窈窕淑女》。 Imagine a middle-school production of My Fair Lady.
这部音乐剧的导演是本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇的高中同学，不知怎的，他说服了他扮演伊丽莎·杜利特尔的父亲，清洁工阿尔弗雷德。 The director of the musical went to high school with Benedict Cumberbatch and somehow convinces him to play Eliza Doolittle’s father, Alfred, the dustman.

阿尔弗雷德不是音乐剧的主角。 Alfred isn’t the star of the musical.
但他确实有两首很棒的歌——“With a Little Bit of Luck”和“get Me to the Church on Time”——还有一些精彩的对话。 But he does get two great songs—”With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time”—and some wonderful dialogue.
让本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇扮演这个角色，和一群中学生一起，对大多数学生来说，这将是难忘的。 Put Benedict Cumberbatch in that role with a bunch of middle-school students and it would be unforgettable for most of the students.
而本尼迪克特也会从中得到一些精彩的故事来写他自己的剧本:“让我告诉你我曾经帮过一个哈罗大学的老朋友这个忙……”你会如何描述本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇和一群孩子之间的关系，他们不可避免地会因为有一个真正的演员和名人出现而感到不知所措和敬畏? And Benedict would get some good stories out of it for his own script: “Let me tell you about the time I did this favor for an old friend of mine from Harrow . . .” How would you describe the relationship between Benedict Cumberbatch and a bunch of kids inevitably overwhelmed and in awe of having a real actor and celebrity in the show?
遥远，这是简单的答案。 Distant, is the simple answer.
它们只是没有可比性。 They’re just not comparable.
因为它们没有可比性，所以它们不可能有真正的关系。 And because they’re not comparable, they can’t really have a relationship.
当然，它们在某种程度上是相互关联的。 They relate to one another in some dimension, of course.
毕竟，他们是在同一部剧里，一起分享场景。 They’re in the same show, after all, and share scenes together.
甚至在台下也有一些对话。 And there’s even some conversation offstage.
但它们并没有真正以一种有意义的方式相互作用。 But they don’t really interact in a meaningful way.
这位明星和其他演员之间的差距太大了。 There’s just too big a gulf between the star and the rest of the cast.
当康伯巴奇在台上甚至台下的时候，他真的能展现出任何本质的自己吗? Can Cumberbatch really share anything of his essential self when he’s onstage or even offstage?
这很难想象。 That’s hard to imagine.
在一群中学生中，他能有多真实? How authentic can he really be among a bunch of middle-schoolers?
【结论】我认为在某种程度上，当我们把自己塑造成我们生活故事的主角时，我们所做的事情是荒谬的。 I think to some extent this is the reductio ad absurdum of what we do when we cast ourselves as the main character in the story of our lives.
我们与他人交往，但不是在完全平等的基础上。 We relate to other people, but not on an exactly equal footing.
如果我不小心，我的感觉比你的感觉更重要。 If I’m not careful, it’s about how I feel more than about what you feel.
如果我不小心，这是关于你的行为如何影响我，而不是反过来。 If I’m not careful, it’s about how your actions affect me and not the other way around.
即使我的角色只是合唱中的一个人，我也不可避免地让它看起来比实际更大。 And even when my role is just someone in the chorus, I inevitably make it seem bigger than it really is. 我不可避免地把自己看得太严肃了。 I inevitably take myself a little too seriously.
我不可避免地低估了你的角色，很难记住，除了我的生活，你在自己的生活中也有情感和戏剧性。 I inevitably underestimate your role and find it hard to remember that you, too, have emotions and drama in your own life apart from mine.
我很难不摆姿势，不装模作样，不大声说出我的几句台词。 It’s hard not to pose and preen and say my handful of lines a little louder than I should.

