评论
打印
If you wanna live a life of meaning you have to choose to some extent, a life of suffering.
如果你想过一种有意义的生活，你必须在某种程度上选择一种痛苦的生活。
You might wonder, "Why would evolution be so malevolent to curse us with pain?"
你可能会想，“为什么进化论这么邪恶，要用痛苦来折磨我们？”
But there's actually a perfectly good evolutionary argument for this.
但这里面其实有一个完美的进化论论据。
It serves the function of training you to avoid things that damage the body.
它的作用是训练你去避开那些伤害身体的东西。
Just like hunger drives you to food and lust drives you to sex, pain pushes you away from things that would hurt you.
就像饥饿驱使你进食，性欲驱使你做爱一样，痛苦会让你远离那些会伤害你的东西。
But that sets up a puzzle, which is if the purpose of pain, and fear, and grief, and all of that is to avoid them, why do we sometimes seek them out?
但这就产生了一个谜题，如果痛苦、恐惧和悲伤的目的都是为了避免它们，为什么我们有时会去追寻它们呢？
Why do we go to movies that scare us?
为什么我们要去看恐怖片？
Why do we do things like push our bodies to the limit?
为什么我们要做拉伸之类的动作把身体逼到极限？
So where is the lure of the negative?
这些负面体验有何魅力？
Why are we drawn towards them?
为什么我们会被它们吸引呢？
And that's the puzzle, which I'm very interested in.
这就是我非常感兴趣的谜题。
I'm Paul Bloom.
我是保罗·布鲁姆。
I'm a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, and my new book is called "The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and a Search for Meaning."
我是多伦多大学的心理学教授，我的新书名为《甜蜜的地方：痛苦的快乐和对意义的探索》。
There's a world of difference between chosen suffering, which I think has all sorts of benefits, and unchosen suffering.
选择的痛苦和非选择的痛苦之间存在着天壤之别，而我认为选择的痛苦有多种好处。
Unchosen suffering like: chronic pain.
未选择的痛苦，比如：慢性疼痛。
Like: your child dies, your house burns down, you lose your job, you get assaulted.
比如：你的孩子死了，你的房子被烧毁了，你失去了工作，你被袭击了。
Sometimes they can strengthen you.
有时，它们可以增强你的力量。
Sometimes they can build you up spiritually or emotionally or even physically.
有时，它们可以在精神上、情感上、甚至身体上帮助你。
But for the most part, they're bad for you.
但在大多数情况下，它们对你都不是好事。
Avoid them. Avoid them, if you can.
要避开它们。如果可以的话，尽量避开它们。
I think the real value in life, the richness is found in chosen suffering.
我认为生命的真正价值，真正的财富存在于选择的痛苦中。
So Alan Watts has this wonderful story he tells.
艾伦·瓦茨讲述了一个精彩的故事。
He says, imagine you go to sleep one night and you find yourself in a lucid dream.
他说，想象有一天晚上你睡着了，你发现自己进入了一个清醒的梦境中。
You could dream whatever you want.
你可以梦到任何你想要的东西。
Any sort of joy, pleasure, any experience you want.
梦到快乐、愉悦和你想要的任何体验。
If you could fantasize about it, you could experience it.
只要你能幻想到它，就能体验到。
Then you wake up the next morning and you get to have whatever dream you want again.
然后第二天早上醒来，你又可以做任何你想做的梦了。
And again, it's a lucid dream.
再说一次，这是一个清醒的梦。
And again, you explore pleasure and all sorts of excitement.
再一次，你探索其中的快乐和各种刺激。
But sooner or later, Watts points out, you're gonna get bored of this.
但瓦茨指出，你迟早会对此感到厌倦。
What you're gonna do is you're gonna throw out some obstacles.
你会想要设置一些障碍。
You're gonna set up the possibility for failure.
你会制造出失败的可能性。
You're gonna set up situations where you do fail, because if you don't fail, then the successes mean nothing and soon you'll be living a life in your dreams of complexity, of struggle, of pain.
你会设置一些让你失败的处境，因为如果你从不失败，那成功就毫无意义，很快你就会生活在一个复杂、挣扎和痛苦的梦境中。
And then he says you'll be living a life much like the life you live now.
然后他说你会过上和现实中一样的生活。
There's a deep insight here which is that the good things in life only make sense relative to the bad things.
