中英双语阅读472：How to Find True Love 如何发现真爱

英语口语屋 2021-03-10

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How to Find True Love

如何发现真爱

I began to learn about love in dancing school, at age 11 remember thinking on the first day I was going to fall madly in love with one of the boys and spend the next years of my life kissing and waltzing.

我11岁在一所舞蹈学校上学时开始对爱有所了解。记得去学校的第一天我就在想，自己将疯狂地爱上某个男孩子，并与他在亲吻、华尔兹中度过接下来的时光。

During class,however,I sat among the girls,waiting for a boy to ask me to dance. To my complete shock, I was consistently one of the last to be asked. At first I thought the boys had made a terrible mistake. I was so funny and pretty, and I could beat everyone I knew at tennis and climb trees faster than a cat. Why didn't they dash toward me?

在课堂上，我坐在一群女孩子中，等着男孩来邀我跳舞。然而令我完全震惊的是，我总是最后一个被邀请的。起初我认为是男孩子的严重失误：我如此风趣如此可爱，打网球胜过所有我认识的人，爬起树来比猫还要快，他们为什么不争先恐后地冲过来邀请我吗？

Yet class after class, I watched boys dressed in blue blazers and gray pants head toward girls in flowered shifts whose perfect ponytails swung back and forth like metronomes. They fell easily into step with one another in a way that was completely mysterious to me. I came to believe that love belonged only to those who glided, who never shimmied up trees or even really touched the ground.

一堂又一堂课，我看着那些穿着蓝色运动上衣和灰色裤子的男孩一头扎向那些穿着花边衬衫的女孩子，她们漂亮的马尾辫有节奏地晃来晃去。他们的舞步总是很合拍，这完全让我感到不可思议。我开始相信，爱只属于那些优雅文静的女孩子，而不会像我这样晃悠着爬树甚至重重摔在地上的女孩。

By the time I was 13,I knew how to subtly tilt my head and make my tears fall back into ray eyes, instead of down my cheeks, when no one asked me to dance. I also discovered the “powder room”, which became my softly lit, reliable retreat. Whenever I started to cry, I'd excuse myself and run in there.

13岁时，我已经学会了在没人请我跳舞时，如何巧妙地仰起头，将眼泪忍住，不让它们流下緣颊。我还发现了“化妆室”，那里灯光柔和，成了我可靠的躲避之处。每次我要哭的时候，就借故跑到那里去。

I finally stopped crying when I met Matt, who was quiet and hung out on the edges of the room. When we danced for the first time,be wouldn't even look at me in the eyes. But he was cute, and he told great stories. We became good buddies, dancing every dance together until the end of school.

后来我遇见了马特，终于不再哭泣。他静静地出现在房间的一边。我们第一次跳舞时，他甚至不敢正视我。但是他很可爱，而且会讲很多好听的故事。我们成了好朋友，每次都一起跳舞，这样一直到毕北。

I learned from him my most important early lesson about romance: that the potential for love exists in comers, in the most unlikely as well as the most obvious places.

从他那儿我学到了有关恋爱的最重要的早期课程：爱的可能性无处不在，既在最显眼之处，也在最不起眼的地方。

For years my love life continued to be one long tragic-comic novel. In college I fell in love with a tall English major who rode a motorcycle. He stood me up on our sixth date--an afternoon of sky diving. I jumped out of the plane alone and Landed in a parking lot.

多年来，我的爱情生活一直就像一部悲喜相交的长篇小说。上大学时，我爱上了英语系一个骑摩托车的高个子男孩，我们约好一天下午去跳伞，那是我们的第六次约会，他失约了。我只好独自从飞机上跳下，降落在一个停车场上。

In my mid-20s I moved to New York City where love is as hard to find as a legal parking spot. My first Valentine's Day there, I went on a date to a crowed bar on the Upper West Side. Halfway through dinner, my date excused himself and never returned.

二十四五岁时，我搬到了纽约。在那里，找寻真爱如同找一个合法的泊车位一样困难，在纽约的第一个情人节，我前往西区一间拥挤的酒吧赴约，晚餐吃了一半，我的约会对象借故离席后，再也没有回来。

At the time I lived with a beautiful roommate. Flowers piled up at our door like snowdrifts, and the light on the answering machine always blinked in a panicky way, overloaded with messages from her admirers. Limousines purred outside, with dates waiting for her behind tinted windows.

当时与我同住的是个漂亮女孩，门口的鲜花多得像雪堆，录音电话上的指示灯疯狂地闪个不停，里面录满了爱慕她的人的留言。豪华轿车停在外面，遨她赴约的人在有色玻璃车窗后等待着她。

In my mind, love was something behind a tinted window, part apparition, part shadow, definitely unreachable. Whenever I spotted happy-looking couples, I'd wonder where they found love, and want to follow them home for the answer.

