TED英语演讲：这才是爱情应有的样子
今天小编为大家收集整理了关于TED英语演讲：这才是爱情应有的样子,希望大家会喜欢,同时也希望给你们带来一些参考的作用!
A better way to talk about love
OK, so today I want to talk about how wetalk about love. And specifically, I want to talk about what's wrong with howwe talk about love.
今天我想谈谈我们是如何谈论爱情的。我尤其想和你们聊的是，我们谈论爱情时到底哪里出错了。
Most of us will probably fall in love a fewtimes over the course of our lives, and in the English language, this metaphor,falling, is really the main way that we talk about that experience. I don'tknow about you, but when I conceptualize this metaphor, what I picture isstraight out of a cartoon — like there's a man, he's walking down the sidewalk, withoutrealizing it, he crosses over an open manhole, and he just plummets into thesewer below. And I picture it this way because falling is not jumping. Fallingis accidental, it's uncontrollable. It's something that happens to us withoutour consent. And this — this is the main way we talk about starting a new relationship.
我们大多数人在一生中可能深爱过几次，在英语中，坠入爱河这个比喻，是我们谈论这段经历的主要方式。我不知道你是怎么想的，但是当我把这个比喻概念化的时候，我脑海里浮现的是一幅漫画——就像有一个人，他走在人行道上，没有意识到自己走过一个打开的井盖，然后他就一头栽进下面的下水道里。我会这么想是因为，坠落不是跳跃。坠落是偶然的，是无法控制的。是没经过我们的同意就发生了，而这我们说到开始一段新的感情，主要就用的这种方式去表达的。
I am a writer and I'm also an Englishteacher, which means I think about words for a living. You could say that I getpaid to argue that the language we use matters, and I would like to argue thatmany of the metaphors we use to talk about love — maybe even most ofthem — are a problem.
我是一名作家，同时也是一位英语老师，这就意味着我以思考语言为生。你可能会说，我们使用的语言很重要，我认为我们用来谈论爱情的许多隐喻——甚至可能是其中的大多数都是有问题的。
So, in love, we fall. We're struck. We arecrushed. We swoon. We burn with passion. Love makes us crazy, and it makes ussick. Our hearts ache, and then they break. So our metaphors equate theexperience of loving someone to extreme violence or illness.
于是，我们坠入爱河。我们被击溃。我们意乱情迷。爱让我们疯狂，也让我们难受不已。我们的心会痛，会心碎。所以我们把深爱某人比喻为与极端暴力和疾病相关的比喻。
They do. And they position us as thevictims of unforeseen and totally unavoidable circumstances.My favorite one ofthese is "smitten," which is the past participle of the word"smite." And if you look this word up in the dictionary —you will seethat it can be defined as both "grievous affliction," and, "tobe very much in love." I tend to associate the word "smite" witha very particular context, which is the Old Testament. In the Book of Exodusalone, there are 16 references to smiting, which is the word that the Bibleuses for the vengeance of an angry God.
确实是这样的。这些比喻把我们看作在不可预见和完全不可避免的情况的受害者。我最喜欢的一个是smitten，它是smite的过去分词如果你在字典里查这个词-你会发现它既可以被定义为“极度痛苦”，也可以被定义为“神魂颠倒”。我倾向于把"smite"这个词和一个非常特殊的语境联系起来，那就是《旧约》。仅在《出埃及记》中，就有16处提到了smiting，这是圣经中用来描述愤怒的上帝复仇的词。
(Laughter)
Here we are using the same word to talkabout love that we use to explain a plague of locusts.Right?So, how did thishappen? How have we come to associate love with great pain and suffering?Andwhy do we talk about this ostensibly good experience as if we are victims?These are difficult questions, but I have some theories. And to think thisthrough, I want to focus on one metaphor in particular, which is the idea oflove as madness.
