Alisa Volkman: So this is where our story begins -- the dramatic moments of the birth of our first son, Declan. Obviously a really profound moment, and it changed our lives in many ways. It also changed our lives in many unexpected ways, and those unexpected ways we later reflected on, that eventually spawned a business idea between the two of us, and a year later, we launched Babble, a website for parents.
Torej tukaj se prične najina zgodba, dramatičen trenutek, ko se je rodil najin prvi sin Declan. Kot je očitno, gre za prvinski trenutek, ki je v marsičem spremenil najini življenji. Ta je v najina življenja prinesel nenadejanih sprememb, in ko sva kasneje premišljevala o njih, sva prišla do skupne poslovne ideje, leto kasneje sva namreč ustanovila Babble, spletno stran za starše.
Rufus Griscom: Now I think of our story as starting a few years earlier. AV: That's true.
Jaz pa mislim, da se je ta zgodba pričela pravzaprav nekaj let prej. - Res je.
RG: You may remember, we fell head over heels in love.
Kot se lahko spomniš, sva bila najprej zaljubljena do ušes.
AV: We did.
Da, res je.
RG: We were at the time running a very different kind of website. It was a website called Nerve.com, the tagline of which was "literate smut." It was in theory, and hopefully in practice, a smart online magazine about sex and culture.
Takrat sva v resnici imela drugačno spletno stran. Imenovala se je Nerve.com (Živec.com), čigar podnaslov se je glasil "Knjižne obscenosti." Teoretično, in upam da tudi praktično, je šlo za pametno spletno revijo o spolnosti in kulturi.
AV: That spawned a dating site. But you can understand the jokes that we get. Sex begets babies. You follow instructions on Nerve and you should end up on Babble, which we did. And we might launch a geriatric site as our third. We'll see.
Ki je sprožila spletno stran za zmenke. In vam je hitro jasno, kakšne šale dobiš iz tega. Seks seveda povzroči otroke. Slediš navodilom na Živcu in nato pristaneš na Babblu, kakor sva tudi midva. Morda pa v prihodnje ustvariva še stran za starejše, nikoli ne veš.
RG: But for us, the continuity between Nerve and Babble was not just the life stage thing, which is, of course, relevant, but it was really more about our desire to speak very honestly about subjects that people have difficulty speaking honestly about. It seems to us that when people start dissembling, people start lying about things, that's when it gets really interesting. That's a subject that we want to dive into. And we've been surprised to find, as young parents, that there are almost more taboos around parenting than there are around sex.
Za naju prehod iz Živca na Babble ni bil povezan le z življenjskim obdobjem, čeprav je temu primeren, temveč je šlo bolj za najino željo, da iskreno spregovoriva o rečeh, o katerih ljudje težko odkrito spregovorijo. Zdi se nama, da ko se ljudje pričnejo pretvarjati o nečem, takrat lažejo, in to šele postane zanimivo. Prav to je tema, v katero se želiva poglobiti. Kot mlada starša sva bila presenečena, da obstaja več skrivnosti o starševstvu, kakor pa o seksu.
AV: It's true. So like we said, the early years were really wonderful, but they were also really difficult. And we feel like some of that difficulty was because of this false advertisement around parenting. (Laughter) We subscribed to a lot of magazines, did our homework, but really everywhere you look around, we were surrounded by images like this. And we went into parenting expecting our lives to look like this. The sun was always streaming in, and our children would never be crying. I would always be perfectly coiffed and well rested, and in fact, it was not like that at all.
Res je. Torej kot rečeno, zgodnja leta so bila res čudovita, toda prav tako tudi naporna. Čutiva pa, da del teh težav izvira iz izkrivljenega oglaševanja okrog starševstva. (smeh) Naročila sva se na številne revije, opravila svojo domačo nalogo, toda kamorkoli se obrneš, si obkrožen s takšnimi podobami. Tako sva vstopila v starševtstvo tudi sama in pričakovala, da bo prav takšno tudi najino življenje. Sonček bi nas neprestano grel, naši otroci pa ne bi jokali. Moja frizura bi nenehno stala, bila bi spočita, v resnici pa ni bilo prav nič podobno temu.
