TED | 如何走好生命中的每一步

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

I was then 37 years old, “an age of discretion,” wrote William Trevor. I was prone to meditating on time and age. An illness in the family and later an injury to me had long made clear that growing old could not be assumed. And besides, growing old only postponed the inevitable, time seeing through what circumstance did not. It was all a bit disheartening.

当年我37岁，威廉·特雷弗说这是“一个小心翼翼的年纪”。我总是想去沉思岁月和人生。我们家族中的一种遗传病，后来也对我有所伤害。这件事告诉我不是每个人都能平平安安活到老的。况且，年华老去只不过是推迟了不可避免的死亡的事实，岁月看穿了一切。这有些令人伤感。

A list, though, would last. To chronicle a life year by vulnerable year would be to clasp and to ground what was fleeting, would be to provide myself and others a glimpse into the future, whether we made it there or not. And when I then began to compile my list, I was quickly obsessed, searching pages and pages for ages and ages. Here we were at every annual step through our first hundred years. “Twenty-seven ... a time of sudden revelations,” “sixty-two, ... of subtle diminishments.”

然而一张时间表会得以留存。去记录逐渐衰弱的生命，就是去尝试挽留流水般逝去的年华，就是让我们自己和别人可以窥一眼未来，无论我们是否能抵达终点。而当我开始整理我的时间表时，我就已经被迷住了，一页一页地寻找岁月的痕迹。在一百年的跋涉中我们回看每年的步伐。 “二十七岁，是一个充满著豁然开朗的年龄。” “六十二岁，是一个逐渐光华不再的年龄。”

I was mindful, of course, that such insights were relative. For starters, we now live longer, and so age more slowly. Christopher Isherwood used the phrase "the yellow leaf" to describe a man at 53, only one century after Lord Byron used it to describe himself at 36.

当然我也明白，这种对岁月的见解是相对的。首先，我们的寿命比前人要长，所以我们衰老得慢。克里斯托弗·伊舍伍德用“落叶” 形容53岁的人，而一百年前拜伦伯爵正好用这个词形容当时36岁的自己。

I was mindful, too, that life can swing wildly and unpredictably from one year to the next, and that people may experience the same age differently. But even so, as the list coalesced, so, too, on the page, clear as the reflection in the mirror, did the life that I had been living: finding at 20 that “... one is less and less sure of who one is;” emerging at 30 from the “... wasteland of preparation into active life;” learning at 40 “... to close softly the doors to rooms [I would] not be coming back to.” There I was.

我也知道，有时命运多舛的人一年之间也会经历不可预测的大风大浪，每个人在同样的年龄都有不同的经历。即使如此，当这张时间表完成的时候，我仍然能在那里面找到我自己一生的影子：发现“人在20岁的时候总是看不清自己”； 三十出头“总算从荒芜闯出精彩纷呈“； 40岁学会了“要轻轻地关上我不再进去的房间的门。” 这就是我。

Of course, there we all are. Milton Glaser, the great graphic designer whose beautiful visualizations you see here, and who today is 85 - all those years “... a ripening and an apotheosis,” wrote Nabokov - noted to me that, like art and like color, literature helps us to remember what we’ve experienced.

当然，这也是我们。你所看到的这张美丽的照片正是85岁的米尔顿·格拉塞，一位了不起的平面设计师。86个年头，“正是成熟和昇华之时” 纳博科夫写到。对于我来说，文学就像艺术和色彩，替我们记住我们记住了曾经的我们。

And indeed, when I shared the list with my grandfather, he nodded in recognition. He was then 95 and soon to die, which, wrote Roberto Bolaño, “... is the same as never dying.” And looking back, he said to me that, yes, Proust was right that at 22, we are sure we will not die, just as a thanatologist named Edwin Shneidman was right that at 90, we are sure we will. It had happened to him, as to them.

果真，当我把这张时间表 拿给我祖父看时 他赞同地点了点头。 他当时已经95岁了，离大去之时不远了。像罗伯托·博拉诺写的，“这就如同永垂不朽。”往回看，我祖父也跟我这样说过。普鲁斯特说所不假，22岁的我们坚信我们不会死，而就像死亡学家，埃德温父施耐德曼说的，90岁的时候，我们都清楚我们将要离去。就跟他的同辈人一样他已然经历了死亡。

Now the list is done: a hundred years. And looking back over it, I know that I am not done. I still have my life to live, still have many more pages to pass into. And mindful of Mailer, I await 44.

现在这张时间表已经完成：整整一百年。只是现在再回看这张表，我觉得我还没有完成我的任务。我还要去好好活我余下的人生，而这剩下的年华，也足够去书写更多精彩。心中不忘诺曼·梅勒所言，44岁，我满怀期待。