TED英语演讲视频：你为什么而去旅行？（附演讲稿）

TED是Technology, Entertainment, Design(科技、娱乐、设计)的缩写，这个会议的宗旨是"用思想的力量来改变世界"。TED演讲的特点是毫无繁杂冗长的专业讲座，观点响亮，开门见山，种类繁多，看法新颖。而且还是非常好的英语口语听力练习材料，建议坚持学习。

TED英语演讲视频：你为什么而去旅行？

对于许多人来说，清明节3天长假让我们像抓住了救命稻草一样，备好行囊来到远方，才能不辜负这自由时光。可随着全国主要道路进入堵车模式，各大景点人满为患，我们不禁再次思考，远行的价值到底在哪。远行究竟是洗涤了你的人生，还是换一个地方受苦。人的一生远行是必须的吗？你现在有资格谈远行吗？

我们嘲笑坐井观天，我们嘲笑躲在象牙塔里观世界，因此，我们远行，却发现更可嘲笑的荒原。这是为什么呢？说到底好坏由思维决定。如果我们想改变自己的人生，最高效的方法，是从改变自己的思维开始。

本期TED演讲者，旅行作家，Pico Iyer 告诉我们真正静下心来独处的魅力，只有当自己处于并享受这个状态时，我们才发现远行有时只是一个幌子，当你不能以合适的视角观察外界时，大地依然暗淡无光。Pico Iyer说，让自己可以培养更专注和更珍惜世界的视角的诀窍，就是静下心来与自己独处，哪里也不去。

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=u0153tqwy9a&width=500&height=375&auto=0

我们活在围墙的两端，墙内久了想出去，墙外久了想进来。我们被新鲜刺激所驱使，我们被新鲜刺激所伤。只有一个词，窥视我们的内心，并嘲笑至今，它是空虚。 习得专注于珍惜世界的视角，我们就从新鲜刺激的囚牢中，脱离出来。也许，远行的真正意义就在于，它让你在这莽撞与躁动的世界之中，保有沉静之心。

演讲稿

TED英语演讲视频：你为什么而去旅行？

I'm a lifelong traveler. Even as a little kid, I was actually working out that it would be cheaper to go to boarding school in England than just to the best school down the road from my parents' house in California. So, from the time I was nine years old I was flying alone several times a year over the North Pole, just to go to school. And of course the more I flew the more I came to love to fly, so the very week after I graduated from high school, I got a job mopping tables so that I could spend every season of my 18th year on a different continent. And then, almost inevitably, I became a travel writer so my job and my joy could become one. And I really began to feel that if you were lucky enough to walk around the candlelit temples of Tibet or to wander along the seafronts in Havana with music passing all around you, you could bring those sounds and the high cobalt skies and the flash of the blue ocean back to your friends at home, and really bring some magic and clarity to your own life. Except, as you all know, one of the first things you learn when you travel is that nowhere is magical unless you can bring the right eyes to it. You take an angry man to the Himalayas, he just starts complaining about the food. And I found that the best way that I could develop more attentive and more appreciative eyes was, oddly, by going nowhere, just by sitting still. And of course sitting still is how many of us get what we most crave and need in our accelerated lives, a break. But it was also the only way that I could find to sift through the slideshow of my experience and make sense of the future and the past. And so, to my great surprise, I found that going nowhere was at least as exciting as going to Tibet or to Cuba. And by going nowhere, I mean nothing more intimidating than taking a few minutes out of every day or a few days out of every season, or even, as some people do, a few years out of a life in order to sit still long enough to find out what moves you most, to recall where your truest happiness lies and to remember that sometimes making a living and making a life point in opposite directions.

