So, a few years ago I was at JFK Airport about to get on a flight, when I was approached by two women who I do not think would be insulted to hear themselves described as tiny old tough-talking Italian-American broads.

几年前, 在肯尼迪机场, 我正在赶飞机, 两名女士从后面追上我, 我想她们大概不会介意我把她们描述为身材矮小, 言语粗陋的美籍意大利老大妈。

The taller one, who is like up here, she comes marching up to me, and she goes, "Honey, I gotta ask you something. You got something to do with that whole 'Eat, Pray, Love' thing that's been going on lately?"

个子高的那个, 大概这么高, 她追上我, 然后问道, "亲爱的, 我想问你个事儿。你是不是跟最近上映的那个什么《美食、祈祷和恋爱》有啥关系?"

And I said, "Yes, I did."And she smacks her friend and she goes, "See, I told you, I said, that's that girl. That's that girl who wrote that book based on that movie."

我说, "是的。"然后她拍了一下她的朋友, 说道, "对吧, 我就说嘛, 就是她。那个根据电影的故事情节写了本儿书的姑娘。"

So that's who I am. And believe me, I'm extremely grateful to be that person, because that whole "Eat, Pray, Love" thing was a huge break for me. But it also left me in a really tricky position moving forward as an author trying to figure out how in the world I was ever going to write a book again that would ever please anybody, 

这就是我。相信我, 我还是非常感激那个人, 因为有关《美食、祈祷和恋爱》的一切对我而言都是一个巨大的突破， 但是同时也把我推向了一个尴尬的境地。作为一名作家, 我需要继续写作, 但我无法确定我写的下一本书能否得到读者的青睐,

because I knew well in advance that all of those people who had adored "Eat, Pray, Love" were going to be incredibly disappointed in whatever I wrote next because it wasn't going to be "Eat, Pray, Love," and all of those people who had hated "Eat, Pray, Love" were going to be incredibly disappointed in whatever I wrote next because it would provide evidence that I still lived. 

因为我非常的清楚, 无论我下一本书的内容是什么，那些热爱《美食、祈祷和恋爱》的读者们都会无比失望, 因为下一本书一定不会再是《美食、祈祷和恋爱》, 而那些厌恶《美食、祈祷和恋爱》的读者们也都会无比失望,无论我的下一本书写的是什么, 因为他们会失望的发现我还活得好好的。

So I knew that I had no way to win, and knowing that I had no way to win made me seriously consider for a while just quitting the game and moving to the country to raise corgis. 

所以, 我知道怎么做都无法两全其美。当我刚开始意识到这一点的时候，我很认真的考虑过要不要就此封笔， 搬到乡下养养小狗退休算了。

But if I had done that, if I had given up writing, I would have lost my beloved vocation, so I knew that the task was that I had to find some way to gin up the inspiration to write the next book regardless of its inevitable negative outcome. 

但是如果我真的这么做了, 真的放弃了, 我将会失去所热爱的职业生涯, 所以我很清楚应该做什么，就是要想办法重新激起斗志, 继续写新书, 不去在意会收到怎样的负面评价。

In other words, I had to find a way to make sure that my creativity survived its own success.

换句话说，我需要努力的找到一条出路，确保我在成功之后依旧保持创造力。

And I did, in the end, find that inspiration, but I found it in the most unlikely and unexpected place. I found it in lessons that I had learned earlier in life about how creativity can survive its own failure.

最终, 我做到了, 我找到了动力, 只不过是在比较意外的、不太可能的场合。这其实是源于我早年失败时如何保持创造力的经验。

So just to back up and explain, the only thing I have ever wanted to be for my whole life was a writer. I wrote all through childhood, all through adolescence, by the time I was a teenager I was sending my very bad stories to The New Yorker, hoping to be discovered. 

让我稍微重复一下, 成为作家是我这辈子唯一希望能够从事的职业。我从孩童时期就开始不停的写,  青少年时期也坚持着，当我只有十几岁的时候，就已经把写的不怎么样的故事寄给了给《纽约客》, 希望能够被编辑发现。

After college, I got a job as a diner waitress, kept working, kept writing, kept trying really hard to get published, and failing at it. I failed at getting published for almost six years. 