我们谈论爱情时所使用的词语和我们用来解释蝗虫的瘟疫所用的词语是同一个。对吧?那么，怎么会这样呢?我们是为什么会把爱和巨大的痛苦联系在一起呢?为什么我们谈论这种看似美好的经历时将自己看做受害者呢?这些问题很难回答，但我有一些理论。为了深入思考这个问题，我想特别关注一个比喻，那就是爱是疯狂的想法。
When I first started researching romanticlove, I found these madness metaphors everywhere. The history of Westernculture is full of language that equates love to mental illness. These are justa few examples. William Shakespeare: "Love is merely a madness," from"As You Like It."Friedrich Nietzsche: "There is always somemadness in love." "Got me looking, got me looking so crazy in love — "fromthe great philosopher, Beyoncé Knowles.
当我第一次开始研究浪漫爱情时，我发现这些疯狂的隐喻无处不在。西方文化史上充满了将爱情等同于精神疾病的语言。这只是几个例子。莎士比亚:“爱只不过是一种疯狂”，出自《皆大欢喜》。尼采:“爱情总有疯狂的时刻。”伟大的哲学家碧昂丝·诺尔斯曾说过:“让我看起来疯狂，像是爱疯了”
I fell in love for the first time when Iwas 20, and it was a pretty turbulent relationship right from the start. And itwas long distance for the first couple of years, so for me that meant very highhighs and very low lows. I can remember one moment in particular. I was sittingon a bed in a hostel in South America, and I was watching the person I lovewalk out the door. And it was late, it was nearly midnight, we'd gotten into anargument over dinner, and when we got back to our room, he threw his things inthe bag and stormed out. While I can no longer remember what that argument wasabout, I very clearly remember how I felt watching him leave.
我第一次坠入爱河是在我20岁的时候，从一开始这段关系就跌宕起伏。在最初的几年里，我们处于异地恋的状态，所以对我来说，这意味着要么极度幸福要么极度痛苦。我能特别记得那一刻，我坐在南美一家旅社的床上，看着我爱的夺门而出。已经很晚了，将近午夜了，我们在吃晚饭的时候发生了争吵，当我们回到房间时，他把他的东西扔进包里，气冲冲地走了。虽然我已经不记得我们当时因为什么在争吵了，但我非常清楚地记得看着他离开时我的感受。
I was 22, it was my first time in thedeveloping world, and I was totally alone. I had another week until my flighthome, and I knew the name of the town that I was in, and the name of the citythat I needed to get to to fly out, but I had no idea how to get around. I hadno guidebook and very little money, and I spoke no Spanish.
那时我22岁，这是我第一次来到发展中国家，我孤身一人。还有一个星期我才能飞回家，我知道我要去的城镇的名字，也知道我要飞到的城市的名字，但是我不知道该怎么走。我没有旅游指南，也没有多少钱，而且我不会说西班牙语。
Someone more adventurous than me might haveseen this as a moment of opportunity, but I just froze. I just sat there. Andthen I burst into tears. But despite my panic, some small voice in my headthought, "Wow. That was dramatic. I must really be doing this love thingright."
一些比我更有冒险精神的人可能会把这看作是一个机遇，但我却愣住了。我只是坐在那里。然后我泪流满面。尽管我很恐慌，但我脑子里还是有个很小的声音在想:“哇!这是很戏剧性的，我真的爱上这个人了!”
Because some part of me wanted to feelmiserable in love. And it sounds so strange to me now, but at 22, I longed tohave dramatic experiences, and in that moment, I was irrational and furious anddevastated, and weirdly enough, I thought that this somehow legitimized thefeelings I had for the guy who had just left me.
因为我在这一刻想要被爱折磨，现在听起来很奇怪，但在我22岁的时候，我渴望有戏剧性的经历，在那一刻，我失去理智，愤怒和崩溃，奇怪的是，我认为这在某种程度上，我对那个刚摔门而去的我的男人产生这样的感情是合理的。
I think on some level I wanted to feel alittle bit crazy, because I thought that that was how loved worked. This reallyshould not be surprising, considering that according to Wikipedia, there areeight films, 14 songs, two albums and one novel with the title "CrazyLove."