我这辈子都是个旅行者。 即使还是一个小孩子的时候， 我便了解，事实上， 去读英国寄宿学校会比 去加州父母家附近 最好的学校就读还来得便宜。 所以，当我 9 岁时， 我在一年中，会独自飞行几回， 穿越北极，就只是去上学。 当然，飞得越频繁， 我越是爱上旅行， 所以就在我高中毕业后一周， 我找到一份清理桌子的工作， 为了让自己可以在 18 岁那年， 在地球不同的大陆上， 分别待上一季。 接着，几乎不可避免地 我成了一个旅游作家， 使我的工作和志趣 可以结合在一块儿。 我真的开始发觉 如果你可以幸运地 漫步于西藏的烛光寺庙， 或者在音乐的缭绕间 悠然信步于哈瓦那海岸， 你便能将那声音、天际 与靛蓝海洋的闪烁光芒 带给你家乡的朋友， 真确地捎来些许神奇， 点亮自身生命。 除了，如你们所知， 当旅行时，你学到的第一件事情是 你必须以正确的视角看世界， 否则大地依然黯淡无光。 你带一个易怒的男人爬喜马拉雅山， 他只会抱怨那儿的食物。 我发现，有点怪异的是， 最好的让自己可以培养 更专注和更珍惜世界的视角的诀窍是 哪儿都不去，静止于原处即可。 当然呆在原地正是我们许多人 寻常所得到的东西， 我们都渴望在快速的生活中获得休息。 但那却是我唯一的方法， 让自己可以重历自身的经验幻灯， 理解未来与过去。 如此，我惊异地发现， 我发现无所去处 和游览西藏或古巴一样，令人兴奋。 无所去处，只不过意谓着 每天花几分钟， 或每季花几天， 甚至，如同有些人所做的， 在生命中花上几年 长久地静思于某处， 寻找感动你最多的一瞬， 回忆你最真实的幸福时刻， 同时记住， 有时候，谋生与生活 彼此是处于光谱线上的两端的。

And of course, this is what wise beings through the centuries from every tradition have been telling us. It's an old idea. More than 2,000 years ago, the Stoics were reminding us it's not our experience that makes our lives, it's what we do with it. Imagine a hurricane suddenly sweeps through your town and reduces every last thing to rubble. One man is traumatized for life. But another, maybe even his brother, almost feels liberated, and decides this is a great chance to start his life anew. It's exactly the same event, but radically different responses. There is nothing either good or bad, as Shakespeare told us in "Hamlet," but thinking makes it so. And this has certainly been my experience as a traveler. Twenty-four years ago I took the most mind-bending trip across North Korea. But the trip lasted a few days. What I've done with it sitting still, going back to it in my head, trying to understand it, finding a place for it in my thinking, that's lasted 24 years already and will probably last a lifetime. The trip, in other words, gave me some amazing sights, but it's only sitting still that allows me to turn those into lasting insights. And I sometimes think that so much of our life takes place inside our heads, in memory or imagination or interpretation or speculation, that if I really want to change my life I might best begin by changing my mind. Again, none of this is new; that's why Shakespeare and the Stoics were telling us this centuries ago, but Shakespeare never had to face 200 emails in a day. (Laughter) The Stoics, as far as I know, were not on Facebook. We all know that in our on-demand lives, one of the things that's most on demand is ourselves. Wherever we are, any time of night or day, our bosses, junk-mailers, our parents can get to us. Sociologists have actually found that in recent years Americans are working fewer hours than 50 years ago, but we feel as if we're working more. We have more and more time-saving devices, but sometimes, it seems, less and less time. We can more and more easily make contact with people on the furthest corners of the planet, but sometimes in that process we lose contact with ourselves. And one of my biggest surprises as a traveler has been to find that often it's exactly the people who have most enabled us to get anywhere who are intent on going nowhere. In other words, precisely those beings who have created the technologies that override so many of the limits of old, are the ones wisest about the need for limits, even when it comes to technology. I once went to the Google headquarters and I saw all the things many of you have heard about; the indoor tree houses, the trampolines, workers at that time enjoying 20 percent of their paid time free so that they could just let their imaginations go wandering. But what impressed me even more was that as I was waiting for my digital I.D., one Googler was telling me about the program that he was about to start to teach the many, many Googlers who practice yoga to become trainers in it, and the other Googler was telling me about the book that he was about to write on the inner search engine, and the ways in which science has empirically shown that sitting still, or meditation, can lead not just to better health or to clearer thinking, but even to emotional intelligence. I have another friend in Silicon Valley who is really one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the latest technologies, and in fact was one of the founders of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly. And Kevin wrote his last book on fresh technologies without a smartphone or a laptop or a TV in his home. And like many in Silicon Valley, he tries really hard to observe what they call an Internet sabbath, whereby for 24 or 48 hours every week they go completely offline in order to gather the sense of direction and proportion they'll need when they go online again. The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology. And when you speak of the sabbath, look at the Ten Commandments -- there's only one word there for which the adjective "holy" is used, and that's the Sabbath. I pick up the Jewish holy book of the Torah -- its longest chapter, it's on the Sabbath. And we all know that it's really one of our greatest luxuries, the empty space. In many a piece of music, it's the pause or the rest that gives the piece its beauty and its shape. And I know I as a writer will often try to include a lot of empty space on the page so that the reader can complete my thoughts and sentences and so that her imagination has room to breathe.

