【被誉为“人民的作家”的美国作家Anne Lamott在61岁生日即将到来之前，在TED做了一次演讲，分享她从生活和写作中收获的12条真理（事实）。】
看视频，阅读中文字幕很辛苦。我觉得这位作家的人生经验是极珍贵的，对许多人来说也有很强的治愈效果，我把演讲整理成文字以供阅读，静心阅读或许能给大家更多启迪。由于文化背景的不通，个别的翻译有不通，或难以理解的地方，我做了一点修改，方便理解。以下是Anne演讲的主要内容——
anne lamott ted talk
我七岁大的孙子就睡在楼下的大厅里。他经常早上醒来，说：“知道吗，今天会是最棒的一天。” 有时候，他在半夜用颤抖的声音喊我，“奶奶，你也会生病死去吗？”我觉得对我和我认识的大部分人来说，这相当说明问题，我们是一个乐观和恐惧的混合的烧烤架。
因此，在我61岁生日的前几天，我坐下来，决定把我相信的所有东西都列出来。浮世俗文化中真实的成分的太少了，而能确信某些事是挺好的。比方说，我不再是47岁了，尽管我觉得自己还是47岁，我也愿意把自己当成47岁的样子。我朋友保罗在80岁将至时曾说，他觉得自己还是个年轻人，就是身体出了严重毛病。我们真实的自己，其实在时间和空间之外，当然，看着我的作品，实际上，我能意识到自己出生于1954年。我的内心是在时间和空间之外，它没有年龄，我存在于我活过的每一个年龄，你也一样。尽管如此，在这里我禁不住顺便也提醒一下各位，就是我如果没有按照60年代的护肤理论护理皮肤可能会更好，当时那种理论包括尽可能多晒太阳，并涂上厚厚的婴儿油，然后用锡箔纸板反射来吸收更多的阳光。不过，面对现实还是很释然的，我不用再为中年挣扎了，我决定写下我知道的每一个事实。如今，人们觉得沮丧以及茫然，他们总是问我什么是真实的。因此，我希望我列出的这些我确信的事情，可以向那些不知所措和陷入困境的人提供基本的指引。
My sever-year-old grandson sleeps just down the hall from me, and he wakes up a lot of mornings and he says, “You know, this could be the best day ever.” And other times, in the middle of the night, he calls out in a tremulous voice, “Nana, will you ever get sick and die?” I think this pretty much says it for me and most of people I know, that we’re a mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread.
So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday, and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. There’s so little truth in the popular culture, and it’s good to be sure of a few things. For instance, I am no longer 47, although this is the age I feel, and the age I like to think of myself as being. My friend Paul used to say in his late ’70s that he felt like a young man with something really wrong with him. Our true person is outside of time and space, but looking at the paperwork, I can, in fact, see that I was born in 1954. My inside self is outside of time and space. It doesn’t have an age. I’m every age I’ve ever been, and so are you. Although I can’t help mentioning as an aside that it might have been helpful if I hadn’t followed the skin care rules of the ’60s, which involved getting as much sun as possible while slathered in baby oil and basking in the glow of a tinfoil reflector shield. It was so liberating, though, to face the truth that I was no longer in the last throes of middle age, that I decided to write down every single true thing I know. People feel really doomed and overwhelmed these days, and they keep asking me what’s true. So I hope that my list of things I’m almost positive about might offer some basic operating instructions to anyone who is feeling really overwhelmed and beleaguered.
第一条：也是最真实的事情是，所有的事实都有相反的一面。
生命是既珍贵，又不可思议地美丽的礼物。不过，在现实中却不是这样的。对我们这些天生敏感的人来说，这与我们的感受完全不相配。
人生如此艰辛，以至于有时候我们怀疑自己是不是被耍了。生命同时充满了令人心碎的甜蜜和美丽，令人绝望的贫困，以及洪水、婴儿、粉刺和莫扎特，全都缠绕在一起。我认为这不是一个理想的体系。
Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it's impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It's been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive.
It's so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we're being punked. It's filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don't think it's an ideal system.
第二条：如果你把插头拔掉几分钟，几乎所有事情都能恢复运转——你们也是。
Number two: almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes--including you.