大学后我找了一份餐厅服务员的工作, 继续工作, 继续写作, 继续努力的让自己的作品出版, 却连续的遭遇了失败。大概有六年的时间, 一直不断的被出版社拒绝。

So for almost six years, every single day, I had nothing but rejection letters waiting for me in my mailbox. And it was devastating every single time, and every single time, I had to ask myself if I should just quit while I was behind and give up and spare myself this pain. 

在那六年的时间里的每一天, 除了邮箱里收不完的拒信， 我一无所有。每一个这样的时刻都非常难熬, 每一次我都不由得问自己, 是不是应该放弃, 不要再这么痛苦下去了。

But then I would find my resolve, and always in the same way, by saying, "I'm not going to quit, I'm going home."

但是我又总是立刻就找回了斗志, 每次都是如此，对自己说, "我不会放弃, 我要回家."

And you have to understand that for me, going home did not mean returning to my family's farm. For me, going home meant returning to the work of writing because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing,

这里你们需要明白一点, "回家"并不是指回到我的家族农场。对我而言, "回家"就是回去继续写作的意思, 因为写作就是我的家, 因为对写作的热爱,  远大于被拒绝带给我的伤痛,

which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that's how I pushed through it.

或者说我对写作的热爱胜过我对自我(ego)的爱, 更直接的说, 我爱写作胜过爱我自己。我就是这么挺过来的。

But the weird thing is that 20 years later, during the crazy ride of "Eat, Pray, Love," I found myself identifying all over again with that unpublished young diner waitress who I used to be, thinking about her constantly, and feeling like I was her again,

不过奇怪的是, 20年之后, 当《美食、祈祷和恋爱》带给我巨大成功的时候, 我发现自己又回到了从前的状态, 那个无书可出的年轻服务员的状态, 我无时不刻不回想着过去的我, 觉得我又变成了当初的自己, 

which made no rational sense whatsoever because our lives could not have been more different. She had failed constantly. I had succeeded beyond my wildest expectation. We had nothing in common. Why did I suddenly feel like I was her all over again?

这听上去不太合理，毕竟过去和现在的我生活状态已经大不一样了。她一直遭遇失败，而我获得了始料未及的成功。我们没有任何相似之处。那么为什么我突然觉得自己很像她,  很像过去的自己?

And it was only when I was trying to unthread that that I finally began to comprehend the strange and unlikely psychological connection in our lives between the way we experience great failure and the way we experience great success. 

直到我尝试一点一点的解开谜团, 我终于开始意识到, 使现在和过去的我产生这种奇怪的"心理联接"的原因, 在于我们在面临巨大失败以及巨大成功时的应对方式。

So think of it like this: For most of your life, you live out your existence here in the middle of the chain of human experience where everything is normal and reassuring and regular, but failure catapults you abruptly way out over here into the blinding darkness of disappointment.

想象一下: 在你生命中绝大多数时间，你的生活状态只是人类生活经历中的一个片段, 普通, 安稳而又平常, 而失败就相当于突然把你从这种状态中猛的推向了无尽黑暗和失望的深渊。

Success catapults you just as abruptly but just as far way out over here into the equally blinding glare of fame and recognition and praise. And one of these fates is objectively seen by the world as bad, and the other one is objectively seen by the world as good,

成功也会如此突如其来的改变你, 不同的是, 成功会给你带来极高的认可、赞扬和威望。这两种不同的命运, 一种被这个世界视为是坏的, 另一种被这个世界认为是好的。

but your subconscious is completely incapable of discerning the difference between bad and good. The only thing that it is capable of feeling is the absolute value of this emotional equation,the exact distance that you have been flung from yourself. 

但是你的潜意识完全无法区分这种好坏的差别。你唯一能够感知的是在情绪上体验到的绝对值，是你在情绪上偏离常态的自己的绝对值。

And there's a real equal danger in both cases of getting lost out there in the hinterlands of the psyche.