在我的脑海里，爱情就像是有色玻璃后的某种东西，半隐半现，难以企及。每当我看到一对对脸上洋溢着幸福的情侣，我就想问问他们是如何找到真爱的，并想跟随他们一起回家，探个究竞。

After a few years in the city I got my dream job--writing about weddings for a magazine called 7 Days. I had to find interesting engaged couples and write up their love stories. I got to ask total strangers the things I'd always wanted to know.

在纽约待了几年之后，我终于得到了自己梦寐以求的工作——为一个名为《七日谈》的杂志写婚礼报道。我的任务就是寻找一些有趣的订了婚的情侣，并将他们的爱情故事写出来。这使我终于有机会向那些陌生人打听我一直想知道的事情。

I found out at least one sure answer to the question "How do you know it's love?" You know when the everyday things surrounding you--the leaves, the shade of light in the sky, a bowl of strawberries--suddenly shimmer with a kind of unreality.

我发现至少有一个确切的答案可以回答“你怎么知道这是爱？”这个问题。当你周围一些原来平常的东西，像树叶、天空中的光影、一碗草莓，忽然间蒙上了一层梦幻的色彩，你会知道这就是爱。

You know when the tiny details about another person, ones that are insignificant to most people, seem fascinating and incredible to you. One groom told me he loved everything about his future wife, from her handwriting to the way she scratched on their apartment door like a cat when she came home. One bride said she fell in love with her fiance because "one night, a moth was flying around a light bulb, and he caught it and let it out the window. I said, 'That's it. He's the guy.'"

一个人的某些方面在大多数人看来可能是微不足道的，但对恋爱中的人来说却是迷人而奇妙的。一位新郎曾告诉我，他爱未婚妻的一切，从她的字体到她回家时像猫一样挠门的习惯。有一位新娘爱上她的未婚夫则是因为“有一晚，一只飞蛾在灯泡周围飞来飞去，他捉住了它，然后将它从窗户放了出去。当时我想：‘没错，他就是我要找的人。’”

You also know it's love when you can't stop talking to each other. Almost every couple I've ever interviewed said that on their first or second date, they talked for hours and hours. For some, falling in love is like walking into a soundproof confessional booth, a place where you can tell all.

当你们滔滔不绝地相互倾诉时，你也会知道那就是爱。我采访过的情侣几乎每一对都说，他们在第一次或第二次约会时，一谈就是几个小时。对一些人来说，坠入爱河就像是走进一间隔音的忏悔室，在那里你可以倾诉一切。

Finding love can be like discovering a gilded ballroom on the other side of your dingy apartment, and at the same time like finding a pair of great old blue jeans that are exactly your size and seem as if you've worn them forever. I can't tell you how many women have told me they knew they were in love because they forgot to wear makeup around their boyfriend. Or because they felt at ease hanging around him in flannel pajamas. There's some modern truth to Cinderella's tale--it's love when you're incredibly comfortable, when the shoe fits perfectly.

找到爱情就像是在你昏暗公寓的另一边，发现了一个豪华舞厅：同时又像是找到了一条非常合身而且仿佛你已经穿了很久的质地很好的蓝色旧牛仔裤。我无法说清究竟有多少女人告诉过我，她们确信自己在恋爱，因为她们在男友面前忘记了化妆：或者因为穿着法兰絨的睡衣在他身边晃来晃去也觉得很自在。灰姑娘的故事即使在现代，也有其真实性：当你感到无比惬意时，当那双舞鞋恰恰合你的脚时，那肯定就是爱。

Finally, I think you're in love if you can make each other laugh at the very worst times--when the IRS is auditing you or when you are driving a convertible in a rainstorm or when your hair is turning gray. As someone once told me, 90 percent of being in love is making each other's life funnier and easier, all the way to the deathbed.

最后一点，如果你们在最糟的时候，比方说，在国内收入署审查你的账目的时候，在暴风雪中开着敞篷车的时候，或者当你的头发变灰白的时候，还能使对方开心地发笑，那你们就是在相爱。正如有人曾告诉我的那样，爱情让恋爱中的人感到生活百分之九十都是轻松有趣的，直到生命的终结。

Seven years ago I started writing about love and weddings for The New York Times in a column called "Vows". And now that I have been on this beat for so long, a strange thing has happened: I'm considered an expert on love. The truth is, love is still mostly a mystery to me. The only thing I can confidently say is this: Love is as plentiful as oxygen. You don't have to be thin, naturally blond, super-successful, socially connected, knowledgeable about politics or even particularly charming to find it.