把自己视为主角并不会让你成为自恋者。 Seeing yourself as the main character doesn’t make you a narcissist.
如果你既谦逊又害羞，你通常仍然是正在展开的迷你剧的主角。 If you’re humble and shy, you’re still usually the main character in an unfolding miniseries.
这只是一部关于一个谦逊害羞的人所面临的挑战的迷你剧。 It’s just a miniseries about the challenges facing a humble, shy person.
即使是我们当中最谦逊的人，最害羞的人，也倾向于把注意力集中在我们自身经历的不可避免的中心，以及我们对过去的扭曲、不完美的记忆上。 Even the most humble among us, the shyest among us, tend to focus inward on the inevitable centrality of our own experiences and our distorted, imperfect memories of our past.
这是一种不同的生活方式。 Here’s a different way to go through life.
为了得到另一种选择，想想一个情景喜剧或连续剧的演员阵容。 To get at the alternative, think about an ensemble cast for a sitcom or a series.
在《老友记》这样的剧里，没有明星，没有主角。 In a show like Friends, there’s no star, no main character.
就是一群人在彼此的生活中穿插穿插。 There’s just a bunch of people weaving in and out of one another’s lives.
这部剧可能叫《宋飞正传》，但他不是主角。 The show may be called Seinfeld, but he’s not the main character.
有四个主要人物。 There are four main characters.
这部剧讲述的是他们之间的关系，而不仅仅是杰里的生活。 The show is about their relationships, not just the narrative arc of Jerry’s life.
或者想想电影《真爱至上》。 Or think of the movie Love Actually.
众星云集，但没人是电影的主角。 A star-studded cast but no one’s the star of the movie.
这是一个关于爱和联系的故事，而不是一个主角的冒险故事。 It’s a story about love and connection, not the adventures of a central protagonist.
或者想象一下和你的伴侣一起去舞池。 Or imagine going out on a dance floor with your partner.
你对舞蹈的态度是什么? What is your attitude toward the dance?
也许是为了从体验中获得尽可能多的满足感。 Perhaps it’s to get as much as possible out of the experience for your own satisfaction.
你的目标可能是吸引别人的注意，用你的技能给别人留下深刻的印象，赢得他们的掌声和尊重。 Your goal might be to attract attention to yourself and to impress people with your skills, to earn their applause and respect.
你可能认为舞池主要是一个竞争的地方，你的目标是超越其他舞者，提高排名。 You might think of the dance floor as primarily a place of competition where your goal is to outshine the other dancers and move up in the rankings.
很多人一生都像这样跳舞，这并不是最糟糕的态度，只要你不试图绊倒其他竞争对手。 A lot of people dance through life like this, and it’s not the worst attitude, as long as you don’t try to trip up the other competitors.
【正确的做法】或者，你可以选择升华自己的地位或表达自己的能力，希望让你的伴侣发光，或者增强所有舞者在地板上的体验。 Alternatively, you might choose to sublimate your own status or the ability to express yourself in hopes of making your partner shine, or to enhance the experience of all of the dancers out on the floor.
你可能会专注于成为比你自己更大的事物的一部分，以意想不到的和令人愉快的方式在其他舞者附近和周围编织。 You might focus on being part of something larger than yourself, weaving near and around the other dancers in unexpected and delightful ways.

当你在舞池中机智地表演，举止得体，把别人——你的伴侣和其他情侣——记在心里时，你就可以选择如何思考之前、期间和之后的经历。 When you act tactfully on the dance floor and behave properly, keeping others—your partner and the other couples—in mind, you have a choice in how to think of the experience before, during, and after.
你可以为自己的无私行为感到自豪，也可以从更全面的角度看待自己，把自己看作比自己更大的事物的一部分，一个更充实、更紧密的体验。 You can pride yourself on your selfless behavior or you can see yourself in a more holistic way, as part of something larger than yourself, a fuller, more connected experience.
我们可以选择如何感知和构建我们的日常经历。 We have a choice in how we perceive and frame our daily experiences.
一种选择是将我们自己视为原子主义的、英雄主义的、存在主义的孤独者。 One choice is to see ourselves as fundamentally atomistic, heroic, and existentially lonely.
另一种是把我们自己看作是有联系的，属于某种东西的，这种归属感是体验的中心。 The other is to see ourselves as connected and belonging to something, with that belonging at the center of the experience.
我们如何构建我们经历的前、中、后，改变了我们的日常经历如何成为我们的一部分。 How we frame the before, during, and after of our experiences changes how our daily experiences become part of us.
如果你把自己视为整体的一部分而不是主角，你会有什么不同的生活? How would you live differently if you saw yourself as part of an ensemble rather than the main character?
这个整体的想法在实践中是如何工作的? How would this ensemble idea work in practice?
假设我要和某人喝咖啡，一个我很久没见的人。 Suppose I’m meeting someone for coffee, someone I haven’t seen in a while.
展望这次谈话，我列出了一些我希望分享的故事——可能是我的有趣经历，也可能是我最近的一次成功。 Looking ahead to the conversation, I catalog a few stories I hope to share—maybe a funny experience I had or a recent success.
在谈话中，我花了很多时间思考我接下来要说什么，并确保我表达了我的观点。 During the conversation, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to say next and to make sure I make my points.
如果这是一场专业的谈话，而不是与朋友的聊天，我可能会特别关注这一点。 This is particularly likely to be my focus if it’s a professional conversation rather than a chat with a friend.
我怎样才能给人留下好印象呢? How can I make a good impression?
我能让这个人为我做什么? What can I get this person to do for me?
但即使我和朋友在一起，我也可以直接或间接地利用我的朋友来实现我自己的目标。 But even when I’m with a friend, I can use my friend in direct and indirect ways for my own goals.
谈话结束后，我可以尽情享受已经讲完了我想讲的故事，并庆幸自己是多么有趣或多么雄辩。 After the conversation is over, I can savor having told the stories I wanted to tell and congratulate myself on how funny I was or how eloquent.
这种观点是以自我为中心的，即使我足够慷慨地把通话时间分成两半，让我的谈话对象和我一样多地说话。 This perspective is self-centered even if I am gracious enough to split the airtime in half and let my conversational partner talk as much as I do.
体验这种对话的另一种方式是，不要把它看作是交替的独白，而是把它看作是一次真实的对话，一种朝着意想不到的、计划外的方向发展的突发体验。 A different way to experience that conversation is to think of it not as alternating monologues but as an actual conversation, an emergent experience that goes in unexpected, unplanned directions.
我可以把它看作是一种即兴创作，一种有机的艺术，而不是一场照本宣卡的预设对话。 I can think of it as more of an improvisation, which is an organic art, than a scripted, prefab conversation.

