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 toplog oktobarskog jutra, sišao sam sa noćnog voza u Mandaleju, bivšem glavnom gradu Burme, sada je to Mjanmar. I na ulici sam naleteo na grupu snažnih muškaraca koji su stajali pored njihovih bicikli rikši. A jedan mi je prišao i ponudio mi razgledanje. Cena koju je naveo je bila smešna. Bila je niža od cene čokoladice u mojoj zemlji.
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.
Te sam se ispentrao u njegovu rikšu i on je počeo polako da pedala kroz palate i pagode. I dok je to radio, rekao mi je kako je došao u grad iz svog sela. Stekao je diplomu iz matematike. Njegov san je bio da bude nastavnik. Ali, naravno, život je težak pod vojnom diktaturom, te je za sad ovo bio jedini način da zaradi za život. Mnogo noći, rekao mi je, zapravo je prespavao u ovoj rikši kako bi uhvatio prve posetioce sa noćnog voza.
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 smo otkrili da na izvesne načine, imamo toliko toga zajedničkog - obojica smo bili u dvadesetim, obojica smo bili fascinirani stranim kulturama - te me je pozvao u njegovu kuću.
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 skrenuli sa širokih, natrpanih ulica i počeli smo da truckamo niz hrapave, nenastanjene uličice. Svuda okolo su bile urušene straćare. Zaista sam izgubio svest o tome gde sam, i shvatio sam da mi se sad može desiti bilo šta. Mogli bi me opljačkati ili drogirati ili nešto još gore. Niko ne bi znao.
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.
Naposletku se zaustavio i uveo me u baraku, koja se sastojala od svega jedne sićušne prostorije. A potom se sageo i posegnuo ispod kreveta. A nešto u meni se sledilo. Čekao sam da vidim šta će da izvuče. I naposletku je izvadio kutiju. Unutra je bilo svako pismo koje je ikad dobio od posetilaca iz inostranstva, a na nekima je zalepio male izbledele crno-bele fotografije njegovih novih prijatelja iz inostranstva.
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.
Pa, kad smo se pozdravili te noći, shvatio sam da mi je takođe pokazao tajni smisao putovanja, a to je strmoglavljivanje, odlazak u unutrašnjost, kao i u spoljašnjost na mesta na koja u suprotnom ne biste išli, da se otisnete u neizvesnost, nepoznanicu, čak i u 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, opasno je lako pretpostaviti da imamo kontrolu nad svim. Tamo napolju, podsećaju vas svakog trenutka da nemate, i ne možete sve da shvatite, takođe.
Everywhere, "People wish to be settled," Ralph Waldo Emerson reminded us, "but only insofar as we are unsettled is there any hope for us."
Svuda: "Ljudi žele da se skrase", podsetio nas je Ralf Valdo Emerson, "ali sve dok smo neskrašeni ima neke nade 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 smo imali sreće da čujemo neke stimulativne nove ideje i otkrića i, zaista, o svim načinima na koje se znanje uzbudljivo probija napred. Ali u jednom momentu, znanja ponestaje. I to je trenutak kad se vaš život uistinu prelama: zaljubite se; izgubite prijatelja; svetla se pogase. I tad kad ste izgubljeni ili uznemireni ili van sebe, tada otkrivate ko ste.
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 verujem da je neznanje blagoslov. Nauka je nesumnjivo učinila naše živote življim i dužim i zdravijim. I večno sam zahvalan nastavnicima koji su mi objasnili zakone fizike i istakli da je tri puta tri - devet. Mogu to izračunati na prstima u bilo koje doba noći ili dana. Ali kad mi matematičar kaže da minus tri puta minus tri jeste devet, takav vid logike skoro da liči na poverenje.
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.
Suprotno od znanja, drugim rečima, nije uvek neznanje. Može da bude čuđenje. Ili tajanstvenost. Mogućnost. A u mom životu, otkrio sam da me ono što ne znam uzdiže i vuče napred mnogo više nego ono što znam. Takođe me je ono što ne znam često zbližavalo sa svima koji me okružuju.
