文/玛丽·斯坦 译/汤玮健 审订/仇蓓玲

By Marie Stein

Middle-aged, unemployed, single and my money spent, I’m an utter failure in comparison to many of my college peers.

[2] I graduated from an elite university in the 1980s. My class of approximately 1550 has generated a Nobel Prize winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a World Bank chief, a few ambassadors, at least one current governor and several mayors. I know former classmates who are university presidents, hedge fund managers, college professors, CEOs and so on.

[3] What a load of over-achievers!

[4] Meanwhile, the rest of us remain uncelebrated, absent from the public eye, not courted by private bankers,nosy paparazzi, respected charities,luxury real estate agents or art auction houses.

人到中年，孤身一人，没有工作，也没有积蓄，和我的许多大学同学比起来，我是个彻头彻尾的失败者。

[2] 1980年代，我从一所精英大学毕业。与我同届毕业的约有1550人，其中有一位诺贝尔奖得主、一位普利策奖得主、一位世界银行高层、若干位大使、至少一位在任州长和若干位市长，我也知道以前的同班同学中现在担任大学校长、对冲基金经理、大学教授或者公司高管的大有人在。

[3]成功人士如此之多！

[4]与此同时，我们余下的同学默默无闻，远离公众视野，既不受私人银行家青睐，也不被狗仔队跟踪，知名慈善机构、豪宅经纪或者艺术品拍卖行更不会关注我们。

[5]一个人毕业之后的成就，通常用所获学历、阶层等级、公司头衔、上杂志封面次数、社交媒体受欢迎度以及财富的多少来衡量。在精英大学的校友聚会上，只有知名校友的故事才能得到关注，大家在窃窃私语中交流着知名校友的辉煌事迹。在同学们的巨大成就面前，我们又怎能不感到自己是个失败者呢？

[6] 19世纪丹麦哲学家克尔凯郭尔在自己的故事《地里的百合与空中的飞鸟》中提出过同样的问题。

[7]故事中，克尔凯郭尔描写了一只喜欢和百合说八卦的小鸟。这只鸟有个坏习惯，总爱“或真或假地叙说其他地方有大片更加绚丽多彩的百合花”。小鸟讲述的故事让百合十分困扰，因为与小鸟奇妙故事里那些更加绚丽的百合相比，它实在是太微不足道了，它甚至怀疑自己配不配叫作百合花。

[8]在比较带来的痛苦之下，苦恼的人最终迷失了自己，甚至忘记了自己也是一个人。

[9]无比绝望中，他说服自己，他与别人不一样，他甚至怀疑自己还是不是真正意义上的“人”。就好像百合觉得自己太渺小，以至于不知道究竟自己还能不能被称为百合花。

[5] Post-graduate achievement is usually measured in degrees earned and awarded, class rankings, corporate titles, magazine covers and social media popularity, and money made. At elite institutions’ alumni gatherings,the bar for storytelling is set high,with summary biographies of our most luminous graduates shared in hushed murmurs. How can we compare ourselves to our peers’ stupendously visible achievements and not think ourselves failures?

[6] In the 1800s, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard2索伦·阿拜·克尔凯郭尔，19世纪丹麦著名哲学家。addressed the same question with his own story: “The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air.”

[7] In it, Kierkegaard describes a little bird that loves to gossip to its friend the lily. The bird, he writes, has a bad habit of saying “all sorts of things, true and untrue,about other places where lilies far more splendid were found in great abundance.”The listening lily, in turn, becomes troubled. Seeing its own unsplendid existence in comparison to the bird’s fantastic tales of other and better lilies, the lily begins to doubt whether it deserves to call itself a lily at all.

[8] In the distress of comparison, the troubled person may go at last so far that in view of the difference he forgets that he is a man.

[9] In despair, he conceives himself so different from other men, that he even conceives he is different from what is meant by being a man, just as the lily was so inconspicuous that it was questionable if it was really a lily.

[10] In other words, it’s not just painful to doubt. To measure success in any way but from the inside is to rock the foundations of your identity.

[11] Most of us are already busy enough trying to get by.

[10]换句话说，怀疑自己不仅痛苦，任何不从内部价值评价成功的行为都是在动摇自己身份的根基。

[11]我们中的大多数人都在忙着勉强度日。

[12]我们忙着应付日常生活的各种现实问题，日复一日，学着变通，偶尔也会坚持到底。我们可以用一次考试或者一项提案来比较自己的表现，但是把自己和别人相比来检验自己是不是成功人士，这不仅没意义，也很令人讨厌。

[13]我们很多人获得的都不是显而易见的成功，获得财富成就的人大多是极其幸运的，但他们在感情上不一定也有那么好的运气。现在，许多人终于明白，不管工作多么努力，有多么聪明，运气在“成功”中的作用远比想象中大。

[14]我的一些同学，他们取得的伟大成就也许将永远不被人知晓或追捧，另外一些同学，他们最好、最成功、成果最多的时刻尚未到来。还有一些同学，他们一直在黑暗中苦苦挣扎，还能活着就很开心。

[12] We’re busy with the practical tasks of everyday living, doing and redoing, learning and changing, and sometimes staying the course. We might compare our performance on an examination, or a recent grant proposal;but to compare ourselves against others in the totality of being a successful adult is odious and futile.

[13] Many of us are not the kind of successful that’s easy to see. Many of us who have enjoyed financial success were extremely fortunate, but perhaps not so lucky in love. Many of us understand now that no matter how hard you work or how brilliant you might be,luck has far more to do with “success”than one might imagine.

[14] There may be a few of us in my graduating class who have achieved great things that won’t ever be known or celebrated. There are those of us whose best, most successful and most fruitful years are yet to come. There are those of us who have struggled with darkness and who are very, very happy to simply still be here.

[15] I am extraordinarily grateful for the experiences I have had and I am absurdly proud of what many of my college friends and acquaintances have achieved and continue to achieve,whether they are famous and obviously successful, or not.

[16] The truth is, at a college reunion,the most glamorous resumes are an afterthought; they crystallize only after conversations about where we live,who we love, about our health and our shared memories—of each other and of the institution we made our own, in four years together.

[17] Those best stories and legends are rarely about success or failure; they’re about us, just as we were and are. When I look at my college class, I don’t see successes and failures—I see example after example of the astonishingly rich and diverse human experience. ■

[15]我对自己曾经的经历心存感激，无论我的同学们是否有名气，是不是公认的成功人士，我都为他们过去和未来的成就骄傲。

[16]事实上，大学同学聚会上最光彩夺目的经历是大家交谈过后的回味，是与老同学分享我们的近况——住址、所爱之人、健康状况——以及回忆大学四年同窗情谊后感情的升华。

[17]这些最棒的传奇和故事同过去的我们有关，也和现在的我们有关，但很少涉及成败。我看着我的大学同学，看到的不是成功者和失败者，而是一个个经历丰富且各有不同的鲜活的人。 □