我想在某种程度上，我让自己有点疯狂，因为我认为这才是爱一个人的方式。这一点都不奇怪，毕竟维基百科上显示有8部电影、14首歌曲、两张专辑和一本名为《疯狂的爱》的小说。
About half an hour later, he came back toour room. We made up. We spent another mostly happy week traveling together.And then, when I got home, I thought, "That was so terrible and sogreat.This must be a real romance." I expected my first love to feel likemadness, and of course, it met that expectation very well. But loving someonelike that — as if my entire well-being depended on him loving me back — was notvery good for me or for him.
大约半小时后，他回来了。我们和解了。我们又一起度过了快乐的一周，一起旅行。当我回到家，我想，那真是一段又可怕又美好的一段经历。这一定是一段真正的罗曼史。我期待我的初恋是疯狂的，当然，我如愿以偿了。但是爱一个人就像是我整个人的状态感受都取决于他是否也爱我。这与我，与他而言都不是一件好事。
But I suspect this experience of love isnot that unusual. Most of us do feel a bit mad in the early stages of romanticlove. In fact, there is research to confirm that this is somewhatnormal,because, neurochemically speaking, romantic love and mental illness arenot that easily distinguished. This is true.
但我怀疑这种爱的体验并不是那么不寻常。在大多数人刚开始一段恋情时都感到有那么一点疯狂。事实上，有研究证实这其实是正常的，因为从神经化学的角度来说，浪漫的爱情和精神疾病并不是那么容易区分的。
This study from 1999 used blood tests toconfirm that the serotonin levels of the newly in love very closely resembledthe serotonin levels of people who had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsivedisorder.
1999年的这项研究通过血液测试证实，刚恋爱的人的血清素水平与被诊断为强迫症的人的血清素水平非常相似。
Yes, and low levels of serotonin are alsoassociated with seasonal affective disorder and depression. So there is someevidence that love is associated with changes to our moods and our behaviors.And there are other studies to confirm that most relationships begin this way.
是的，低血清素水平也与季节性情绪失调和抑郁症有关。所以有证据表明，爱与我们情绪和行为的变化有关。还有其他研究证实，大多数关系都是这样开始的。
Researchers believe that the low levels ofserotonin is correlated with obsessive thinking about the object of love, whichis like this feeling that someone has set up camp in your brain. And most of usfeel this way when we first fall in love. But the good news is, it doesn'talways last that long —usually from a few months to a couple of years.
研究人员认为，血清素水平低与相思有关，就像有人在你的大脑中安营扎寨一样。我们大多数人在第一次恋爱时都有这种感觉。但好消息是，它并不总是持续那么长时间——通常从几个月到几年。
When I got back from my trip to SouthAmerica, I spent a lot of time alone in my room,checking my email, desperate tohear from the guy I loved. I decided that if my friends could not understand mygrievous affliction, then I did not need their friendship. So I stopped hangingout with most of them. And it was probably the most unhappy year of my life.But I think I felt like it was my job to be miserable, because if I could bemiserable, then I would prove how much I loved him.And if I could prove it,then we would have to end up together eventually.
当我从南美旅行回来后，我花了很多时间独自呆在房间里，查看电子邮件，急切地想要收到我爱的人的来信。我决定，如果我的朋友不能理解我的痛苦，那么我就不需要他们的友谊。所以我不再和他们中的大多数出去玩了。那可能是我一生中最不快乐的一年。但我认为痛苦是我必须要经历的，因为如果我能感受到痛苦，我就能证明我有多爱他。如果我能证明这一点，我们最终会在一起。
This is the real madness, because there isno cosmic rule that says that great suffering equals great reward, but we talkabout love as if this is true.