第三条：几乎不存在什么外在的力量，可以长久的帮助你自己，除非你在等器官移植。
你无法购买、达到或期待心灵的安宁。这是最可怕的事实，我非常憎恨它。
但这是内心的事，我们无法让世上最爱的人期待一份安宁或越来越好。他们必须找到自己的路，找到自己的答案。你不能在孩子成为英雄的征程中一路上替他们挡风遮雨。你必须对他们放手。不这么做就是不尊重他们。更何况如果问题是别人的，你可能也不知道到底该怎么办。我们的帮助常常不太有用。我们的帮助经常是有害的。而所谓的“帮助”就是“控制”的褒义词。别老是帮忙啦。别再老是对大家施以你的援手和友善啦。
Three: there is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you're waiting for an organ.
You can't buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth, and I so resent it.
But it's an inside job, and we can't arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world. They have to find their own ways, their own answers. You can't run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero's journey. You have to release them. It's disrespectful not to. And if it's someone else's problem, you probably don't have the answer, anyway. Our help is usually not very helpful. Our help is often toxic. And help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don't get your help and goodness all over everybody.
第四条：每个人都是心烦意乱的、支离破碎的、过度依赖的、胆小怕事的，甚至有的人同时拥有这些负面情绪。
这些人比你愿意相信的更像你，所以不要拿自己的内在想法与别人的外在表现相比较。这只会让本已糟糕的你更加糟糕。同时，你无法保护、纠正或拯救他们，或是让他们清醒过来。而令我变得振作清醒的，是三十年前我自己的行动和思考引发的困境。
当时我请求一些理智的朋友帮我，我也求助于更强大的力量。“上帝God”一词可以看做是“绝望中的礼物gift of desperation”的缩写，G-O-D，或者像一个清醒的朋友说的，到头来，我堕落的速度比我降低底线的速度还要快。
所以在这种情况下，“上帝”可能意思是，“我已经没什么好主意了。”
当纠正、保卫和拯救都变成徒劳，彻底的自我保护就成了小小的量子，这种力量从你心中激发出来后，飘散在空气中，就像一点点新鲜空气。这是给世界的一份大礼。人们的反应是，“好吧，她是不是太目空一切了？”，只要像蒙娜丽莎一样婉儿一笑，然后给彼此都倒杯好茶就好。能欣赏一个人的憨傻、自私、暴躁、自恼是就像拥有了一个家。这个家是让世上风平浪静开始的地方。
This brings us to number four: everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together.
They are much more like you than you would believe, so try not to compare your insides to other people's outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are. Also, you can't save, fix or rescue any of them or get anyone sober. What helped me get clean and sober 30 years ago was the catastrophe of my behavior and thinking.
So I asked some sober friends for help, and I turned to a higher power. One acronym for God is the "gift of desperation," G-O-D, or as a sober friend put it, by the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.
So God might mean, in this case, "me running out of any more good ideas."
While fixing and saving and trying to rescue is futile, radical self-care is quantum, and it radiates out from you into the atmosphere like a little fresh air. It's a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, "Well, isn't she full of herself," just smile obliquely like Mona Lisa and make both of you a nice cup of tea. Being full of affection for one's goofy, self-centered, cranky, annoying self is home. It's where world peace begins.
第五条：可可含量达到75%的巧克力实际上不能算作是食物。
75%的黑巧克力应该标注为“不可食用”，它的最佳用途是作为捕蛇器的诱饵或者垫桌角。就不应该认为那东西能吃。
Number five: chocolate with 75 percent cacao is not actually a food.
Its best use is as a bait in snake traps or to balance the legs of wobbly chairs. It was never meant to be considered an edible.
第六条：写作。
你认识的每一个作家，初稿写得都很糟糕，但他们会坚持坐在椅子里。这就是生活的秘密。这也许就是你和作家之间的主要区别。他们想做就去做了。
他们在做之前靠自己预先准备好了。他们把这当做一种道义上的义务。他们讲述自己某天某时曾经历过的故事， 一点一点地讲出来。在我哥哥上四年级的时候，有次有一篇关于鸟类的学期论文，第二天就要交，然而他还没有开始写。
于是我爸爸在他身旁坐下来，拿着一本Audubon的书、一些纸张、铅笔和两脚钉——知道两脚钉的都不再年轻了吧——然后他对我哥哥说，“一只鸟一只鸟的写，孩子。先读一些关于鹈鹕的东西，然后用你自己的理解把鹈鹕的知识写下来。接着找到山雀，然后用你自己的理解告诉我们山雀的知识。再然后是鹅。”
所以写作最重要的两点：一只鸟一只鸟的写 和惨不忍睹的初稿。如果你不知道从哪开始，记得那些发生在你身上的事，它们每件都属于你，你就直接说出来。如果人们希望你把他们写得更温和一些，那他们本应该表现得更好。
也许某天你清醒了会觉得糟糕透了， 因为你发现你从来没写下那些一直牵扯着你的内心的东西，比如你的故事，回忆，幻想，与歌唱——你的真实，你对事物的看法——用你自己的声音，这些都是你必须要带给我们的东西，也是你何以来到这个世界的意义。
Number six -- writing.
Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts, but they keep their butt in the chair. That's the secret of life. That's probably the main difference between you and them. They just do it.
They do it by prearrangement with themselves. They do it as a debt of honor. They tell stories that come through them one day at a time, little by little. When my older brother was in fourth grade, he had a term paper on birds due the next day, and he hadn't started.
So my dad sat down with him with an Audubon book, paper, pencils and brads--for those of you who have gotten a little less young and remember brads -- and he said to my brother, "Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just read about pelicans and then write about pelicans in your own voice. And then find out about chickadees, and tell us about them in your own voice. And then geese."
So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts. If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
You're going to feel like hell if you wake up someday and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart: your stories, memories, visions and songs -- your truth, your version of things -- in your own voice. That's really all you have to offer us, and that's also why you were born.
第七条：你必须要从出版发行和短暂的创作成就中恢复过来。
这些名利杀死了迷失其中的人。它们会以你无法想象的方式 伤害你、改变你。
我所认识的最低级和邪恶的人是一些出版过超级畅销书的男作家。这又说回第一点：所有事都是有对立面的。能让你的作品出版当然也是一个奇迹，这可以让你的故事被世人阅读和听闻。但要努力让自己从出版发行的幻想中抽身，你以为出版发行可以治愈你，可以填满你内心一个个如同瑞士干酪的洞。它不能。它也不会。但是写作本身可以。在合唱团或蓝草乐队唱歌也可以。在社区作壁画或观鸟飞也可以，或者养一条其他人都不想养的老狗，也可以治愈你。
Seven: publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from.
They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine.
The most degraded and evil people I've ever known are male writers who've had huge best sellers. And yet, returning to number one, that all truth is paradox, it's also a miracle to get your work published, to get your stories read and heard. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, that it will fill the Swiss-cheesy holes inside of you. It can't. It won't. But writing can. So can singing in a choir or a bluegrass band. So can painting community murals or birding or fostering old dogs that no one else will.
第八条：家庭。无论家人有多么珍贵和精彩，家庭生活都是难、难、难。再一次，参见第一条。
如果在家庭聚会上，你突然很想杀人或自杀——记住，在所有情况下，的的确确，我们任何一个人的孕育和诞生都是一个奇迹。
地球是一个教会我们宽恕的学校。宽恕从原谅自己开始，你最好从坐在餐桌前开始。这样，你还能穿着舒服的裤子来做这件事。
当William Blake（十八十九世纪作家诗人）说，我们在这世上要学会忍受爱的光束，他知道，你的家人会是密不可分的一部分，即使你要为了你可爱的小人生尖叫跑开。但我保证，你能行。你能做到，灰姑娘，你能做到，然后你会为自己感到大为惊奇。
Number eight: families. Families are hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be. Again, see number one.
At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal -- remember that in all cases, it's a miracle that any of us, specifically, were conceived and born.
Earth is forgiveness school. It begins with forgiving yourself, and then you might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.
When William Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But I promise you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderella, you can do it, and you will be amazed.
第九条：食物。试着做得更好一些。我想你明白我的意思。
Nine: food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.
第十条：恩泽。
恩泽是精神上的WD-40（万能润滑油）或者是游泳圈。恩泽的神秘之处在于，上帝爱亨利•基辛格和弗拉基米尔•普京，也爱我，就像他或她也爱你们刚出生的小孙子。想想看吧！
是恩泽改变了我们，治愈了我们，它也治愈了我们的世界。想要召唤恩泽，就说“救命”，然后系好安全带。恩泽会在你需要的时候出现，但它不会将你遗弃那里。
遗憾的是， 恩泽不会像鬼马小精灵一样。但是电话会响的，邮件会来的，尽管困难重重，你会得到属于你自己的幽默感。笑声真的是含着二氧化碳的圣洁。它帮助我们一次又一次地呼吸 让我们回归自我，这也带给我们对生活和彼此的信心。记住，恩泽总是坚持到最后。
Number 10 -- grace. Grace is spiritual WD-40, or water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as He or She loves your new grandchild. Go figure.
