So, a few years ago I was at JFK Airport about to get on a flight, when I was approached by two women who I do not think would be insulted to hear themselves described as tiny old tough-talking Italian-American broads.
幾年前我在甘迺迪國際機場, 快上飛機時, 有兩位女士靠近我, 她們兩人矮小、蒼老, 是措辭嚴厲的 義大利裔美國女性, 我想他們聽我這麼說 並不會覺得受辱。
The taller one, who is like up here, she comes marching up to me, and she goes, "Honey, I gotta ask you something. You got something to do with that whole 'Eat, Pray, Love' thing that's been going on lately?"
較高的那位大概這麼高, 她快速走向我,接著說: 「親愛的,我得問你個問題。 你和最近流行的 《享受吧!一個人的旅行》有關?」
And I said, "Yes, I did."
我說:「是的。」
And she smacks her friend and she goes, "See, I told you, I said, that's that girl. That's that girl who wrote that book based on that movie." (Laughter)
她拍了一下朋友後說: 「看吧,我就說她是那女孩。 她就是寫了那本書的女孩, 根據那部電影寫的。」 (笑聲)
So that's who I am. And believe me, I'm extremely grateful to be that person, because that whole "Eat, Pray, Love" thing was a huge break for me. But it also left me in a really tricky position moving forward as an author trying to figure out how in the world I was ever going to write a book again that would ever please anybody, because I knew well in advance that all of those people who had adored "Eat, Pray, Love" were going to be incredibly disappointed in whatever I wrote next because it wasn't going to be "Eat, Pray, Love," and all of those people who had hated "Eat, Pray, Love" were going to be incredibly disappointed in whatever I wrote next because it would provide evidence that I still lived. So I knew that I had no way to win, and knowing that I had no way to win made me seriously consider for a while just quitting the game and moving to the country to raise corgis. But if I had done that, if I had given up writing, I would have lost my beloved vocation, so I knew that the task was that I had to find some way to gin up the inspiration to write the next book regardless of its inevitable negative outcome. In other words, I had to find a way to make sure that my creativity survived its own success. And I did, in the end, find that inspiration, but I found it in the most unlikely and unexpected place. I found it in lessons that I had learned earlier in life about how creativity can survive its own failure.
那就是我。 相信我,我非常榮幸能成為那個人, 因為《享受吧!一個人的旅行》的那整件事, 對我來說是天大的好運。 但那也讓我處在很微妙的位置, 那就是以作家身分繼續前進, 我到底要如何才能 再寫本可以取悅任何人的書, 因為我早知道 每位超愛《享受吧!一個人的旅行》的讀者 會有多麼失望, 因為不論我接下來寫什麼, 那都不再是《享受吧!一個人的旅行》; 而那些討厭《享受吧!一個人的旅行》的人 也會大失所望, 因為不論我接下來寫什麼, 那都證明了我還活著。 因此我知道自己沒有贏的機會, 也知道自己沒辦法贏, 這件事讓我認真思考了一陣子, 就放棄這場遊戲吧, 然後搬到鄉下去養柯基犬。 但如果我當時那麼做, 如果我當時放棄寫作, 就會失去最愛的天職。 因此,我知道任務是我得找到某個方法 來抓住靈感, 才能寫下一本書, 不管那無可避免的失敗。 換句話說,我得找到方法確保 我的創造力能在曾有的成功裡倖存。 後來,我找到了那靈感, 但我發現那是在最不可能, 也最想不到的地方出現。 我是在生活中 早已學過的課題中發現 創造力如何從過去的失敗中存活下來。
So just to back up and explain, the only thing I have ever wanted to be for my whole life was a writer. I wrote all through childhood, all through adolescence, by the time I was a teenager I was sending my very bad stories to The New Yorker, hoping to be discovered. After college, I got a job as a diner waitress, kept working, kept writing, kept trying really hard to get published, and failing at it. I failed at getting published for almost six years. So for almost six years, every single day, I had nothing but rejection letters waiting for me in my mailbox. And it was devastating every single time, and every single time, I had to ask myself if I should just quit while I was behind and give up and spare myself this pain. But then I would find my resolve, and always in the same way, by saying, "I'm not going to quit, I'm going home."