当然，这是明智的众生历经几百年 从每个传统中所告诉我们的。 这是一个古老的概念。 早在两千多年前， 斯多葛学派提醒我们 并不是我们的经验 成就了我们的生命， 而是我们用那经验做了什么。 想象一下，一阵飓风 迅速扑向你的城市， 将所有一切化为废墟。 某个人身心遭受终身顿挫， 但另一个人，也许甚至是他的兄弟， 却几乎感觉释怀， 并认定，这是一个可以 使自己重获新生的重要机会。 这是同样的事件， 截然不同的回应。 没有什么是绝对的好坏， 正如莎士比亚 在《哈姆雷特》中所告诉我们的， 好坏由思维决定。 这无疑就是我 作为一个旅者的经验。 24 年前，我完成了一次 最不可思议的旅程： 橫跨朝鮮。 但这次旅行只持续了几天。 这经验对于无所去处的我来说， 允许我可以在心思中回朔， 试着了解它，让它在我的思维中 寻得一个位置， 在那儿，它已存留了 24 年， 而且很可能会在我这生中， 一直持续下去。 换句话说， 这次旅行， 带给我一些惊人的景致， 但唯有处于静止的状态 才让我得以将这些风景线 化为更长的见识。 我有时会想，我们的生活 有太多东西发生在 我们自己的脑袋里， 在回忆中，在想象里， 透过诠释，或是猜测， 如果我真想改变我的生命， 我可能最好从 改变我的思维开始。 同样，这一切都不是新想法; 这就是为什么莎士比亚和斯多葛学派 在几个世纪前就告诉我们， 然而，莎士比亚从未面对过 一天收到两百多封电邮的日子。 (笑声) 据我所知，斯多葛派的学者们 也没待在脸书上。 我们都知道，在我们的按需生活中， 一种最迫切需要之物 就是自己。 无论我们处于何处，处于何时， 无论是夜晚或白天中的任何时刻， 我们的老板，垃圾邮件， 我们的父母都能找到我们。 社会学家近年来所发现的是， 当今美国人的工作时间 竟然比 50 年前还少， 但我们却觉得自己的工时更长。 我们有越来越多的 可以用来节省时间的设备， 但有时，时间似乎越来越少。 我们比以前更容易与 身处地球另一端的人们联系， 但有时候，在那过程中， 我们与自己断了线。 作为一个旅行者， 让我最为诧异的事情之一就是 我发现，时常，往往那些 最使我们能够走向世界各地的人 却最希望身居原处。 换句话说，正是那些 创造了打破旧时的 限制人出游的科技的人们 才是最具智慧的个体， 他们理解限制的必须， 甚至在面对科技本身时，亦是如此。 有一次我造访谷歌总部， 我见到了所有你们听说过的事; 室内树屋，蹦床， 拥有 20% 属于自己付费工时的员工， 允许他们的想象自由漫游。 但更让我感到印象深刻的是， 当我正在等待我的数字身份证时， 有位谷歌员工告诉我一个项目， 说他正打算教许许多多的谷歌员工 来练习瑜伽，并成为训练师， 而另外一个谷歌员工 向我阐述了一本他正想写的书， 一本关于内在寻索的书， 以及科学如何经验性地证明 打坐，或冥想 不仅能促进健康，明晰思维， 甚至也能增加情绪智慧。 我有另一个在硅谷工作的朋友， 他的确是当前最前沿科技的 最有说服力的代言人，事实上， 他是《连线》杂志的 创始人之一，凯文·凯利。 凯文当时正在写一本有关最新技术的书， 但他家里却没有智能手机， 笔记本电脑，或者电视。 如同许多住在硅谷的人们， 他非常努力地观察 那个称为互联网安息日的东西， 在每个星期，有 24 或 48 小时， 他们会彻底地下线， 以寻求一点方向感， 用来重新调整，并汲取 他们重新上线时之所需。 有件科技可能尚未给予我们的是 如何可以更聪明地使用科技。 谈到休息日， 让我们看看十戒吧， 其中只有一个字的形容词涉及“神圣”， 而那就是安息日。 我拿起犹太圣典《托拉》， 它最长的章节，就是关于安息日。 我们都知道，这真是 我们所拥有的最大奢侈之一： 空。 在许多音乐作品中，停顿或静默 赋予了这作品美丽形貌。 我知道，作为一个作家， 我时常会在页面中留下空白， 让读者可以完整地 领会我的思维与句法， 以留给想象呼吸的空间。