The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and heals our world. To summon grace, say, "Help," and then buckle up. Grace finds you exactly where you are, but it doesn't leave you where it found you.
And grace won't look like Casper the Friendly Ghost, regrettably. But the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds, you'll get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves, and this gives us faith in life and each other. And remember -- grace always bats last.
第十一条：上帝就意味着美德。
他真的不那么可怕。它意味着神圣或是慈爱的，朝气蓬勃的智慧，就像我们从伟大的Deteriorata中知道的，宇宙中的松饼（此处指一首被恶搞的诗词，其中说上帝是宇宙中的松饼）。上帝的美名是:“不是我。”
艾默生Emerson（十九世纪美国思想家，作家）曾说：地球上最幸福的人，是那个从自然中学会了敬畏的人。所以多到外面去走走，抬头看看。
我的牧师说你可以将蜜蜂困在无盖玻璃瓶的底部，因为它们不会抬头看，所以它们只会四处碰壁。走出去，抬头看看，这是生活的秘密。
Eleven: God just means goodness.
It's really not all that scary. It means the divine or a loving, animating intelligence, or, as we learned from the great "Deteriorata," "the cosmic muffin." A good name for God is: "Not me."
Emerson said that the happiest person on Earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot and look up.
My pastor said you can trap bees on the bottom of mason jars without lids because they don't look up, so they just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. Go outside. Look up. Secret of life.
最后，死亡。第十二条：哇，天哪。有时候至亲的人死去真的难以承受，你永远无法从悲痛中平复，无论老话怎么说，你也做不到。
我们基督徒喜欢把死亡想象成只是更换了住址，但无论如何，如果你不把心门封锁，这个人就还将活在你的心中。就像莱昂纳德•科恩Leonard Cohen说的，“万物皆有裂痕，那将是光照进来的地方。”
那也将会我们感到亲人重获新生的地方。而且，有些人会让你在最不该笑的时候，开怀大笑，那将是个超赞的好迹象。
但他们的缺席也将是你一生的思乡之噩梦。悲痛和朋友、时间和眼泪，会在一定程度上治愈你。眼泪将沐浴、洗礼、滋润你，以及你一路走来的土地。
你知道上帝对摩西说的第一件事吗？他说：“脱下你的鞋子。”因为你所站之地是圣地，虽然我们感觉（这块土地）并不神圣。很难相，但这是我所知道的最真实的事情。
当你再年长一点，像我这个小人物这般，你会意识到死亡和出生一样神圣。也别担心，继续你的生活。只要你需要，与周围的至亲们一起面对死亡，那么每个人的死亡将会是简单而温柔的。
你不会孤单的。不论等待我们的是什么他们都会帮你一同度过。正如Ram Dass所说，“当该说的说了，该做的做了，我们真的只是互相把对方送回家。”
我想说的就是这些， 但如果我想到别的东西， 我会告诉你们的， 谢谢你们。
And finally: death. Number 12. Wow and yikes. It's so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die. You'll never get over these losses, and no matter what the culture says, you're not supposed to.
We Christians like to think of death as a major change of address, but in any case, the person will live again fully in your heart if you don't seal it off. Like Leonard Cohen said, "There are cracks in everything, and that's how the light gets in."
And that's how we feel our people again fully alive. Also, the people will make you laugh out loud at the most inconvenient times, and that's the great good news.
But their absence will also be a lifelong nightmare of homesickness for you. Grief and friends, time and tears will heal you to some extent. Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate and moisturize you and the ground on which you walk.
Do you know the first thing that God says to Moses? He says, "Take off your shoes." Because this is holy ground, all evidence to the contrary. It's hard to believe, but it's the truest thing I know.
When you're a little bit older, like my tiny personal self, you realize that death is as sacred as birth. And don't worry -- get on with your life. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need.
You won't be alone. They'll help you cross over to whatever awaits us. As Ram Dass said, "When all is said and done, we're really just all walking each other home."
I think that's it, but if I think of anything else, I'll let you know. Thank you. Thank you.
