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There is so much talk of love in our societies, it would be natural to think that we must by now know what it is and why it counts.
在我们的社会中有太多关于爱的话题，很自然地，我们必须知道爱是什么，为什么爱很重要。
Love is the excited feeling we get in the presence of someone of unusual accomplishment and talent – great intelligence or beauty for the most part – whom we hope will reciprocate our interest and whom we badly want to touch, caress and one day share our lives with.
爱是当我们看到一个有非凡成就和天赋的人(多半是非常聪明或美丽的人)时所产生的一种兴奋的感觉，我们希望他会回应我们的兴趣，我们迫切地想要触摸、爱抚他，并在某天可以与他一起生活。
This definition sounds so plausible and enjoys such powerful cultural endorsement,
这一定义听起来是如此的合理，并得到了如此强有力的文化支持，
we are apt to miss another vision of love altogether, this one focused not so much on the appreciation of strength as on a tolerance of, and kindness towards, what is weak and misshapen.
我们很容易完全错过爱的另一种视角，这一视角更多地关注的不是对力量的欣赏，而是对脆弱和畸形的东西的宽容。
According to this vision, we display love when, on the way home, we come across an itinerant drunk – weather-beaten and dishevelled, beer addled and ranting
根据这一视角，当我们在回家的路上，遇到一个醉汉，饱经风霜，衣冠不整，喝得酩酊大醉，大吼大叫时，我们就会表现出爱
– and do not, for once, turn away and instead make the momentous internal step (with all the eventual outward actions that might follow) of considering them as a version of ourselves, prey to the same passions and distempers, visited by the same longings, upset by similar losses and worthy of their own share of compassion and tolerance.
而不是， 转过身离去，使内心挣扎(所有最终外部可能遵循的行动)，把他们视为我们自己, 被同样的感情和暴躁所折磨，被同样的渴望所困扰，因相似的失去, 自怨自艾而沮丧。
We show love too when we see a well dressed person shouting grandly and imperiously at an airport, filled with self-righteousness, apparently bloated on their own self-regard, and do not dismiss them immediately as insane or entitled,
当我们看到一个穿着得体的人在机场庄严而傲慢地大喊大叫时，我们也会表现出爱，他们充满了自以为是，他们显然很自私自利，而我们不会立即把他们视为疯子或自以为是的人，
but instead, take the trouble to see the frightened vulnerable self beneath the bluster, when we grow curious as to the sickness of the soul that might be operating just below the surface and are able to wonder what has hurt them – and why they might be so scared.
但相反，我们就会在咆哮声下看到被吓坏了的脆弱的自己，此时，我们对灵魂的病态产生好奇，这种病态可能只是表象，我们会想是什么伤害了他们，为什么他们会如此害怕。
We show love when we see a small child throwing themselves on the floor in the aisles of a supermarket, shouting that they want ‘it’ again and again,
当我们看到一个小孩在超市的过道里摔倒在地，一次又一次地喊着要“它”，
and do not focus only on how inconvenient it is to steer our trolley around them and how piercing and maddening their screams are, but also feel how much we understand their frustration
不要只关注在小孩周围推着购物车是多么不方便，他们的尖叫声是多么刺耳和疯狂，也要理解小孩子的挫折和困难
– and would want to tell them that their pain is in its general form ours too and that we would also like to rest against a kindly adult’s chest and hear ‘I know, I know’ until the pain ebbs.
—并且想要告诉他们，他们的痛苦也和我们的一样，我们也想靠在一个和蔼的成年人的胸膛上休息，听到“我知道了，我知道了”，直到疼痛消失。
However many songs celebrate the act, it is no particular feat to love someone who is on their best behaviour, who looks beautiful and moves with grace through the world.
不管有多少歌曲赞美这一行为，爱上一个举止最佳的人并不是什么特别的壮举，他看起来很美，在世界上的一举一动都很优雅。
What really cries out for our attention is the love of what is crooked and gnarled, damaged and self-disgusted.
真正需要我们注意的我们也要爱扭曲、残缺和自我厌恶的部分。
In this definition, love is the effort required to imagine oneself more accurately into the life of another human who has not made it in way easy to admire or even like them.
在这个定义中，爱是一种努力，使自己更准确地想象到另一个人的生活中，而这个人的生活并不容易让人羡慕甚至喜欢。
In the Western tradition, it was the man from Nazareth who gave us the most memorable demonstrations of this sort of love, who made it seem glamorous to love differently from the Romans and the Greeks, to love the prostitute, the prisoner and the sinner, to show love to a wretch, a catastrophe and an enemy.
在西方的传统,是拿撒勒的人给了我们最难忘的示威游行这种爱,使它看起来迷人的爱不同于罗马人和希腊人, 爱妓女, 囚犯和罪人, 把爱给坏蛋, 灾难和敌人。
To extrapolate from the approach, a truly Christian dating app would not merely highlight the beautiful and the dazzling,
从这个方法可以推断，一个真正的基督徒约会应用程序不仅会突出美丽和耀眼，
it wouldn’t allow us to swipe away every slightly displeasing person at a stroke but would instead stop us arbitrarily at photographs of hugely challenging figures – malodorous lepers, shocking reprobates
它不会让我们一下子就把每个不太讨人喜欢的人都划走，而是会在看到那些极具挑战性的人(散发着恶臭的麻风病人、令人震惊的堕落者)的照片时，武断地阻止我们
– and would command, with all the authority of divine intonation, ‘Love! Here where it would feel so natural and so easy to hate, your duty is to love…’
——还会以神圣语调的权威命令，‘爱! 在这里，憎恨是那么自然，那么容易，你的职责就是去爱……”
It’s a measure of how we far forgotten everything to do with this sort of love, how committed we are to love-as-admiration, that such a command would sound so peculiar and so laughable.
这是一种衡量，表明我们已经忘记了与这种爱有关的一切，表明我们对爱的崇拜是多么的执着，以至于这样的命令听起来是如此奇怪和可笑。
Yet we might say that nothing is more important than this love, that this is the love that rescues nations from intolerance, that pauses wars, that halts recriminations, that calms furies and that allows civilisation to continue.
然而，我们可以说，没有什么比这种爱更重要的了。这种爱使各国免于偏狭，使战争停止，使相互指责消失，使愤怒平息，使文明得以延续。
True love involves precisely not giving someone what is their due, but giving them what they need in order to survive.
真正的爱不是给予别人他们应得的，而是给予他们生存所需要的。