这是真正的疯狂，因为没有宇宙法则说巨大的痛苦会换来同等的报酬，但我们谈论爱情时的确是这样的。
Our experiences of love are both biologicaland cultural. Our biology tells us that love is good by activating these rewardcircuits in our brain, and it tells us that love is painful when, after a fightor a breakup, that neurochemical reward is withdrawn. And in fact — and maybeyou've heard this —neurochemically speaking, going through a breakup is a lot likegoing through cocaine withdrawal,which I find reassuring.
我们的爱情经历和生理和文化都是相关的。通过激活了我们大脑中的这些奖赏回路，生理反应告诉我们爱情很美好，在吵架或分手后，这种神经化学奖赏被撤回。生理反应又会告诉我们爱情很痛苦，实际上，或许你听说过这个从神经化学的角度说经历一场分手就像戒除毒瘾，我为此感到心安。
And then our culture uses language to shapeand reinforce these ideas about love. In this case, we're talking aboutmetaphors about pain and addiction and madness. It's kind of an interestingfeedback loop. Love is powerful and at times painful, and we express this inour words and stories, but then our words and stories prime us to expect loveto be powerful and painful.
然后我们的文化用语言来塑造和强化这些关于爱的观念。在这个例子中，我们讨论的是关于痛苦，上瘾和疯狂的隐喻。这是一个有趣的反馈循环。爱是强大的，有时是痛苦的，我们用语言和故事来表达这种感受，但是它们反过来又让我们期待爱情是强大且痛苦的，
What's interesting to me is that all ofthis happens in a culture that values lifelong monogamy. It seems like we wantit both ways: we want love to feel like madness, and we want it to last anentire lifetime. That sounds terrible.
我认为有趣的是，这都存在于重视终生一夫一妻制的文化中。我们似乎想要两全其美:我们想让爱变得疯狂，我们想让它持续一生。这听起来太可怕了。
To reconcile this, we need to either changeour culture or change our expectations. So, imagine if we were all less passivein love. If we were more assertive, more open-minded, more generous and insteadof falling in love, we stepped into love. I know that this is asking a lot, butI'm not actually the first person to suggest this. In their book,"Metaphors We Live By," linguists Mark Johnson and George Lakoffsuggest a really interesting solution to this dilemma, which is to change ourmetaphors. They argue that metaphors really do shape the way we experience theworld, and that they can even act as a guide for future actions, likeself-fulfilling prophecies.
为了协调这个矛盾，我们需要改变我们的文化要么改变我们的期望。所以，想象一下如果我们在爱情中不那么被动。如果我们更自信、更开放、更慷慨，我们慢慢步入爱河，而不是坠入爱河。我知道这要求很多，但我并不是第一个提出这个建议的人。语言学家马克·约翰逊(Mark Johnson)和乔治·拉考夫(George Lakoff)在他们的著作《我们赖以生存的隐喻》(metaphor We Live By)中提出了一种非常有趣的方法来解决这个难题，那就是改变我们的隐喻。他们认为隐喻确实塑造了我们体验世界的方式，甚至可以作为未来行为的指南，比如自我实现预言。
Johnson and Lakoff suggest a new metaphorfor love: love as a collaborative work of art. I really like this way ofthinking about love. Linguists talk about metaphors as having entailments,which is essentially a way of considering all the implications of, or ideascontained within, a given metaphor. And Johnson and Lakoff talk abouteverything that collaborating on a work of art entails: effort, compromise,patience, shared goals. These ideas align nicely with our cultural investmentin long-term romantic commitment, but they also work well for other kinds ofrelationships — short-term, casual, polyamorous, non-monogamous, asexual — becausethis metaphor brings much more complex ideas to the experience of loving someone.
约翰逊和拉考夫提出了爱的一个新隐喻:爱是一种合作的艺术作品。我真的很喜欢这种思考爱情的方式。语言学家把隐喻看作是有牵连的，它本质上是一种考虑给定隐喻的所有含义或包含在其中的思想的方法。约翰逊和拉考夫认为不管是什么要合作创造艺术需要具备以下几点：努力、妥协、耐心、共同的目标。这些想法与我们对长期浪漫承诺的文化投资非常吻合，但它们也适用于其他类型的关系——短期的、随意的、多角恋的、非一夫一妻制的、无性的——因为这个比喻给爱一个人的体验带来了更加复杂的概念。
So if love is a collaborative work of art,then love is an aesthetic experience. Love is unpredictable, love is creative,love requires communication and discipline, it is frustrating and emotionallydemanding. And love involves both joy and pain. Ultimately, each experience oflove is different.
