One hot October morning, I got off the all-night train in Mandalay, the old royal capital of Burma, now Myanmar. And out on the street, I ran into a group of rough men standing beside their bicycle rickshaws. And one of them came up and offered to show me around. The price he quoted was outrageous. It was less than I would pay for a bar of chocolate at home.
Jednog vrućeg listopadnog jutra sišao sam s cjelonoćnog vlaka za Mandalay, staru kraljevsku prijestolnicu Burme, sada Myanmar. I na ulici sam sreo skupinu grubih muškaraca koji stoje pored svojih bicikl rikši. Jedan mi je prišao i ponudio mi da me provede. Cijena koju je stavio bila je nezamisliva. Manje nego bih platio čokoladicu kod kuće.
So I clambered into his trishaw, and he began pedaling us slowly between palaces and pagodas. And as he did, he told me how he had come to the city from his village. He'd earned a degree in mathematics. His dream was to be a teacher. But of course, life is hard under a military dictatorship, and so for now, this was the only way he could make a living. Many nights, he told me, he actually slept in his trishaw so he could catch the first visitors off the all-night train.
Tako da sam se popeo u rikšu, i počeo je pedalirati polako između mjesta i pagoda. I dok je to radio rekao mi je kako je došao u grad sa sela. Imao je diplomu iz matematike. Njegov san je bio da bude učitelj. Ali naravno, život je težak u vojnoj diktaturi, i za sada, ovo je jedini način da zaradi za život. Puno noći je, rekao mi je, zapravo spavao u svojoj rikši tako da bi mogao uhvatiti prve posjetitelje iz cijelonoćnog vlaka.
And very soon, we found that in certain ways, we had so much in common -- we were both in our 20s, we were both fascinated by foreign cultures -- that he invited me home.
I uskoro, shvatili smo da na određene načine, imamo jako puno toga zajedničkog -- bili smo u 20im godinama, fascinirale su nas strane kulture -- tako da me pozvao kući.
So we turned off the wide, crowded streets, and we began bumping down rough, wild alleyways. There were broken shacks all around. I really lost the sense of where I was, and I realized that anything could happen to me now. I could get mugged or drugged or something worse. Nobody would know.
Pa smo sišli sa širokih, zakrčenih ulica, i počeli smo se kotrljati kroz grube, divlje uličice. Svuda su bile raspadajuće kolibe. Izgubio sam osjećaj gdje sam, i shvatio sam da mi se sada svašta može dogoditi. Mogli bi me opljačkati ili drogirati ili nešto gore. Nitko nije morao znati.
Finally, he stopped and led me into a hut, which consisted of just one tiny room. And then he leaned down, and reached under his bed. And something in me froze. I waited to see what he would pull out. And finally he extracted a box. Inside it was every single letter he had ever received from visitors from abroad, and on some of them he had pasted little black-and-white worn snapshots of his new foreign friends.
Napokon, stali smo i uveo me u kolibu, koja se sastojala od jedne sićušne sobe. I sagnuo se, posegnuo ispod kreveta. I nešto u meni se smrzlo. Čekao sam da vidim što će izvući. I napokon je izvukao kutiju koja je sadržavala svako pismo koje je primio od posjetitelja iz inozemstva, na neka je nalijepio male crno bijele fotografije svojih novih stranih prijatelja.
So when we said goodbye that night, I realized he had also shown me the secret point of travel, which is to take a plunge, to go inwardly as well as outwardly to places you would never go otherwise, to venture into uncertainty, ambiguity, even fear.
Tako da kada smo se pozdravili te noći shvatio sam da mi je također pokazao tajnu svrhu putovanja, a to je odvažiti se, ići unutra ali i prema van na mjesta na kojima inače nikad ne bi išli, da zavirite u nesigurnost, nejasnost, čak i strah.
At home, it's dangerously easy to assume we're on top of things. Out in the world, you are reminded every moment that you're not, and you can't get to the bottom of things, either.
Kod kuće, vrlo je lako pretpostaviti da imamo sve pod kontrolom. Vani, u svijetu, podsjećaju vas svakog trenutka kada nemate, niti je možete steći.
Everywhere, "People wish to be settled," Ralph Waldo Emerson reminded us, "but only insofar as we are unsettled is there any hope for us."