Now, in the physical domain, of course, many people, if they have the resources, will try to get a place in the country, a second home. I've never begun to have those resources, but I sometimes remember that any time I want, I can get a second home in time, if not in space, just by taking a day off. And it's never easy because, of course, whenever I do I spend much of it worried about all the extra stuff that's going to crash down on me the following day. I sometimes think I'd rather give up meat or sex or wine than the chance to check on my emails. (Laughter) And every season I do try to take three days off on retreat but a part of me still feels guilty to be leaving my poor wife behind and to be ignoring all those seemingly urgent emails from my bosses and maybe to be missing a friend's birthday party. But as soon as I get to a place of real quiet, I realize that it's only by going there that I'll have anything fresh or creative or joyful to share with my wife or bosses or friends. Otherwise, really, I'm just foisting on them my exhaustion or my distractedness, which is no blessing at all.

现在，在实际的领域中， 当然有很多人， 倘若他们稍微富余的话， 会试着在国内拥有第二个家。 我从未有过那些资源， 但我有时记得 任何时候，若我想的话， 我可以给自己放一天假， 来适时地，获得第二个家。 当然，这从来就不容易， 每次我这么做， 对于所有多出来的 会压垮我隔日工作天的忧虑就会出现。 有时我会觉得，我宁愿 放弃吃肉，性生活，或红酒， 也不愿失去任何一丁点查邮箱的机会。 (笑声) 每一季，我的确给自己三天假期， 但关于丢下我妻子 以及忽略那些 老板寄来的看似紧急的邮件， 以及错过一个朋友的派对， 我内心某处仍然觉得有负罪感。 但一旦来到某个真正安静的地方， 我才了解，只有去那儿， 我才能拥有全新的， 有创意的，或快意之事 和我妻子，上司和朋友分享。 否则，老天， 我能够加诸于他们的 仅仅是我的疲惫或分神状态， 实在无福可言。