所以如果爱是一种艺术合作，那么爱就是一种审美体验。爱是不可预测的，爱是有创造力的，爱需要交流和自律，爱是令人沮丧的，也是情感上的要求。爱包含了快乐和痛苦。最终，每一种爱的体验都是不同的。
When I was younger, it never occurred to methat I was allowed to demand more from love, that I didn't have to just acceptwhatever love offered. When 14-year-old Juliet first meets — or, when14-year-old Juliet cannot be with Romeo, whom she has met four days ago, shedoes not feel disappointed or angsty. Where is she? She wants to die. Right?And just as a refresher, at this point in the play, act three of five, Romeo isnot dead. He's alive, he's healthy, he's just been banished from the city. Iunderstand that 16th-century Verona is unlike contemporary North America, andyet when I first read this play, also at age 14, Juliet's suffering made senseto me.
当我年轻的时候，我从来没有想过我可以向爱索取更多，我不用对爱情逆来顺受。当14岁的朱丽叶第一次遇见—或者当14岁的朱丽叶不能和她四天前见过的罗密欧在一起时，她不会感到失望或生气。她在哪里呢?她想死。对吧?让我们复习一下，在第五幕的第三幕，罗密欧没有死。他还活着，他很健康，他刚被赶出这个城市。我知道16世纪的维罗纳不同于当代的北美，但当我14岁第一次读到这部戏剧时，朱丽叶的痛苦对我来说是有意义的。
Reframing love as something I get to createwith someone I admire, rather than something that just happens to me without mycontrol or consent, is empowering. It's still hard. Love still feels totallymaddening and crushing some days, and when I feel really frustrated, I have toremind myself: my job in this relationship is to talk to my partner about whatI want to make together. This isn't easy, either. But it's just so much betterthan the alternative, which is that thing that feels like madness.
重塑爱情，就好像这是我和我仰慕的人共同创造的，而不是未经我同意或者不受控制就发生的，这会让人感到充满力量。这仍然很难。有时候，爱情仍然让人抓狂，让人崩溃，当我真的感到沮丧的时候，我必须提醒自己:我在这段关系中的工作就是和我的伴侣想要一起建立什么。这也不容易。但这比另一种选择要好得多，那就是那种感觉很疯狂的东西。
This version of love is not about winningor losing someone's affection. Instead, it requires that you trust your partnerand talk about things when trusting feels difficult, which sounds so simple,but is actually a kind of revolutionary, radical act. This is because you getto stop thinking about yourself and what you're gaining or losing in yourrelationship, and you get to start thinking about what you have to offer. Thisversion of love allows us to say things like, "Hey, we're not very goodcollaborators. Maybe this isn't for us." Or, "That relationship wasshorter than I had planned, but it was still kind of beautiful."
这种爱情无关赢得或失去谁的爱慕，而是，它要求你信任你的伴侣，在很难信任对方的时候进行沟通，这听起来很简单，但实际上是一种革命性的、激进的行为。这是因为你不再只想到你自己在这段关系中得到或失去了什么，你要开始思考你给予什么。这种爱情让我们能够去说，“嘿，我们的合作并不是很顺利呢，或许我们不合适”或者，“这段关系持续的时间比我计划的要短，但仍然很美好。”
The beautiful thing about the collaborativework of art is that it will not paint or draw or sculpt itself.This version oflove allows us to decide what it looks like.
艺术合作的美妙之处在于，它不会自己成为艺术品。这种爱让我们能够决定自己的爱情应该是怎样的
Thank you.
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