因此只要回顧並說明, 我這輩子唯一想做的事, 就是作家。 整個童年和青春期我都在寫, 在我還是青少女時, 我把自己的爛故事寄給《紐約客》, 希望能被發掘。 唸完大學,我開始當餐廳服務生, 我繼續工作、寫作, 為了能出版非常努力, 然後卻失敗了。 我有將近六年沒得到出版機會。 因此幾乎這六年的每一天, 除了拒絕信在信箱等我之外, 什麼都沒有。 每次都讓人傷心欲絕, 每一次,我都得自問 每當我失敗了,是不是該就此罷手、 放棄,讓自己不再受苦。 但之後我發現自己的決心,而且始終如一, 只要說:「我不打算放棄, 我要回家了。」
And you have to understand that for me, going home did not mean returning to my family's farm. For me, going home meant returning to the work of writing because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing, which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that's how I pushed through it.
你要了解對我來說, 回家的意思不是回到我家的農場。 對我來說, 回家意謂著回到寫作的工作上, 因為寫作就是我的家, 因為我熱愛寫作 勝於我討厭寫壞了的感覺, 那就是說我愛寫作 勝於我的自我, 終極的意義就是 我愛寫作勝於愛自己。 那就是我走過來的方式。
But the weird thing is that 20 years later, during the crazy ride of "Eat, Pray, Love," I found myself identifying all over again with that unpublished young diner waitress who I used to be, thinking about her constantly, and feeling like I was her again, which made no rational sense whatsoever because our lives could not have been more different. She had failed constantly. I had succeeded beyond my wildest expectation. We had nothing in common. Why did I suddenly feel like I was her all over again?
但奇怪的是 20 年後, 在《享受吧!一個人的旅行》的 瘋狂之旅期間, 我發現自己又再次用 當年那個沒出書的 年輕服務生認定一切, 我總是不斷想起她, 再次覺得自己就是她, 其實這沒什麼道理, 因為我們的生活早已天差地遠。 她不斷失敗, 而我曾超乎意料之外的成功。 我們沒有任何共通處。 為什麼我突然又覺得自己就是她?
And it was only when I was trying to unthread that that I finally began to comprehend the strange and unlikely psychological connection in our lives between the way we experience great failure and the way we experience great success. So think of it like this: For most of your life, you live out your existence here in the middle of the chain of human experience where everything is normal and reassuring and regular, but failure catapults you abruptly way out over here into the blinding darkness of disappointment. Success catapults you just as abruptly but just as far way out over here into the equally blinding glare of fame and recognition and praise. And one of these fates is objectively seen by the world as bad, and the other one is objectively seen by the world as good, but your subconscious is completely incapable of discerning the difference between bad and good. The only thing that it is capable of feeling is the absolute value of this emotional equation, the exact distance that you have been flung from yourself. And there's a real equal danger in both cases of getting lost out there in the hinterlands of the psyche.
一直到我試著抽絲剝繭, 才終於開始理解 那奇怪又不真實的精神連結 存在我倆生命中 經歷大起大落的方式之間。 用這個方式思考: 你大半輩子的生活 是在人類的歷史洪流中渡過, 每件事都很正常、可靠與規律, 但失敗讓你猛然落入遠在天邊、 黑得看不見五指的失望深淵裡。 成功也是讓你猛然落入 同樣遠在天邊的 那以名聲、肯定與讚賞 所構成的目盲眩光之中。 而在這兩種命運中,有一個 在客觀上,是被世人認為不好的, 而另一個則被視為好的, 但你的潛意識卻完全無法 分辨好與壞的差別。 唯一能感受到的是 這種情感方程式的絕對值, 那就是一直以來 你被拋離自己的距離。 這兩種情況都有同樣真實的危險, 就是在心靈深處迷失。
But in both cases, it turns out that there is also the same remedy for self-restoration, and that is that you have got to find your way back home again as swiftly and smoothly as you can, and if you're wondering what your home is, here's a hint: Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. So that might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service, it might be raising corgis, I don't know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.