RG: When we lowered the glossy parenting magazine that we were looking at, with these beautiful images, and looked at the scene in our actual living room, it looked a little bit more like this. These are our three sons. And of course, they're not always crying and screaming, but with three boys, there's a decent probability that at least one of them will not be comporting himself exactly as he should.
In ko sva spustila svetleče starševske revije, v katerih sva občudovala vse te lepe podobe ter se ozrla naokoli po dnevni sobi, je vse skupaj zgledalo bolj takole. To so najini trije sinovi. Seveda se ves čas ne jokajo in derejo, toda s tremi fantki je vendarle večja verjetnost, da se vsaj eden ne bo obnašal tako, kot bi se moral.
AV: Yes, you can see where the disconnect was happening for us. We really felt like what we went in expecting had nothing to do with what we were actually experiencing, and so we decided we really wanted to give it to parents straight. We really wanted to let them understand what the realities of parenting were in an honest way.
Ja, tukaj se vidi kje se je to trganje pričelo za naju. Pomislila sva, da to, kar sva pričakovala, v resnici ni imelo nič skupnega s tem, kar sva doživljala, zato sva se odločila, da bova to staršem odkrito povedala. Hotela sva, da bi razumeli, kaj starševstvo v resnici pomeni.
RG: So today, what we would love to do is share with you four parenting taboos. And of course, there are many more than four things you can't say about parenting, but we would like to share with you today four that are particularly relevant for us personally. So the first, taboo number one: you can't say you didn't fall in love with your baby in the very first minute. I remember vividly, sitting there in the hospital. We were in the process of giving birth to our first child.
Kar želiva danes narediti je, z vami deliti štiri starševske tabuje. Seveda obstaja veliko več kot štiri stvari, ki jih ne smete izreči o starševstvu, toda danes želiva z vami deliti tiste štiri, ki so bile še posebej zanimive za naju. Tabu št.1: Ne reci, da se nisi že prvo minuto zaljubil v svojega dojenčka. Živo se spomnim, ko sem sedel v bolnišnici. Bili smo sredi poroda najinega prvega otroka...
AV: We, or I?
- Mi ali jaz?
RG: I'm sorry. Misuse of the pronoun. Alisa was very generously in the process of giving birth to our first child -- (AV: Thank you.) -- and I was there with a catcher's mitt. And I was there with my arms open. The nurse was coming at me with this beautiful, beautiful child, and I remember, as she was approaching me, the voices of friends saying, "The moment they put the baby in your hands, you will feel a sense of love that will come over you that is [on] an order of magnitude more powerful than anything you've ever experienced in your entire life." So I was bracing myself for the moment. The baby was coming, and I was ready for this Mack truck of love to just knock me off my feet. And instead, when the baby was placed in my hands, it was an extraordinary moment. This picture is from literally a few seconds after the baby was placed in my hands and I brought him over. And you can see, our eyes were glistening. I was overwhelmed with love and affection for my wife, with deep, deep gratitude that we had what appeared to be a healthy child. And it was also, of course, surreal. I mean, I had to check the tags and make sure. I was incredulous, "Are you sure this is our child?" And this was all quite remarkable. But what I felt towards the child at that moment was deep affection, but nothing like what I feel for him now, five years later.
