英语美文朗读 第372期 The Secret Of Happiness(上)
1.你必须接受不完美和瑕疵
Many people believe that if they just collect a house, a spouse, a car, and 2.5 children, everything will be "perfect". Life has a checklist. Problems don't go away; they change and evolve. And the quicker we accept that the point of life is progress, and not perfection, the sooner we can all order a pizza and go home. Perfection is an idealization. It's something that is approached but never reached. Whatever your conception of "perfect" is in your pretty little head, it is in itself, an imperfect concept. There is no perfect. There is only what you wish in your head.
很多人相信，如果他们买了房子，找到了伴侣，有一辆车，生了几个孩子，一切事情就会变得“完美”。生活有一个任务清单。问题不会消失；他们会改变，会进化。我们越快得接受生活的重点不在于完美，而在于进步，我们就能早点轻松地生活。完美是一个理想化的概念。这是我们可以不断接近，但永远不会达成的事物。无论你脑袋里对于“完美”的概念是什么，它只存在于你的脑袋里，一个不完美的概念。世界上不存在完美。只有你脑海里对自己的期望。
We don't get to decide what perfection is. We don't know. All we can know is what is better or worse than what is now. And even then we're often wrong. When we let go of our concept of what is perfect and what "should" be, we relieve ourselves of the stress and frustration of living up to some arbitrary standard. And usually this standard isn't even ours! It's a standard we adopted from other people. Accepting imperfection is hard, because it forces us to accept that we have to live with things we don't like.
我们没办法决定什么是完美。因为我们不知道。我们只知道什么是比现在更好的或者更坏的。即使如此，我们的想法也经常是错误的。当我们放下了我们对于“完美”的定义和生活“应该”怎么过的想法，我们就把自己从要以一个主观标准来生活的压力和挫败中解放出来。这个标准甚至不来源于我们自己！这个标准是我们从其他人那得来的。接受不完美是很艰难的，因为这迫使我们要去接受并适应我们不喜欢的事情。
2. YOU MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR PROBLEMS
2.你必须对自己的问题负起责任
Blaming the world for our problems is the easy way out. It's tempting and it can even be satisfying. We're the victims and we get to be all emo and indignant at all of the terrible injustices that have been inflicted upon us. We wallow in our imagined victimhood so as to make ourselves feel unique and special in ways we never got to feel unique and special anywhere else. But our problems are not unique. And in ourselves we are not all that special. The beauty of accepting the imperfection of your own knowledge is that you can no longer be certain that you're not to blame for your own problems.
将自己的问题归咎于这个世界是一种轻松的方式。这很诱惑，甚至可以使你满足。我们是受害者，我们可以对我们遭受的可怕的不公正的事情感到激愤。我们沉湎于自己幻想出的受迫害情景，好让我们感受到一种不能从其他地方感受的感觉，我们是独一无二的，是特别的。但我们的问题不是独一无二的。并且我们也并不是那么特别。接受自身不完美的美好之处在于，你不再确定自己的问题不归咎于自身。
Are you really late because of traffic? Or could you have left earlier? Is it really the incompetence of your manager that lost you your promotion? Or was there something more you could have done? The truth is usually somewhere around "both", - although it varies from situation to situation. But the point is that you can only fix your own imperfections and not the imperfections of others. So you may as well get to work on them. Blaming others for the problems in your life may give you a smidgen of short-term relief, but ultimately it implies something entirely insidious: that you are incapable of controlling your own fate. And that's the most depressing assumption of all to live with.
你真是是因为交通问题而迟到吗？还是你本可以早点出发？你没有升职真的是因为经理的失职吗？还是你自己本来能做更多的事得到升职？事情的真相可能是两方面的原因都存在，-虽然这会因为情况不同而不同。但重点在于你只能完善自己不完美的地方而不是别人的。所以你也许该开始行动了。把自己生活的问题归咎于其他人身上或许可以给你一点短暂的解脱，但这最终暗示了一些隐藏的问题：你无法掌控自己的命运。而这是所有你可能要接受的事情中最令人沮丧的一个假设。
3. YOU MUST FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY
3.你必须感受自己的恐惧，并无论如何也要做下去
Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is feeling the fear, the doubt, the insecurity, and deciding that something else is more important. IF we identify with our moment-to-moment emotional states and sensitivities, our happiness will surge and crash like a deregulated Wall Street derivatives orgy. For those of you who don't know anything about Wall Street: that's really bad. We want sturdy, resilient happiness. Not derivatives orgies.
勇敢不是不害怕。勇敢是感知恐惧，怀疑，不安全感并认为相比这些，其他的更为重要。如果我们感知我们每时每刻的敏感的情绪波动，我们的幸福会像不受管制的华尔街衍生品*狂欢一样激增或陡降。告知给那些不了解华尔街的人：这种情况非常糟糕。我们想要坚定，坚韧的幸福。而不是衍生品狂欢。
True, long-lasting, kid-tested-and-mother-approved happiness, is not derived from our immediate emotional states - being constantly greedy is not only impossible but it would be unbearably annoying - but rather is derived from the deeper values we define for ourselves. Our Ultimate Life Satisfaction is not defined by what we do and what happens to us, but why we do what we do and why it happens to us.
真实的，持久的，有保障的幸福并不来源于我们瞬间的感情状态 - 对幸福太贪心不仅不可能得到幸福，而且会承受无法忍受的厌烦 - 而来源于我们为自己定义的深层价值。我们根本的生活满意度并不由我们做了什么和什么事情在我们身上发生决定，而是由为什么我们会做这些事和为什么这些事会在我们身上发生决定。