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."
Osam uzastopnih novembara, poslednjih, svake godine sam putovao duž Japana sa Dalaj Lamom. I jedno mi je ponavljao svakodnevno da se čini kako ljude najviše razuverava i daje im samopouzdanje fraza: "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?"
"Šta će da se desi sa Tibetom?" "Da li ćemo ikada postići mir u svetu?" "Koji je najbolji način vaspitanja dece?"
"Frankly," says this very wise man, "I don't know."
"Iskreno", kaže ovaj veoma mudar čovek, "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, ekonomista Danijel Kaneman, proveo je preko 60 godina do sad izučavajući ljudsko ponašanje i njegov zaključak glasi da smo uvek daleko uvereniji u ono što mislimo da znamo nego što bi trebalo da budemo. Imamo, kako on to upečatljivo formuliše, "neograničenu sposobnost da zanemarujemo neznanje". Znamo - početak i kraj citata - da će naša ekipa pobediti ovog vikenda, i jedino se sećamo tog znanja u retkim prilikama kad smo u pravu. Većinu vremena smo u neznanju. A tu počiva istinska prisnost.
Do you know what your lover is going to do tomorrow? Do you want to know?
Znate li šta će vaš ljubavnik da radi sutra? Da li želite da znate?
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 ljudi zovu, Adam i Eva, nikad ne bi umrli, dokle god bi jeli sa drveta života. Ali onog trena kad su počeli da glođu sa drveta poznavanja dobra i zla, izgubili su svoju nevinost. Postali su postiđeni i zabrinuti, samosvesni. I saznali su, možda malčice prekasno, da izvesno postoje neke stvari koje moramo da znamo, ali da postoji još mnogo, mnogo više onih koje valja ostaviti neistraženim.
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.
Sad, kad sam bio dete, sve sam to znao, naravno. Proveo sam 20 godina po učionicama, sakupljajući činjenice i zapravo sam bio u informacionom poslu, pisao sam članke za časopis "Tajm". I krenuo sam na svoje prvo pravo putovanje u Japan na dve i po nedelje i vratio sam se sa esejom od 40 stranica, objašnjavajući svaki i najmanji detalj japanskih hramova, njihovu modu, bejzbol mečeve, njihovu dušu.
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 da razumem toliko me je ganulo iz razloga koje još uvek nisam mogao da objasnim, da sam odlučio da se preselim u Japan. I pošto sam tamo već 28 godina, zaista vam ne bih uopšte mogao reći mnogo toga o mom usvojenom domu. A to je divno jer znači da svakog dana nešto novo otkrivam, a samim tim, gledam iza uglova i zapažam na stotine hiljada stvari koje nikad neću shvatiti.
Knowledge is a priceless gift. But the illusion of knowledge can be more dangerous than ignorance.
Znanje je neprocenjiv dar. No iluzija znanja može da bude 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.
Misao da poznajete svog ljubavnika ili neprijatelja može da bude podmuklija od priznanja da ih nikad nećete upoznati. Svakog jutra u Japanu, dok sunce kupa naš maleni stan, mnogo se opirem da ne gledam prognozu vremena jer ako to uradim, moj um će da bude pomućen, pometen, čak i kad 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.
Već 34 godine sam stalno zaposleni pisac. I nešto što sam naučio je da preobražaj nastaje kad nemam kontrolu, kad ne znam šta će da usledi, kad ne mogu da pretpostavim da sam iznad svega što me okružuje. A isto važi i za ljubav ili u kriznim trenucima. Iznenada smo ponovo u toj rikši i truckamo dalje od širokih, osvetljenih ulica; i podsećamo se, zaista, na prvi zakon putovanja i, samim tim, života: jaki ste samo onoliko kolika je vaša spremnost na predaju.
In the end, perhaps, being human is much more important than being fully in the know.
Naposletku, možda, biti čovek je daleko važnije od stanja potpune poznanice.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)