Se opravičujem. Nepravilna raba zaimka. Alisa je bila velikodušno v procesu rojevanja najinega prvega otroka... - Hvala. ... jaz pa sem le stal zraven z mrežico. In tako stojim tam z odprtimi rokami, gledam babico, ki mi gre naproti s tem prelepim otročičkom, in medtem, ko se mi približuje, se spomnim prijateljev, ki so mi govorili, "V trenutku, ko boš prijel dojenčka v naročje, te bo preplavil občutek ljubezni, ki je po jakosti močnejši od vsega, kar si kadarkoli doživel." In tako se je začela priprava na ta trenutek. Dojenček prihaja, jaz pa pripravljen na tovornjak ljubezni, ki me bo zadel in vrgel s tal. V glavnem, ko sem prejel dojenčka v roke, je bil to res izjemen trenutek. Ta slika je nastala točno par sekund za tem, ko sem ga imel v naročju in ga spet predal. Lahko vidite najine lesketajoče oči. Bil sem preplavljen z ljubeznijo in naklonjenostjo do žene, in globoko hvaležen, da sva dobila zdravega otroka. Bilo pa je tudi bizarno, mislim, moral sem izpolniti vse te obrazce ipd. Bil sem v dvomih, "Si prepričana, da je to najin otrok?" Vse skupaj je bilo precej nenavadno. Kar sem občutil do otroka tisti trenutek, je bila vsekakor globoka naklonjenost, toda to ni nič v primerjavi s tem, kar čutim danes do njega, pet let kasneje.
And so we've done something here that is heretical. We have charted our love for our child over time. (Laughter) This, as you know, is an act of heresy. You're not allowed to chart love. The reason you're not allowed to chart love is because we think of love as a binary thing. You're either in love, or you're not in love. You love, or you don't love. And I think the reality is that love is a process, and I think the problem with thinking of love as something that's binary is that it causes us to be unduly concerned that love is fraudulent, or inadequate, or what have you. And I think I'm speaking obviously here to the father's experience. But I think a lot of men do go through this sense in the early months, maybe their first year, that their emotional response is inadequate in some fashion.
Tako sva prišla do nečesa, kar je brezbožno početje. Najino ljubezen do otroka sva postavila v časovni diagram. (smeh) To je, kot veste, brezbožno dejanje. Prepovedano je ljubezen meriti z grafi. Razlog za to je v tem, da o ljubezni razmišljamo necelovito, binarno. Si bodisi zaljubljen ali pač ne. Ljubiš ali pa ne ljubiš. V resnici pa je ljubezen proces in problem pri dojemanju ljubezni kot nečesa, kar je razdvojeno je, da povzroča neupravično zaskrbljenost, češ da je ljubezen varljiva, neprava ali karkoli vas že skrbi. Očitno je, da tu govorim z očetovske perspektive. Čeprav menim, da veliko moških preživlja vse to v prvih mesecih oz. v prvem letu, kot da je njihov čustveni odziv na nek način nepravilen.
AV: Well, I'm glad Rufus is bringing this up, because you can notice where he dips in the first years where I think I was doing most of the work. But we like to joke, in the first few months of all of our children's lives, this is Uncle Rufus. (Laughter)
Vesela sem, da je Rufus to izpostavil, kajti lahko opazite kje doživlja padec v teh prvih letih, kjer seveda večino dela opravim jaz. Rada se šaliva da je prvih nekaj mesecev življenja najinih otrok, on stric Rufus. (smeh)
RG: I'm a very affectionate uncle, very affectionate uncle.
Ja, zelo nežen stric, zelo nežen.
AV: Yes, and I often joke with Rufus when he comes home that I'm not sure he would actually be able to find our child in a line-up amongst other babies. So I actually threw a pop quiz here onto Rufus.
Ja, pogosto se pošalim z njim, ko pride domov, da nisem ravno prepričana, če bi lahko prepoznal svoje otroke med drugimi otroki. Zato sem ga tudi izzvala s tem kvizom.
RG: Uh oh.
Ojoj.
AV: I don't want to embarrass him too much. But I am going to give him three seconds.
Nočem ga izpostavljati preveč, pa vendar mu dam tri sekunde.
RG: That is not fair. This is a trick question. He's not up there, is he?
To ni pravično, to je trik, saj ga gotovo ni gor, kaj?
AV: Our eight-week-old son is somewhere in here, and I want to see if Rufus can actually quickly identify him.
Najin sin, ki je star osem tednov je nekje vmes, in res želim videti, kako hitro ga bo prepoznal.
RG: The far left. AV: No!
Prvi z leve? - Ne!
(Laughter)
(smeh)
RG: Cruel.
Kruto.
AV: Nothing more to be said.