And so when I was 29, I decided to remake my entire life in the light of going nowhere. One evening I was coming back from the office, it was after midnight, I was in a taxi driving through Times Square, and I suddenly realized that I was racing around so much I could never catch up with my life. And my life then, as it happened, was pretty much the one I might have dreamed of as a little boy. I had really interesting friends and colleagues, I had a nice apartment on Park Avenue and 20th Street. I had, to me, a fascinating job writing about world affairs, but I could never separate myself enough from them to hear myself think -- or really, to understand if I was truly happy. And so, I abandoned my dream life for a single room on the backstreets of Kyoto, Japan, which was the place that had long exerted a strong, really mysterious gravitational pull on me. Even as a child I would just look at a painting of Kyoto and feel I recognized it; I knew it before I ever laid eyes on it. But it's also, as you all know, a beautiful city encircled by hills, filled with more than 2,000 temples and shrines, where people have been sitting still for 800 years or more. And quite soon after I moved there, I ended up where I still am with my wife, formerly our kids, in a two-room apartment in the middle of nowhere where we have no bicycle, no car, no TV I can understand, and I still have to support my loved ones as a travel writer and a journalist, so clearly this is not ideal for job advancement or for cultural excitement or for social diversion. But I realized that it gives me what I prize most, which is days and hours. I have never once had to use a cell phone there. I almost never have to look at the time, and every morning when I wake up, really the day stretches in front of me like an open meadow. And when life throws up one of its nasty surprises, as it will, more than once, when a doctor comes into my room wearing a grave expression, or a car suddenly veers in front of mine on the freeway, I know, in my bones, that it's the time I've spent going nowhere that is going to sustain me much more than all the time I've spent racing around to Bhutan or Easter Island.

所以当我 29 岁时， 我决定要重整自己全部的生活， 为了获得那无所去处的体验。 有天晚上，我从办公室回家， 当时午夜时分，我正在出租车上， 经过了时代广场， 我突然惊觉，自己仓皇度日 以至于永远无法赶上自己的生活。 而我当时的生活，事实上 已差不多就和我小时梦想的一般。 我有非常有趣的朋友和同事， 我在公园大道和第 20 街交口 有个非常棒的公寓。 我有个对我来说绝佳的工作， 这工作让我得以撰写世界事务， 但我从来未能将自己和它清楚分开， 让自己倾听自己的思绪， 或，去理解是否我真的处于喜乐之中。 因此，我放弃我梦想中的工作， 就为了待在一个位于日本京都 某后街里的单间房内， 这地方长久以来产生了一种强烈的 对我来说极为神秘的吸引力。 甚至在我孩提时代， 我会看着一幅京都的画作 并感觉，我认出它来了， 在定睛审视它之前，我便知如此。 但它也是，如同大家所知， 是一个群山环绕的美丽城市， 充满了 2000 多座寺庙和神社， 人们在那儿静默了 800 年以上之久。 就在我搬到那儿不久， 我与现在的妻儿， 挤在一个有两间房的公寓里， 在一个不毛之地， 我们没有自行车，没有车， 没有可以理解的电视节目， 我还得以作家和记者的身份， 抚养我的至亲家人， 因此很明显地，这对职业生涯， 对文化探索， 或对体验社会文化纷繁来说， 都不是一个理想的规划。 但我理解，这赋予了我那些 我最珍爱的日子， 与时刻。 我在那儿从未需要使用手机。 我基本上几乎无须看时间， 每天早上我醒来时， 在我眼前展开来的一天 是一片敞开的草地。 当生活向你抛出某个重大惊喜时， 它不只会出现一次， 当一个医生来到我房里， 脸上带着肃穆的表情， 或一辆汽车在高速公路上突然改道， 漂移到我车子前方， 我知道，在我骨子里， 正是那无所去处的时光 帮助我持续保持平静， 那比起我在不丹和复活节岛 所度之日都要有帮助。