Svugdje, "Ljudi se žele smiriti," podsjetio nas je Ralph Waldo Emerson, "ali samo dok nismo smireni postoji nada za nas."
At this conference, we've been lucky enough to hear some exhilarating new ideas and discoveries and, really, about all the ways in which knowledge is being pushed excitingly forwards. But at some point, knowledge gives out. And that is the moment when your life is truly decided: you fall in love; you lose a friend; the lights go out. And it's then, when you're lost or uneasy or carried out of yourself, that you find out who you are.
Na ovoj konferenciji, bili smo sretni čuti neke nevjerojatne ideje i nova otkrića i stvarno, o svim načinima na koje znanje napreduje. Ali u nekoj točci, znanje posustaje. I to je trenutak kada je vaš život zapravo odlučen: zaljubite se, izgubite prijatelja, svjetla se ugase. I onda, kada ste izgubljeni ili nemirni ili izvan sebe, zapravo otkrijete sebe.
I don't believe that ignorance is bliss. Science has unquestionably made our lives brighter and longer and healthier. And I am forever grateful to the teachers who showed me the laws of physics and pointed out that three times three makes nine. I can count that out on my fingers any time of night or day. But when a mathematician tells me that minus three times minus three makes nine, that's a kind of logic that almost feels like trust.
Ne vjerujem da je neznanje blagoslov. Znanost je naše živote nesumnjivo učinila svjetlijima, dužima i zdravijima. I zauvijek sam zahvalan učiteljima koji su mi pokazali zakone fizike i pokazali da je tri puta tri devet. Mogu to izbrojati na prste u bilo koje doba dana ili noći Ali kada mi matematičar kaže da je minus tri puta minus tri devet, to je logika koja se čini kao povjerenje.
The opposite of knowledge, in other words, isn't always ignorance. It can be wonder. Or mystery. Possibility. And in my life, I've found it's the things I don't know that have lifted me up and pushed me forwards much more than the things I do know. It's also the things I don't know that have often brought me closer to everybody around me.
Suprotnost znanja, drugim riječima, nije uvijek neznanje. Može biti čuđenje. Ili misterija. Mogućnost. I u svom životu, otkrio sam da su stvari koje ne znam one koje su me podigle i pogurale naprijed više nego stvari koje sam znao. I stvari koje ne znam često su me dovele bliže svima oko sebe.
For eight straight Novembers, recently, I traveled every year across Japan with the Dalai Lama. And the one thing he said every day that most seemed to give people reassurance and confidence was, "I don't know."
Posljednjih osam studenih, u posljednje vrijeme, putovao sam svake godine Japanom s Dalaj Lamom. I jedna stvar koju je rekao svakoga dana koja je davala povjerenje i snagu ljudima bila je, "Ne znam."
"What's going to happen to Tibet?" "When are we ever going to get world peace?" "What's the best way to raise children?"
"Što će se dogoditi Tibetu?" "Kada će nastupiti mir u svijetu?" "Kako najbolje odgajati djecu?"
"Frankly," says this very wise man, "I don't know."
"Iskreno," kaže ovaj mudri čovjek, "Ne znam."
The Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman has spent more than 60 years now researching human behavior, and his conclusion is that we are always much more confident of what we think we know than we should be. We have, as he memorably puts it, an "unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance." We know -- quote, unquote -- our team is going to win this weekend, and we only remember that knowledge on the rare occasions when we're right. Most of the time, we're in the dark. And that's where real intimacy lies.
Dobitnik Nobelove nagrade za ekonomiju, Daniel Kahneman proveo je više od šezdeset godina istražujući ponašanje ljudi, i njegov zaključak je da smo uvijek sigurniji u ono što mislimo da znamo više no što bi trebali biti. Imamo, kako on to kaže, "neograničenu sposobnost ignoriranja našeg neznanja." Znamo -- citat -- da će naš tim pobijediti ovaj vikend, i tog znanja se prisjetimo samo u rijetkim prilikama kada smo točno pogodili. Većinu vremena, nemamo pojma. I tu leži prava intimnost.
Do you know what your lover is going to do tomorrow? Do you want to know?