Ni kaj reči.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
I'll move on to taboo number two. You can't talk about how lonely having a baby can be. I enjoyed being pregnant. I loved it. I felt incredibly connected to the community around me. I felt like everyone was participating in my pregnancy, all around me, tracking it down till the actual due-date. I felt like I was a vessel of the future of humanity. That continued into the the hospital. It was really exhilarating. I was shower with gifts and flowers and visitors. It was a really wonderful experience, but when I got home, I suddenly felt very disconnected and suddenly shut in and shut out, and I was really surprised by those feelings. I did expect it to be difficult, have sleepless nights, constant feedings, but I did not expect the feelings of isolation and loneliness that I experienced, and I was really surprised that no one had talked to me, that I was going to be feeling this way. And I called my sister whom I'm very close to -- and had three children -- and I asked her, "Why didn't you tell me I was going to be feeling this way, that I was going to have these -- feeling incredibly isolated?" And she said -- I'll never forget -- "It's just not something you want to say to a mother that's having a baby for the first time."
Pojdimo na tabu št. 2: Ne govori o osamljenosti, ko imaš otroka. V nosečnosti sem uživala, res mi je bilo všeč. S skupnostjo sem se počutila neverjetno povezano. Bilo je, kakor da prav vsi sodelujejo pri moji nosečnosti, in jo spremljajo vse do poroda. Počutila sem se kakor ladja prihodnosti za človeštvo. Podobno se je nadaljevalo v porodnišnici. Res je bilo veselo. Bila sem zasuta z darili, rožami in obiskovalci. Res je bila izjemna izkušnja, toda ko sem prišla domov, sem se naenkrat počutila odrezano in v trenutku sem ugasnila tako navznoter kot navzven ter sem bila povsem presenečena nad temi občutki. Saj sem pričalovala da bo težko, z neprespanimi nočmi, nenehnim hranjenjem, toda nisem pa pričakovala, da se bom počutila tako izolirano in osamljeno, bila sem tudi presenečena, da se z menoj nihče ni pogovoril o tem, da se bom tako počutila. Poklicala sem sestro s katero sva si zelo blizu - tudi ona ima tri otroke - in jo vprašala, "Zakaj mi nisi povedala, da se bom tako počutila, in da bom doživljala občutke neverjetne osamljenosti?" Nikoli ne bom pozabila, da mi je rekla, "To preprosto ni nekaj, kar si želiš povedati mami, ki je pravkar rodila prvega otroka."
RG: And of course, we think it's precisely what you really should be saying to mothers who have kids for the first time. And that this, of course, one of the themes for us is that we think that candor and brutal honesty is critical to us collectively being great parents. And it's hard not to think that part of what leads to this sense of isolation is our modern world. So Alisa's experience is not isolated. So your 58 percent of mothers surveyed report feelings of loneliness. Of those, 67 percent are most lonely when their kids are zero to five -- probably really zero to two. In the process of preparing this, we looked at how some other cultures around the world deal with this period of time, because here in the Western world, less than 50 percent of us live near our family members, which I think is part of why this is such a tough period. So to take one example among many: in Southern India there's a practice known as jholabhari, in which the pregnant woman, when she's seven or eight months pregnant, moves in with her mother and goes through a series of rituals and ceremonies, give birth and returns home to her nuclear family several months after the child is born. And this is one of many ways that we think other cultures offset this kind of lonely period.
Pravzaprav pa misliva, da je točno to potrebno povedati materam, ki prvič povijajo svoje otroke. Ravno tema, ki je bila tako pomembna za naju, je po najinem mnenju kruta resničnost, ki je ključna za vse dobre starše. In težko je spregledati, da je del tega, kar nas vodi v ta občutek izoliranosti pravzaprav sodoben način življenja. Alisina izkušnja tako ni edina. Kar 58 % vprašanih mater poroča o občutkih osamljenosti. Od teh se 67% počuti najbolj osamljene v obdobju starosti otrok od 0-5 let, najbrž jih je največ med 0-2 letoma. Ko sva tole pripravljala, sva preverila kako se v drugih kulturah po svetu soočajo s tem obdobjem, kajti v zahodnem svetu, nas manj kot polovica živi v bližini drugih družinskih članov, kar je deloma razlog zakaj je to obdobje tako zahtevno. Na primer: v južni Indiji obstaja tradicija, t.i. "jholabhari," kjer se nosečnica v sedmem ali osmem mesecu nosečnosti preseli k svoji mami in gre skozi niz ritualov in ceremonij, rodi in se vrne k svoji družini šele nekaj mesecev po rojstvu otroka. To je en od načinov, ki jih druge kulture uporabljajo, da premostijo to obdobje osamljenosti.