这里有一个深刻的见解，那就是生活中好的东西只有相对于坏的东西才有意义。
If you win every competition you engage in there's no fun to it.
如果你参加任何比赛都能赢，那就没什么乐趣了。
You have to have the possibility of loss.
你必须要有失败的可能性。
If all of your experiences are positive they cease to become positive, you need a negative.
如果你所有的经历都是积极的，它们就没那么积极了，你需要消极的经历。
From a Darwinian perspective, it's no mystery why we seek out good food, good sex, good company, all of that good stuff.
从达尔文主义的角度来看，我们之所以要寻找好的食物、好的性爱、好的同伴，所有这些都不是什么神秘的事情。
But people do more than that.
但人们做的不仅仅是这些。
People often choose to suffer, and they do so in ways that go from small to the big.
人们经常选择受苦，而且会由小到大，慢慢这么做。
So the small, something like hot chilies, working your way through a crossword puzzle, saunas, hot baths, scary movies, massage pain, running till it hurts.
那些小事，比如辣椒，填字游戏通关，桑拿浴，热水澡，恐怖电影，按摩疼痛，跑步到疼。
Moving it up a bit, some people willingly engage in projects that involve a lot of suffering and difficulty.
再往上移一点，有些人就心甘情愿地从事一些涉及很多痛苦和困难的项目。
No one who decides to have a kid is unaware that this is gonna be difficult.
任何决定要个孩子的人都知道这会很困难。
If you were in such good shape that training for a triathlon was easy, it wouldn't have much meaning for you.
如果你的状态好到连铁人三项的训练都易如反掌，那它对你来说就没什么意义了。
But the difficulty is part and parcel of things.
但困难是事情的一部分。
Part of what makes it valuable.
这也是让事情有价值的部分原因。
I've long been interested in the relationship between a life of meaning and chosen suffering.
长期以来，我一直对有意义的生活和选择的痛苦之间的关系感兴趣。
Meaning, and now we're sort of away from the spicy food, crossword puzzle.
这意味着，现在我们说的不是辛辣的食物，填字游戏之类的东西。
Meaning, in the broad sense, is intimately related to the more heavy duty suffering and difficulty.
在广义上，意义与更重的责任、痛苦和困难密切相关。
I would go so far as to say that if it's not hard at some level, if you don't look back on it and sort of shudder a bit, it probably isn't meaningful.
我甚至可以说，如果它在某种程度上不难，如果你想起它内心毫无波澜，它可能就没有意义。
There was a survey done of over a million people and the survey asked, what's your job?
有一项对100多万人进行的调查，调查问道：你是做什么工作的？
And then they asked how meaningful is your job?
然后他们问你的工作有多大的意义？
And the most meaningful jobs were not the jobs that were high status, nor were they the jobs that paid the most.
最有意义的工作并不是地位高的工作，也不是收入最高的工作。
They were jobs like being an educator, a medical professional, in the military, that involve struggle and difficulty.
而是教育工作者、医学专业人员、在军队中的工作，这些工作都包含着斗争和困难。
So we see in our lives a whole spectrum of suffering from things so mild, they barely deserve the name, you know eating some spicy food, or working your way through a crossword puzzle.
所以在生活中，有很多非常温和的事情，它们几乎配不上这个称号，比如吃辣的食物，填字游戏通关等。
No reward, nothing. You just do it because it's hard.
没有奖励，什么都没有。你愿意做只是因为它有难度。
All the way to the sort of pursuits that structure our lives.
一直到构成我们生活的那些追求。
And I actually, I'm gonna make a pretty strong claim here.
事实上，我要在这里做出一个非常有力的声明。
I think that the way people think about meaning our very notion of what a meaningful experience or meaningful goal, or meaningful life is, is that it requires some degree of suffering.
我认为，人们对意义的认知，我们对什么是有意义的经历、有意义的目标或有意义的生活的概念，是它需要一定程度的痛苦。
Where suffering could be physical pain.
痛苦可能是肉体上的痛苦。
It could be difficulty, it could be worrying.
也可能是困难，可能是让人担忧。
It could be the possibility of failure.
也可能是失败的可能性。
But stripped of that, the experience isn't meaningful.
但如果剔除这些，这种体验就没有意义了。
We need pain and suffering to have rich and happy lives.
我们需要痛苦和磨难才能拥有丰富和幸福的生活。