I'll always be a traveler -- my livelihood depends on it -- but one of the beauties of travel is that it allows you to bring stillness into the motion and the commotion of the world. I once got on a plane in Frankfurt, Germany, and a young German woman came down and sat next to me and engaged me in a very friendly conversation for about 30 minutes, and then she just turned around and sat still for 12 hours. She didn't once turn on her video monitor, she never pulled out a book, she didn't even go to sleep, she just sat still, and something of her clarity and calm really imparted itself to me. I've noticed more and more people taking conscious measures these days to try to open up a space inside their lives. Some people go to black-hole resorts where they'll spend hundreds of dollars a night in order to hand over their cell phone and their laptop to the front desk on arrival. Some people I know, just before they go to sleep, instead of scrolling through their messages or checking out YouTube, just turn out the lights and listen to some music, and notice that they sleep much better and wake up much refreshed. I was once fortunate enough to drive into the high, dark mountains behind Los Angeles, where the great poet and singer and international heartthrob Leonard Cohen was living and working for many years as a full-time monk in the Mount Baldy Zen Center. And I wasn't entirely surprised when the record that he released at the age of 77, to which he gave the deliberately unsexy title of "Old Ideas," went to number one in the charts in 17 nations in the world, hit the top five in nine others. Something in us, I think, is crying out for the sense of intimacy and depth that we get from people like that. who take the time and trouble to sit still. And I think many of us have the sensation, I certainly do, that we're standing about two inches away from a huge screen, and it's noisy and it's crowded and it's changing with every second, and that screen is our lives. And it's only by stepping back, and then further back, and holding still, that we can begin to see what the canvas means and to catch the larger picture. And a few people do that for us by going nowhere.

我永远都会是个旅者，那是我生活之所系，然而旅行的美好之处在于，它让你保有沉静之心，在这莽撞与躁动的世界之中。 有一次，我在德国的法兰克福搭机，一位年轻的德国女子坐到我身旁，与我展开非常友善的对谈，近30 分钟， 接着，她就转过身去， 静静地坐在那儿 12 有个小时之久。 她未曾打开屏幕， 她也没有拿出书本， 甚至从未睡去， 就只是静静地坐着， 她那明晰和沉静已真正传授于我。 近来我注意到 有越来越多人刻意地 试图在他们的生活中打开一片空间。 有些人参加黑洞之旅 他们会一晚花上几百美元 只为了将自己的手机与电脑 上缴给度假接待处。 有些我认识的人 并不会在睡前刷屏看信息， 或观看 YouTube 视频， 反而就只是关灯，听音乐， 他们知道，这样会有更好的睡眠，在隔天一早将更神清气爽。 我曾经有幸地 驾驶于洛杉矶旁的 高耸黯黑的群山之中， 那儿曾经住了伟大的诗人乐手 -- 举世皆知的莱纳德·科恩。 他曾在那儿附近作了好几年的僧人， 就在博帝山禅学中心。 当他在 77 岁发表了 自己的唱片专辑， 他故意给这个专辑取了 一个非常不性感的名称 “旧思维”， 然而这专辑在全球17个国家冲上排行榜首位， 在另外9个国家冲上前 5 名。它触动了我们内心里某种东西， 触动了躁动的人们 一种亲密、深刻与沉静的思绪。 我想许多人拥有这种感觉，我当然也是， 我们站在一个巨大的屏幕前，距离大约两英寸，人声鼎沸，摩肩接踵， 每一刻都在变动着，而那屏幕即为我们自己的人生。 唯有向后退一步，再回头一步，静静地屏住气，我们才能开始了解那画布上描绘之物，并以更宽广的眼界洞察世界。有些人已如此做了，他们无须来去。

So, in an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still. So you can go on your next vacation to Paris or Hawaii, or New Orleans; I bet you'll have a wonderful time. But, if you want to come back home alive and full of fresh hope, in love with the world, I think you might want to try considering going nowhere.

因此，在这个快速转变的时代， 没有什么比慢下来还要振奋人心。 在这个失焦的时代，没有什么比凝神专注来得奢侈。在这个不断变动的时代， 没有什么比静思来得急迫了。 所以，下一次当你们去巴黎，夏威夷或新奥尔良度假时，我保证你们会有一段美好时光， 但如果你们想回家， 期待满怀全新希望，爱这个世界，我想，也许你们应该试着哪儿都别去。

Thank you.

谢谢各位。

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