AV: So taboo number three: you can't talk about your miscarriage -- but today I'll talk about mine. So after we had Declan, we kind of recalibrated our expectations. We thought we actually could go through this again and thought we knew what we would be up against. And we were grateful that I was able to get pregnant, and I soon learned that we were having a boy, and then when I was five months, we learned that we had lost our child. This is actually the last little image we have of him. And it was obviously a very difficult time -- really painful. As I was working through that mourning process, I was amazed that I didn't want to see anybody. I really wanted to crawl into a hole, and I didn't really know how I was going to work my way back into my surrounding community. And I realize, I think, the way I was feeling that way, is on a really deep gut level, I was feeling a lot of shame and embarrassed, frankly, that, in some respects, I had failed at delivering what I'm genetically engineered to do. And of course, it made me question, if I wasn't able to have another child, what would that mean for my marriage, and just me as a woman. So it was a very difficult time. As I started working through it more, I started climbing out of that hole and talking with other people. I was really amazed by all the stories that started flooding in. People I interacted with daily, worked with, was friends with, family members that I had known a long time, had never shared with me their own stories. And I just remember feeling all these stories came out of the woodwork, and I felt like I happened upon this secret society of women that I now was a part of, which was reassuring and also really concerning. And I think, miscarriage is an invisible loss. There's not really a lot of community support around it. There's really no ceremony, rituals, or rites. And I think, with a death, you have a funeral, you celebrate the life, and there's a lot of community support, and it's something women don't have with miscarriage.
Tabu št. 3: Ne smeš govoriti o splavu - toda danes bom govoril o svojem. Po sinu Declanu, sva tako najprej ovrednotila pričakovanja. Mislila sva, da lahko greva skozi to še enkrat in da veva s čim se soočava. Hvaležna sva bila, da sva sploh lahko zanosila, kmalu sem spoznala, da bomo imeli še enega fantka, nato pa sva v petem mesecu nosečnosti ugotovila, da sva otroka izgubila. To je njegov zadnji posnetek, ki ga imava. Bil težak čas - zelo boleč. Medtem, ko sem žalovala, sem bila presenečena, da nočem nikogar videti. Resnično sem si želela le, da se skrijem nekam globoko, saj nisem niti vedela kako se bom vrnila nazaj v službo, bližnjo okolico. Če se prav spomnim tistih občutkov je bil globoko spodaj občutek neverjetno močnega sramu, ponižanja, iskreno povedano, kakor da nisem uspela dati tistega, za kar sem genetsko ustvarjena. Seveda sem se takoj pričela spraševati, ali bom sploh še kdaj lahko rodila, pa kaj bo to pomenilo za moj zakon in zame kot žensko. Bili so res težki časi. Tako sem na poti premišljevanja o tem pričela govoriti tudi z drugimi in tako počasi lazila iz svoje luknje. Bila sem presunjena nad zgodbami, ki so privrele na dan. Ljudje, s katerimi sem bila dnevno v stikih, z njimi delala in prijateljevala, celo družinski člani, ki sem jih že dolgo poznala, z menoj še nikoli dotlej niso govorili o svojih zgodbah. Spomnim se občutka, kako so zgodbe počasi kukale na plan in sem posmislila, da sem naletela na veliko skrivnost žensk, s katerimi sem zdaj tudi sama povezana, kar je bilo hkrati olajšujoče in zaskrbljujoče. Menim, da je splav skrita izguba. V zvezi s tem podpore s strani družbe ni. Posebni običaji za to ne obstajajo, prav tako ni ritualov. Ko recimo nekdo umre, poznamo pogrebe, slavimo življenje, takrat je podpora skupnosti običajno velika, kar pa za splav ne velja.
