【TED演讲212】“越高级的人，越不合群”

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本期的TED演讲者Lidia Yuknavitch女士就是这样一个人，她的故事和经历足以让她为“格格不入者”们代言。让我们听听她的故事，心声和感悟。

演说者：Lidia Yuknavitch

演讲题目：The beauty of being a misfit

 中英文对照翻译

So I know TED is about a lot of things that are big, but I want to talk to you about something very small. So small, it's a single word. The word is "misfit." 

我知道TED总是谈一些大事，但是我想讲一件微不足道的小事，小到只有一个词“不适者。”

Somewhere in my early 30s, the dream of becoming a writer came right to my doorstep. Actually, it came to my mailbox in the form of a letter that said I'd won a giant literary prize for a short story I had written. The short story was about my life as a competitive swimmer and about my crappy home life, and a little bit about how grief and loss can make you insane. 

在我三十岁出头的时候，成为作家的梦想在向我招手。准确地说我在我的邮箱里发现了一封信，信上说我写的小说为我赢得了一份大奖。小说讲述了一名历经糟糕的家庭生活的优秀的游泳运动员的故事，还有一些关于悲痛和困惑如何让人抓狂的情节。

The prize was a trip to New York City to meet big-time editors and agents and other authors. So kind of it was the wannabe writer's dream, right? You know what I did the day the letter came to my house? Because I'm me, I put the letter on my kitchen table, 

赢得的奖励是去纽约和知名的编辑、代理和其他作家见面。这是每个作家的梦想，对吧？各位知道我看到信后做了什么吗？因为我是不适者，我把信放在厨房桌子上，

I poured myself a giant glass of vodka with ice and lime, and I sat there in my underwear for an entire day, just staring at the letter. I was thinking about all the ways I'd already screwed my life up. Who the hell was I to go to New York City and pretend to be a writer? Who was I?

给自己倒了一大杯加了冰和柠檬的伏特加，就这样穿着内衣看着那封信坐了一整天。我在考虑以前把我的生活毁了的各种方式。那个要去纽约装作是一位作家的我，到底是谁？我是谁？

But the real reason, I think, I was a misfit, is that my daughter died the day she was born, and I hadn't figured out how to live with that story yet. After my daughter died I also spent a long time homeless, living under an overpass in a kind of profound state of zombie grief and loss that some of us encounter along the way. 

但是我想，真正的原因是我是一个不适者。我的女儿在出生的那天就去世了，我当时根本无法接受这件事。女儿去世后我无家可归了一段时间，住在一个天桥下。那种无尽的悲痛和困惑是很多人一生中都会遇到的。

Maybe all of us, if you live long enough. You know, homeless people are some of our most heroic misfits, because they start out as us. So you see, I'd missed fitting in to just about every category out there: daughter, wife, mother, scholar. And the dream of being a writer was really kind of like a small, sad stone in my throat.

如果活得够久也许所有人都会遇到。无家可归的人是我们中最可怕的不适者，因为从那时起他们就成为了我这样的人。可以看到我与所有的生活格格不入：作为女儿，作为妻子，作为妈妈，作为学者。而想要成为作家的梦想，也一直如鲠在喉。

Audience: How fancy?

观众：有多么精美？

Lidia Yuknavitch: I'm making a confession: I stole three linen napkins – from three different restaurants. And I shoved a menu down my pants. I just wanted some keepsakes so that when I got home, I could believe it had really happened to me. You know?

我承认我从三个不同的饭店偷了三块亚麻餐巾。我还在裤子里藏了一张菜单。我只是想在我回家时还能看到一些我带回来的纪念品让我相信我真的去过这里。你明白 么？

The three writers I wanted to meet were Carole Maso, Lynne Tillman and Peggy Phelan. These were not famous, best-selling authors, but to me, they were women-writer titans. Carole Maso wrote the book that later became my art bible. 

我想见的三位作家是卡罗尔·马索，琳恩·蒂尔曼 和佩吉·费伦。她们不算是最知名和畅销的作家，但是我把她们奉若神明。卡罗尔·马索的书后来成为了我的艺术指导。

It nearly killed me with joy to hang out with these three over-50-year-old women writers. And the reason it nearly killed me with joy is that I'd neverknown a joy like that. I'd never been in a room like that. My mother never went to college. 

能和这三位50多岁的女作家聊天快把我乐疯了。因为我从来不知道生活可以这么开心。我的生活中从来没有打开过这样美好的一扇门。我的母亲没有上过大学。

And my creative career to that point was a sort of small, sad, stillborn thing. So kind of in those first nights in New York I wanted to die there. I was just like, "Kill me now. I'm good. This is beautiful." Some of you in the room will understand what happened next.

从这一点来说我的创作生涯本来就是一个很小的，卑微的，会胎死腹中的事。在纽约的前几天 我希望就死在那里。我想说“杀了我吧！我要葬在这美好之中。”接下来发生了什么屋子里的一些人会理解。

First, they took me to the offices of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Farrar, Straus and Giroux was like my mega-dream press. I mean, T.S. Eliot and Flannery O'Connor were published there. The main editor guy sat me down and talked to me for a long time, trying to convince me I had a book in me about my life as a swimmer. 

首先，他们把我带到了法勒，斯特劳斯和吉鲁的办公室。法勒，斯特劳斯和吉鲁是我的终极梦想出版社。艾略特的诗集和弗兰纳里·奥康纳的小说都在那里出版。主编让我坐下和我聊了很久，一直在试图让我相信我写了一本关于我自己是游泳运动员的书。

I mean, that's how big a deal it was to me. You get it? Their lead editor, Carol Houck Smith, leaned over right in my face with these beady, bright, fierce eyes and said, "Well, send me something then, immediately!" See, now most people, especially TED people, would have run to the mailbox, right? 

这是我人生中多么重大的一件事啊。你明白了么？他们的主编，卡罗尔·霍克史密斯，靠在我面前闪烁着有神，明亮，犀利的目光跟我说：“寄给我 你的一些作品，马上！”大部分人，尤其是来能TED的人马上会去寄，对吧？

It took me over a decade to even imagine putting something in an envelope and licking a stamp.

而我花了很久的时间来思考要不要做这件事。

On the last night, I gave a big reading at the National Poetry Club. And at the end of the reading, Katharine Kidde of Kidde, Hoyt & Picard Literary Agency, walked straight up to me and shook my hand and offered me representation, like, on the spot. 

在最后一天晚上，我在全国诗歌俱乐部做了一场读书会。在读书会结束的时候，凯德公司的凯瑟琳·凯德和霍伊特与皮卡德文学社的人，径直走向我与我握手当场让我做他们的代表。

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. 

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。

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. 

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。

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.

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。

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.

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。

Thank you .

谢谢。

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