Znate li što će vaš partner raditi sutra? Želite li znati?
The parents of us all, as some people call them, Adam and Eve, could never die, so long as they were eating from the tree of life. But the minute they began nibbling from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they fell from their innocence. They grew embarrassed and fretful, self-conscious. And they learned, a little too late, perhaps, that there are certainly some things that we need to know, but there are many, many more that are better left unexplored.
Roditelji svih nas, kako ih neki zovu, Adam i Eva, nisu mogli umrijeti dokle god su jeli s drveta života. Ali istog trena kada su počeli grickati sa stabla spoznaje dobra i zla, izgubili su nevinost. Postalo im je neugodno i bilo ih je sram, bili su samosvjesni. I naučili su, možda malo prekasno, da postoje neke stvari koje moramo znati, ali ih ima puno više koje je bolje ostaviti neistraženima.
Now, when I was a kid, I knew it all, of course. I had been spending 20 years in classrooms collecting facts, and I was actually in the information business, writing articles for Time Magazine. And I took my first real trip to Japan for two-and-a-half weeks, and I came back with a 40-page essay explaining every last detail about Japan's temples, its fashions, its baseball games, its soul.
Kada sam bio dijete, sve sam znao, naravno. Proveo sam 20 godina u učionici skupljajući činjenice, i zapravo sam bio u informacijskom poslovanju, pišući članke za časopis Time. I otišao sam na svoj prvi pravi put u Japan na dva i pol tjedna, i vratio sam se s esejem od 40 stranica objašnjavajući svaki detalj japanskih hramova, mode, baseball utakmica, njegove duše.
But underneath all that, something that I couldn't understand so moved me for reasons I couldn't explain to you yet, that I decided to go and live in Japan. And now that I've been there for 28 years, I really couldn't tell you very much at all about my adopted home. Which is wonderful, because it means every day I'm making some new discovery, and in the process, looking around the corner and seeing the hundred thousand things I'll never know.
No ispod svega toga, nešto što nisam mogao razumjeti me toliko potaknulo, iz razloga koje vam još ne mogu objasniti, da sam otišao živjeti u Japan. I sad kada sam tamo više od 28 godina, zaista vam ne mogu puno toga reći o mom usvojenom domu. Što je prekrasno, jer je svaki dan novo otkriće, i u procesu, gledanja iza ugla i viđanja sto tisuća stvari koje nikad neću znati.
Knowledge is a priceless gift. But the illusion of knowledge can be more dangerous than ignorance.
Znanje je neprocjenjiv dar. Ali iluzija znanja može biti opasnija od neznanja.
Thinking that you know your lover or your enemy can be more treacherous than acknowledging you'll never know them. Every morning in Japan, as the sun is flooding into our little apartment, I take great pains not to consult the weather forecast, because if I do, my mind will be overclouded, distracted, even when the day is bright.
Misliti da znate vašeg partnera ili vašeg neprijatelja može biti opasnije nego prihvatiti da ih nikad nećete znati. Svakog jutra u Japanu, dok sunce ulazi u naš mali stan, borim se ne gledati vremensku prognozu, jer ako to učinim, moj um će biti zamagljen, odvučen, čak i kada je dan vedar.
I've been a full-time writer now for 34 years. And the one thing that I have learned is that transformation comes when I'm not in charge, when I don't know what's coming next, when I can't assume I am bigger than everything around me. And the same is true in love or in moments of crisis. Suddenly, we're back in that trishaw again and we're bumping off the broad, well-lit streets; and we're reminded, really, of the first law of travel and, therefore, of life: you're only as strong as your readiness to surrender.
Pišem već 34 godine. I ono što sam naučio jest da transformacija dolazi kada nemam kontrolu, kada ne znam što je sljedeće, kada ne mogu pretpostaviti da sam veći od svega oko mene. Ista je stvar u ljubavi ili trenutku krize. Odjednom, vratili smo se u rikšu i skačemo po širokim, jasno osvjetljenim ulicama, i podsjećamo se, zapravo, prvog pravila putovanja i samim time života: jak si onoliko koliko si se spreman predati.
In the end, perhaps, being human is much more important than being fully in the know.
Na kraju je, možda, puno važnije biti čovjekom nego sve znati.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)