当然，当和朋友交谈时，我可能有一些最近发生在我身上的重要的事情要分享。 Sure, when talking to a friend, I may have something to share that has happened to me recently and is important.
但我不想只专注于此而忽略了其他体验。 But I don’t want to focus on that to the exclusion of the rest of the experience.
不要带着日程安排开始谈话。 Don’t go into the conversation with an itinerary.
最好是在交谈的过程中发现你想说什么，而不是事先计划好的剧本。 It’s better to discover what you want to say through the process of conversation and not a preplanned script.
与其品味你的谈话才华，不如品味与另一个人互动的经历。 Instead of savoring your conversational brilliance, savor the experience of interacting with another human being.
看看在没有期望的情况下，在没有计划的情况下，会发生什么。 See what happens without expectation during that encounter and without a plan to steer it in particular directions.
把你全部的注意力放在你的谈话对象身上，不要想着你接下来要说什么。 Give your conversational partner your fullest attention without thinking of what you’re going to say next.
不要把你的朋友和家人看作是实现你的目标和增加你的效用的对象，把他们看作是你承诺的合作伙伴，不考虑与他们互动会产生什么结果。 Rather than see your friends and family as objects to serve your goals and increase your utility, see them as partners you commit to with no agenda as to what might emerge from interacting with them.
将与他们互动的机会更多地视为一种探索和冒险，而不是剧本剧。 View the chance to interact with them as more of an exploration and adventure than a scripted drama.
给别人敞开心扉的机会。 Allow another human being the chance to open their heart.
这比你成为主角更有意义，即使这意味着放弃对整个过程的控制。 That can turn out to be a much more meaningful drama than the one where you’re the main character, even if it means giving up control of the process.
在某种程度上，所有这一切只是一个明显的cliché-friends和家庭使生活有意义。 In a way, all of this is just an obvious cliché—friends and family make life meaningful.
所以要善待他们。 So treat them well.
我们都知道这一点。 We all know that.
但如果我们知道这一点，为什么我们会在和孩子交谈的时候低头看手机，因为我们收到了通知或提醒? But if we know that, why do we glance down at our phone in the middle of a conversation with one of our children because we’ve received a notification or an alert?
为什么我们会在聚会上越过与我们交谈的人的肩膀，看看是否有更有趣的人，或者更糟糕的是，在实现某个目标时对我们更有用的人? Why do we look over the shoulder of the person we’re talking to at a party to see if there is someone more interesting, or worse, someone more useful to us in achieving some goal?
为什么我们经常不能抽出足够的时间和朋友一起做一些对我们没有立竿见影的好处的事情呢? Why do we often fail to make sufficient time to do things with our friends that offer no immediate benefit to us?
为什么我们会让朋友渐行渐远，错过一个保持联系的机会? Why do we let friends drift away and miss a chance to stay connected?
为什么我们要查看来电显示，然后决定忽略来电? Why do we check the caller ID and decide to ignore the call?
我们告诉自己，他们是家人! We tell ourselves, They’re family!
他们会明白的! They’ll understand!


与他人相处融洽——成为一个好朋友、好配偶或好同事——是我们每天都要面对的一个棘手问题，我们试图在工作或独处的愿望与周围人待在一起的愿望之间取得平衡。 Playing well with others—being a good friend or spouse or colleague—is a wild problem we confront every day, trying to balance our work or our desire to be by ourselves with the desires of the people around us to spend time together. 对繁荣的关注如何帮助我们应对这种紧张? How does a focus on flourishing help us deal with this tension? 我们怎样才能成为更好的朋友，更好的配偶，更好的同事?
How can we be better fri