RG: Which is too bad because, of course, it's a very common and very traumatic experience. Fifteen to 20 percent of all pregnancies result in miscarriage, and I find this astounding. In a survey, 74 percent of women said that miscarriage, they felt, was partly their fault, which is awful. And astoundingly, 22 percent said they would hide a miscarriage from their spouse.
To je žalostno, kajti splav je pogosta travmatična izkušnja. Namreč, vsaka peta nosečnost se konča s splavom, kar je izjemen podatek. Iz raziskave izhaja, da 74 % žensk meni, da so za splav deloma krive tudi same, kar je grozljivo. Presenetljivo je, da jih 22 % pravi, da bi splav pred soprogi skrile.
So taboo number four: you can't say that your average happiness has declined since having a child. The party line is that every single aspect of my life has just gotten dramatically better ever since I participated in the miracle that is childbirth and family. I'll never forget, I remember vividly to this day, our first son, Declan, was nine months old, and I was sitting there on the couch, and I was reading Daniel Gilbert's wonderful book, "Stumbling on Happiness." And I got about two-thirds of the way through, and there was a chart on the right-hand side -- on the right-hand page -- that we've labeled here "The Most Terrifying Chart Imaginable for a New Parent." This chart is comprised of four completely independent studies. Basically, there's this precipitous drop of marital satisfaction, which is closely aligned, we all know, with broader happiness, that doesn't rise again until your first child goes to college. So I'm sitting here looking at the next two decades of my life, this chasm of happiness that we're driving our proverbial convertible straight into. We were despondent.
In tabu št. 4: ne reci, da je tvoje splošno zadovoljstvo zaradi otroka upadlo. Najbolj zabavno pri tem je, da se je sleherni delček mojega življenja dramatično izboljšal odkar sem se udeležil čudeža, ki mu pravimo rojstvo otroka in družine. Nikoli ne bom pozabil, živo se spomnim dneva, ko je bil Declan star devet mesecev, in sem mu na kavču prebiral Gilbertovo čudovito knjigo z naslovom, 'Stumbling on Happiness.' Ko že prelistam dve tretjini knjige opazim graf na svoji desni, na desni strani knjige, ki sva ga tu poimenovala "Najbolj zastrašujoč graf, ki si ga lahko zamisli" nov starš." Graf je rezultat štirih povsem neodvisnih študij. Na njem lahko vidimo strm padec zakonskega zadovoljstva, ki je močno povezan tudi s splošnim občutkom sreče, ta pa ostaja enak vse do odhoda vašega prvega otroka na študij. Torej lahko sedim in naslednji dve desetletji življenja opazujem ta prepad sreče v katerega s svojim metaforičnim kabrioletom nezadržno drvimo. Bili smo povsem potrti.
AV: So you can imagine, I mean again, the first few months were difficult, but we'd come out of it, and were really shocked to see this study. So we really wanted to take a deeper look at it in hopes that we would find a silver lining.
Lahko si mislite, kako težki so bili za naju prvi meseci, pa sva se iz tega izvlekla, nato pa šok, ko sva videla študijo. Zato sva si vse skupaj želela bolj poglobljeno pogledati in upala na neko rešitev.
RG: And that's when it's great to be running a website for parents, because we got this incredible reporter to go and interview all the scientists who conducted these four studies. We said, something is wrong here. There's something missing from these studies. It can't possibly be that bad. So Liz Mitchell did a wonderful job with this piece, and she interviewed four scientists, and she also interviewed Daniel Gilbert, and we did indeed find a silver lining. So this is our guess as to what this baseline of average happiness arguably looks like throughout life. Average happiness is, of course, inadequate, because it doesn't speak to the moment-by-moment experience, and so this is what we think it looks like when you layer in moment-to-moment experience. And so we all remember as children, the tiniest little thing -- and we see it on the faces of our children -- the teeniest little thing can just rocket them to these heights of just utter adulation, and then the next teeniest little thing can cause them just to plummet to the depths of despair. And it's just extraordinary to watch, and we remember it ourselves. And then, of course, as you get older, it's almost like age is a form of lithium.