7年前，我开始为《纽约时报》的“誓言”专栏写关于恋爱和婚姻的报道。由于我从事这一行北很长时间，竟发生了一件怪事:我被人看成是爱情专家。事实上，爱情对我来说仍旧是一个谜。我唯一能自信地说的就是:爱情就像氧气一样丰富。为了得到它，你不需要有苗条的身材、天生的金发、巨大的成就、良好的社会关系、渊博的政治知识甚至富有魅力。

I've interviewed many people who were down on their luck in every way--a ballerina with chronic back problems, a physicist who had been on 112 (he counted) disastrous blind dates, a clarinet player who was a single dad and could barely pay the rent. But love, when they found it, brought humor, candlelight, home-cooked meals, fun, adventure, poetry and long conversations into their lives.

我采访过许多遭受各种厄运的人:患上慢性背疾的芭蕾舞女演员，与112(据他自己数）个从未谋面的人有过失败的约会的物理学家，一位几乎付不起房租又是单身父亲的单簧管吹奏者…但是当他们找到真爱时，爱情就会把幽默、烛光、家常便饭、乐趣、冒险精神、诗歌和畅谈融入他们的生活。

When people ask me where to find love, I tell a story about one of my first job interviews. It was with an editor at a famous literary magazine. I had no experience or skills, and he didn't for one second consider hiring me. But he gave me some advice I will never forget. He said, "Go out into the world. Work hard and concentrate on what you love to do, writing. If you become good, we will find you. "

当人们问我在哪里能找到真爱时，我就会给他们讲我第一次工作面试时的故事。当时面试我的是一家著名文学杂志社的一名编辑。那时，我没有任何经验和技巧，他也根本没有想要雇用我，但他给我提了一些让我终生难忘的建议。他说:“到社会中去，集中精力努力做好你想做的事——写作。如果你做得好，我们会找到你的

That's why I always tell people looking for love to wait for that "I won the lottery" feeling--wait, wait, wait! Don't read articles about how to trap, seduce or hypnotize a mate. Don't worry about your lipstick or your height, because it's not going to matter. Just live your life well, take care of yourself, and don't mope too much. Love will find you.

这就是为什么我一直告诉那些追求爱情的人，让他们去等待那种“我中奖了”的感觉，等待，等待，再等待！你不必去读那些教你如何捕捉、引诱或使男人着迷的文章，也不必去担心那些诸如口红或身高之类的小事，因为这并不重要。只要好好生活，照顾好自己，别太忧郁，爱情终会找到你。

Eventually it even found me. At 28, I met my husband in a stationery store. I was buying a typewriter ribbon, and he was looking at Filofaxes. I remember that his eyes perfectly matched his faded jeans. He remembers that my sneakers were full of sand. He still talks about those sneakers and how they evoked his childhood--bonfires by the ocean, driving on the sand in an old jeep--all those things that he cherished.

最终，爱情也找到了我。28岁那年，在一家文具店，我遇到了现在的丈夫。当时，成正在买打字机用的色带，他则在看备忘记事本。我还记得，他的眼睛与他那条褪色的牛仔裤很相配。而他则忘不了我那双里面满是沙子的运动鞋。至今他还说起我那双运动鞋，并且说它们是如何唤起了他对童年的回忆——海边的篝火，驾着老式吉普车在沙滩上兜风——所有这些都是他最珍贵的回忆。

How did I know that it was true love? Our first real date lasted for nine hours; we just couldn't stop talking. I had never been able to dance in my life, but I could dance with him, perfectly in step. I have learned that it's love when you finally stop tripping over your toes.

我怎么知道这是真爱呢？我们第一次真正的约会持续了整整9个小时，我们竟有说不完的话！遇到他之前，我从来跳不好舞，但我却能和他一起跳，舞步还非常合拍。我终于明白，是爱情使我不再绊脚。

A year after we met, we married.

认识一年后，我们结婚了。

I have come to cherish writing the "Vows" column. With each story I hear, I have proof that love, optimism, guts, grace, perfect partners and good luck do, in fact, exist. Love, in my opinion, is not a fantasy, not the stuff of romance novels or fairy tales. It's as gritty and real as the subway, it comes around just as regularly, and as long as you can stick it out on the platform, you won't miss it.

我开始珍视我所主持的“誓言”专栏。我所听到的每一个故事都向我证实了，爱情、乐观、勇气、风度以及完美的伴侣的确存在。在我看来，爱情不是幻想，不是浪漫小说和童话故事的素材。爱就像地铁一样执着而真实，就像地铁一样会按时来到，只要你坚持在月台上等待，你就不会错过它。

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