而且(成功和失败)两种情形下都会面临同样的危机, 你可能迷失在心灵的孤岛中。

But in both cases, it turns out that there is also the same remedy for self-restoration, and that is that you have got to find your way back home again as swiftly and smoothly as you can, and if you're wondering what your home is, here's a hint:

而这两种不同的境遇, 又有着相同的自我修复的方法，就是你要尽可能快的, 顺利的找到回家的路. 如果你不知道自己"家"指的是哪里, 有个技巧:

Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. So that might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service, it might be raising corgis,

你的"家"就是你在这个世界上任何一个爱它胜过爱自己的东西。可能是你的灵感和创意, 可能是家庭, 可以是投资, 冒险, 信仰, 服务,可以是养小狗，

I don't know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.

总之, 你的"家"就是这样一个东西, 你会愿意将全部精力投入其中, 而最终的结果并不是最重要的。

For me, that home has always been writing. So after the weird, disorienting success that I went through with "Eat, Pray, Love," I realized that all I had to do was exactly the same thing that I used to have to do all the time when I was an equally disoriented failure. 

对我来说, 这个"家"就是写作。所以在我出版《美食、祈祷和恋爱》之后经历这种奇特的、令人迷失的成功之后, 我意识到我需要做的事情，跟过去的我在经历同样令人迷失的失败时要做的事一样。

I had to get my ass back to work, and that's what I did, and that's how, in 2010, I was able to publish the dreaded follow-up to "Eat, Pray, Love." And you know what happened with that book? It bombed, and I was fine. 

我需要回"家"写作, 我真的这么做了，并且在2010年, 我终于在《美食、祈祷和恋爱》之后, 出版了新书。你们知道出版之后的反响么? 恶评如潮, 但是我感觉还不错。

Actually, I kind of felt bulletproof, because I knew that I had broken the spell and I had found my way back home to writing for the sheer devotion of it. 

事实上, 我觉得自己已经有免疫力了, 因为我知道我需要打破这魔咒而且我找到了回"家"的路，为了这种绝对而纯粹的热爱去写作。

And I stayed in my home of writing after that, and I wrote another book that just came out last year and that one was really beautifully received, which is very nice, but not my point. 

出版之后我继续在"家"中创作, 又写了另一本书, 去年刚刚出版, 获得的反馈真的还不错, 这非常好, 不过不是我的重点。

My point is that I'm writing another one now, and I'll write another book after that and another and another and another and many of them will fail, and some of them might succeed, but I will always be safe from the random hurricanes of outcome as long as I never forget where I rightfully live.

我要说的是我现在正在写一本新的书, 而且我会在这本书之后继续写下一本，一本接着一本的写。很多书的反响都不会太好, 其中有几本或许会获得成功, 不过无论出版后反响如何剧烈, 我的内心都会感到平和, 只要我还记得我真心热爱的是什么。

Look, I don't know where you rightfully live, but I know that there's something in this world that you love more than you love yourself. Something worthy, by the way, so addiction and infatuation don't count, because we all know that those are not safe places to live. Right?

我不知道你们各自真心热爱的是什么, 但是我知道这世上一定有什么东西,  能够让你们爱它们胜过爱自己。当然, 是有价值的东西, 毒瘾和让你过分沉溺的东西不算, 因为我们都知道这不是安全的"家", 不是么?

The only trick is that you've got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most, and then build your house right on top of it and don't budge from it. And if you should someday, somehow get vaulted out of your home by either great failure or great success,

唯一的窍门就是你需要找到最好的, 从你热爱的事物中找到最有价值的, 在这个上面构建自己的"家", 并且一直守护它。或许会有一天, 不知道什么时候你会被迫离开自己的"家", 带着是巨大的成功或者失败,

then your job is to fight your way back to that home the only way that it has ever been done, by putting your head down and performing with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence whatever the task is that love is calling forth from you next. 

那时你需要做的,  就是尽你最大的努力回"家"。而回"家"的唯一方式, 是沉下心来, 投入你的精力, 勤奋, 毅力, 尊重和敬畏, 无论你专注做的是什么事情，只要你遵循心中对这个事情的热爱。

You just do that, and keep doing that again and again and again, and I can absolutely promise you, from long personal experience in every direction, I can assure you that it's all going to be okay.

你只需要坚持, 埋头苦干, 坚持不懈的做下去, 我可以向你保证, 依据我个人长期的经验, 无论从哪个角度来说,  我都可以向你保证, 一切都会好起来的。

Thank you.

谢谢大家。

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