V takih situacijah je dobro imeti spletno stran za starše, saj sva najela to izjemno novinarko, da se je podala v pogovore z znanstveniki, ki so vodili te štiri študije. Rekla sva si, tu mora biti nekaj narobe. Nekaj v teh študijah manjka. Saj ne more biti vse tako slabo. Liz Mitchell je tako opravila izjemno delo, intervjuvala je vse štiri znanstvenike, med katerimi je bil tudi Daniel Gilbert, in tako sva končno našla kanček upanja. Takole izgleda najina predpostavka o tem, kako v osnovi ta povprečna sreča najverjetneje izgleda skozi življenje. Povprečje sreče je seveda neustrezno, kajti ne ustreza izkušnji posameznega trenutka, zato meniva, da v resnici izgleda takole, ko notri vstavimo še izkušnje trenutkov. Vsi se kot otroci spomnimo drobnih stvari, ki jih vidimo tudi na obrazih naših otrok, že drobne stvari jih lahko izstrelijo v višave vse do popolnega navdušenja, že naslednja drobcena stvar pa jih lahko potisne na rob obupa. Že samo opazovanje je izjemna izkušnja, pa tudi sama se tega dobro spomniva. In seveda, medtem ko se staraš, je kakor da je starost narejena iz litija.
As you get older, you become more stable. And part of what happens, I think, in your '20s and '30s, is you start to learn to hedge your happiness. You start to realize that "Hey, I could go to this live music event and have an utterly transforming experience that will cover my entire body with goosebumps, but it's more likely that I'll feel claustrophobic and I won't be able to get a beer. So I'm not going to go. I've got a good stereo at home. So, I'm not going to go." So your average happiness goes up, but you lose those transcendent moments.
Starejši kot si, bolj si stabilen. Mislim, da v dvajsetih in tridesetih letih ljudje pričnemo svojo srečo omejevati. Pričnemo ugotavljati, recimo: "Hej, saj bi lahko šel na koncert in doživel izkušnjo preobrazbe ter imel po celem telesu kurjo polt, toda najverjetneje bi se počutil prostorsko utesnjeno, tako da niti po pivo ne bi mogel iti. Zato raje ne bom šel. Doma imam glasbeni stolp. Torej ne grem." Tako gre povprečna sreča sprva navzgor, vendar izgubiš dragocene trenutke.
AV: Yeah, and then you have your first child, and then you really resubmit yourself to these highs and lows -- the highs being the first steps, the first smile, your child reading to you for the first time -- the lows being, our house, any time from six to seven every night. But you realize you resubmit yourself to losing control in a really wonderful way, which we think provides a lot of meaning to our lives and is quite gratifying.
Ja, nato dobiš prvega otroka, se povsem podvržeš tem vzponom in padcem - vzponom, ki pomenijo prve korake, prvi nasmeh, ko otrok prebere prve vrstice - ter padce, recimo našo hišo kadarkoli med šesto in sedmo zvečer. Tu spoznaš, da se odpoveš ohranjanju nadzor na krasen način, ki v marsičem osmišlja naša življenja, kar pa je zares razveseljivo.
RG: And so in effect, we trade average happiness. We trade the sort of security and safety of a certain level of contentment for these transcendent moments. So where does that leave the two of us as a family with our three little boys in the thick of all this? There's another factor in our case. We have violated yet another taboo in our own lives, and this is a bonus taboo.
Odtod v bistvu trgujemo s povprečno srečo. Menjamo občutek varnosti določene ravni razdovoljstva za te neprecenljive trenutke. Torej kam naju to uvršča kot družino s tremi otroki sredi vsega tega? Obstaja še en dejavnik v najinem primeru. Namreč prekršila sva še en tabu v najinem življenju, to bo tudi bonus tabu.