但這兩者也同樣都有 自我修復的解方, 那就是你必須再次找到回家的路, 儘可能快速與平穩, 如果你想知道自己的家在何方, 可以試想: 你的家就是這世上, 你愛它比愛自己還多的地方。 因此那也許是創造,也許是家庭, 也許是發明、冒險、 信仰、佈道,也許是養柯基犬, 都有可能,你的家就是那個 你能奉獻活力的地方, 有了如此獨一無二的奉獻, 最後的結果就會變得微不足道。
For me, that home has always been writing. So after the weird, disorienting success that I went through with "Eat, Pray, Love," I realized that all I had to do was exactly the same thing that I used to have to do all the time when I was an equally disoriented failure. I had to get my ass back to work, and that's what I did, and that's how, in 2010, I was able to publish the dreaded follow-up to "Eat, Pray, Love." And you know what happened with that book? It bombed, and I was fine. Actually, I kind of felt bulletproof, because I knew that I had broken the spell and I had found my way back home to writing for the sheer devotion of it. And I stayed in my home of writing after that, and I wrote another book that just came out last year and that one was really beautifully received, which is very nice, but not my point. My point is that I'm writing another one now, and I'll write another book after that and another and another and another and many of them will fail, and some of them might succeed, but I will always be safe from the random hurricanes of outcome as long as I never forget where I rightfully live.
對我來說,家一直以來都是寫作。 因此在完成《享受吧!一個人的旅行》 不可思議又讓人迷惘的成功之後, 我了解自己需要做的 就和我處在迷惘的失敗中時 必須做的同一件事。 我得起身去工作, 那是我過去做的事,也是在 2010 年時, 我為什麼能出版那嚇人的東西 接續《享受吧!一個人的旅行》。 你知道那本書後來怎麼了嗎? 大慘敗,但我還是好好的。 其實我覺得自己就像百毒不侵, 因為我知道自己早就破除了魔咒, 我已經找到回家的路, 就是為了全然的奉獻而寫。 那之後我待在寫作的家, 寫了另一本書,在去年出版, 而且也頗受好評, 雖然那不是重點,但那真棒。 重點是我正在寫另一本書, 之後會再寫另一本書, 未來也會寫更多、更多書, 之中有很多本都會慘敗, 也許有幾本會成功, 但是我永遠會平安地 從不時出現的颶風般結局中活下來, 只要我永遠不忘 自己生活在對的地方。
Look, I don't know where you rightfully live, but I know that there's something in this world that you love more than you love yourself. Something worthy, by the way, so addiction and infatuation don't count, because we all know that those are not safe places to live. Right? The only trick is that you've got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most, and then build your house right on top of it and don't budge from it. And if you should someday, somehow get vaulted out of your home by either great failure or great success, then your job is to fight your way back to that home the only way that it has ever been done, by putting your head down and performing with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence whatever the task is that love is calling forth from you next. You just do that, and keep doing that again and again and again, and I can absolutely promise you, from long personal experience in every direction, I can assure you that it's all going to be okay. Thank you. (Applause)
我不知道哪裡對你來說是對的地方, 但我知道世上有某種 你愛它勝過愛自己的東西。 某種有價值的東西, 但是成癮和沉溺不算, 因為我們都知道那不安全,對吧。 唯一的訣竅是你得辨別 你最愛的東西中最好, 也最有價值的那個, 接著在那之上建立起自己的家, 不要讓步。 如果你在某天 從家裡被拋出, 不論是因為慘敗或是大勝, 你的工作就是努力回到那個家, 唯一能夠做到的方式 就是埋頭苦幹, 用勤奮、奉獻、尊重且崇敬的態度去做, 不論接下來這項任務是什麼, 愛都會在下一個階段呼喚你。 你只要做,不停地做, 一而再、再而三, 我能向你保證, 以我長久以來的 各種個人經驗來看, 我能保證一切都會平安無事。 謝謝。 (掌聲)