TED | 格格不入者的心声

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

You see, I’m trying to tell you something about people like me. Misfit people - we don’t always know how to hope or say yes or choose the big thing, even when it’s right in front of us. It's a shame we carry. It’s the shame of wanting something good. It’s the shame of feeling something good. It’s the shame of not really believing we deserve to be in the room with the people we admire.

各位，我尽量告诉大家像我这样的人的感受。不适者经常不知道怎样期待和回答，也不知道在大事面前如何选择。哪怕它们就在我们面前。这是我们身上的耻辱。这是想接受美好时就会有的耻辱。这是想感受美好时就会有的耻辱。这种耻辱让我们不敢相信我们应该和那些我们敬仰的人站在同一个屋檐下。

If I could, I’d go back and I'd coach myself. I’d be exactly like those over-50-year-old women who helped me. I'd teach myself how to want things, how to stand up, how to ask for them. I’d say, “You! Yeah, you! You belong in the room, too.” The radiance falls on all of us, and we are nothing without each other. Instead, I flew back to Oregon, and as I watched the evergreens and rain come back into view, I just drank many tiny bottles of airplane “feel sorry for yourself.” I thought about how, if I was a writer, I was some kind of misfit writer. What I'm saying is, I flew back to Oregon without a book deal, without an agent, and with only a headful and heart-ful of memories of having sat so near the beautiful writers. Memory was the only prize I allowed myself.

如果可以回到过去，我要像那些 50 多岁的女人告诉我的那样告诫自己。我要教自己去诉说我的需求，站起来，要回属于我的东西。我会跟我自己说：“你！ 就是你！你应该在这个屋子里。”只有和大家团结在一起，每个人才是光芒四射的。可现实是，我飞回了俄勒冈，看着窗外的雨拍打着常青树我不禁借酒浇愁。我想就算我是一个作家我也只是一个格格不入的作家。我想说，我回到俄勒冈，没有签下一个书约，没有经纪人同行，有的只是满满的回忆。我曾经和那些美丽的作家离得那么近。回忆是我给自己的奖励。

And yet, at home in the dark, back in my underwear, I could still hear their voices. They said, “Don’t listen to anyone who tries to get you to shut up or change your story.” They said, “Give voice to the story only you know how to tell.” They said, “Sometimes telling the story is the thing that saves your life.”

然后当我回到家的黑暗中，穿回我的内衣，我还能够听见她们的声音。她们说：“不要让任何试图让你闭嘴的人改变你的故事。”她们说：“表达只有你才知道的感受。” 她们说：“有时候写书可以改变你的一生。”

Now I am, as you can see, the woman over 50. And I’m a writer. And I’m a mother. And I became a teacher. Guess who my favorite students are. Although it didn’t happen the day that dream letter came through my mailbox, I did write a memoir, called “The Chronology of Water.” In it are the stories of how many times I’ve had to reinvent a self from the ruins of my choices, the stories of how my seeming failures were really just weird-ass portals to something beautiful. All I had to do was give voice to the story.

现在，我也50 多岁了。我是一个作家。我是一位母亲。我也成为了一名老师。猜猜我最喜欢的学生是谁。我写了一篇回忆录，尽管不是从邮筒拿出信的 那一天写的，叫做“似水年华”。书里讲述的是我如何在 人生选择的废墟中重生的故事。书里讲述的是那些我的失败如何奇迹般地 通向美好的故事。 我要做的就是让大家听到我的故事。

There’s a myth in most cultures about following your dreams. It’s called the hero’s journey. But I prefer a different myth, that’s slightly to the side of that or underneath it. It's called the misfit’s myth. And it goes like this: even at the moment of your failure, right then, you are beautiful. You don’t know it yet, but you have the ability to reinvent yourself endlessly. That's your beauty.

每一种文化中都有追梦的神话，大多数叫做英雄之路。不过我更喜欢另一种神话， 一种过程不同，不为人所知的神话，叫做不适者的神话。它是这样的：即使那时候你失败了，失败的你也是美好的。你可能没有发觉 那个不断地试图重生的你是最美丽的。

You can be a drunk, you can be a survivor of abuse, you can be an ex-con, you can be a homeless person, you can lose all your money or your job or your husband or your wife, or the worst thing of all, a child. You can even lose your marbles. You can be standing dead center in the middle of your failure and still, I’m only here to tell you, you are so beautiful. Your story deserves to be heard, because you, you rare and phenomenal misfit, you new species, are the only one in the room who can tell the story the way only you would. And I'd be listening.

你可以醉酒， 你可以从虐待中逃脱出来，你可以有前科，你可以无家可归，你可以失去所有的钱，工作甚至另一半，或者最难过的莫过于，你失去了你的孩子，甚至失去理智。你站在失败的正中心， 此时我要告诉你，你是那么美好。你的故事应该被大家听到因为你是稀有的，是独特的，是独一无二的，这个屋子里 只有你可以用只有你才会的方式来讲述你的故事。而我会静静地聆听。