AV: A quick bonus taboo for you, that we should not be working together, especially with three children -- and we are.
Še zadnji bonus tabu imava za vas, in sicer da ne bi smela skupaj delati, sploh pa ne s tremi otroki - toda ravno to počneva.
RG: And we had reservations about this on the front end. Everybody knows, you should absolutely not work with your spouse. In fact, when we first went out to raise money to start Babble, the venture capitalists said, "We categorically don't invest in companies founded by husbands and wives, because there's an extra point of failure. It's a bad idea. Don't do it." And we obviously went forward. We did. We raised the money, and we're thrilled that we did, because in this phase of one's life, the incredibly scarce resource is time. And if you're really passionate about what you do every day -- which we are -- and you're also passionate about your relationship, this is the only way we know how to do it. And so the final question that we would ask is: can we collectively bend that happiness chart upwards? It's great that we have these transcendent moments of joy, but they're sometimes pretty quick. And so how about that average baseline of happiness? Can we move that up a little bit?
Sprva sva bila do tega resda nekoliko zadržana. Vsi vedo, da ne smeš delati skupaj s partnerjem. Pravzaprav, ko sva zbirala sredstva za pričetek Babbla, so nama investitorji govorili, "Kategorično ne vlagamo v podjetja, ki so jih ustanovili možje in žene, ker obstaja dodatna verjetnost za neuspeh. To je slaba ideja. Ne delajte tega". Midva sva očitno šla naprej. Zbrala sva sredstva in bila sva zelo vznemirjena zaradi tega, saj v tem življenjskem obdobju človeku najbolj primanjkuje ravno čas. Če delaš s strastjo vsak dan - in midva delava - in če si z enako strastjo tudi v partnerskem odnosu, je to za naju edini način kako to početi. Tako sva prišla do zadnjega vprašanja za vas: ali lahko vsi skupaj, kolektivno, obrnemo ta trend sreče navzgor? Super je, da imamo neprecenljive trenutke sreče, vendar ti trenutki včasih res prehitro minejo. Kaj pa črta povprečnega občutka sreče? Lahko to obrnemu navzgor, vsaj malo?
AV: And we kind of feel that the happiness gap, which we talked about, is really the result of walking into parenting -- and really any long-term partnership for that matter -- with the wrong expectations. And if you have the right expectations and expectation management, we feel like it's going to be a pretty gratifying experience.
Midva čutiva, da je prepad sreče, o katerem sva govorila, v resnici posledica vstopa v starševstvo - in pa tudi vsako dolgoročno partnerstvo - z napačnimi pričakovanji. Če pa imaš realna pričakovanja, s katerimi znaš upravljati, sva prepričana, da bo vse skupaj zelo prijetna izkušnja.
RG: And so this is what -- And we think that a lot of parents, when you get in there -- in our case anyway -- you pack your bags for a trip to Europe, and you're really excited to go. Get out of the airplane, it turns out you're trekking in Nepal. And trekking in Nepal is an extraordinary experience, particularly if you pack your bags properly and you know what you're getting in for and you're psyched. So the point of all this for us today is not just hopefully honesty for the sake of honesty, but a hope that by being more honest and candid about these experiences, that we can all collectively bend that happiness baseline up a little bit.
Torej, to je tisto, ko - najbrž to velja za številne starše, ki se v tem znajdejo, vsaj v najinem primeru je tako - pakiraš za pot v Evropo, in si vznemirjen, da greš. Prideš z letala, in vidiš, da v resnici planinariš po Nepalu. In planinarjenje v Nepalu je izjemna izkušnja, še posebej, če si za to vzel pravo prtljago in se zavedaš kaj te čaka, ker si psihično pripravljen. Torej bistvo vsega tega ni le iskrenost zaradi iskrenosti same, pač pa je to upanje, da lahko z odkritostjo in srčnostjo, ko govorimo o teh izkušnjah, vsi skupaj, kolektivno, obrnemo ta trend sreče nekoliko navzgor.
RG + AV: Thank you.
Hvala lepa.
(Applause)
(aplavz)