我们来到人间伊始：身边围着一群人，他们对我们的关心超乎寻常，且以最温柔最关心的眼神注视着我们，对我们嘘寒问暖。但长大后，我们踏入可怕的现实：我们生活的世界，冷漠到令人颤抖，没有人在乎我们的所在、所想、所说和所做。没有一个路人会好奇我们的一丝一毫，在这个更广阔的宇宙中，我们只是微不足道的一粒尘埃。中英文本We tend to begin our lives with a deeply unrepresentative experience: that of being surrounded by people who care to an extraordinary extent about us. We look up from the dreams and confusions of early infancy and may find a smiling face or two observing us with the utmost tenderness and concern. They watch us as a rivulet of saliva leaks slowly from the corner of our mouth and rush to wipe it away as if dabbing at a precious canvas, then indulgently stroke the fine soft hairs on our delicate scalps. They declare us close to supernatural when, at last, we succeed in pulling our first smile. The applause rings for days when we take our initial steps, giggle, totter, fall, and bravely try to resume our progress. 我们人类常常是以一段极其不具代表性的体验来到了人间：身边围着一群人，他们对我们的关心超乎寻常。生命伊始，我们在懵懂中睁开双眼，悄然发现一两张笑脸，正以最温柔最关怀的眼神注视着我们。他们照看着我们，一旦口水从嘴角流出，他们就会迅速擦拭，轻柔的动作就好像擦拭着名贵的画作，然后轻轻地抚摸我们娇嫩头皮上的细软毛发。当我们最终成功露出第一个笑容时，他们就会表现得不可思议。当我们迈出第一步，能咯咯笑，会蹒跚学步，然后摔倒，并且再次非常勇敢地继续所取得的进步，他们的鼓励会持续好几天。It isn’t just at home. At school, the best teachers encourage us when we find something difficult; they understand we might be shy; they’re keen to detect and encourage the early, tentative signs of our particular talents.不仅是在家如此关心我们。在学校，当我们遇到困难时，最好的老师们也会鼓励我们。老师们理解我们可能会羞怯。他们热衷于发现并且鼓励那些，展现我们婴儿时期特殊才能的、试探性的行为表现。Then, of course, we grow up and we’re inducted into a horrific reality: we exist in a world of astonishing indifference to almost everything we are, think, say or do. We might be in late adolescence when the point really hits home. We might be in a bedsit at university or wandering the streets of the city at night on our own – when it occurs to us, with full force, how negligible a thing we are in the wider scheme. No one in the crowds we pass knows anything about us. Our welfare is of no concern to them. They jostle against us on the pavements and treat us as a mere impediment to their progress. We’re tiny against the towers and brightly-lit flashing advertising hoardings. We might die and no one would even notice.当然，之后我们长大了，踏进了可怕的现实社会：我们生活的世界，冷漠到令人颤抖，没有人在乎我们的所在、所想、所说和所做。我们可能在青春期后期才真正幡然醒悟，被击中要害。我们可能是在大学宿舍里，或者晚上独自一人在街上闲逛，我们才会突然彻底醒悟到，在这个更广阔的宇宙中我们是多么微不足道。没有一个路人知道关于我们的一丝一毫，我们的幸福与他们无关，在人行道上我们与他们摩肩擦踵，却被他们当作是行走路上的拦路虎，相较于高耸林立的塔楼和光怪陆离的广告牌，我们是多么渺小，可能到死也没有人理会我们。It may be a stern truth – but we make it all the more so by focusing only on its darkest dimensions. We remain grief-stricken by how invisible we are, yet we cease to put this bracing thought to its proper philosophical purpose, that of rescuing us from another problem which is gnawing at us all the while: an ongoing and highly corrosive sense of self-consciousness.这些事实多么残酷，但如果我们只关注最黑暗的维度，则会更残酷。我们仍会对自己活得就像个隐形人而感到悲伤，除非我们能矫正这种消极思维，并能够处乱不惊，我们就能从折磨我们已久的不正确的自我意识中解脱：这种自我意识长期存在且具有高度腐蚀性。In another side of our minds, we haven’t accepted the indifference of others at all, in fact, we know, and suffer intensely, from just how much (as we feel sure) others are thinking of us. We’re extremely worried about how high-pitched and odd our voice sounded when we asked the waiter for a bit more milk. We’re certain that the sales attendant noticed how out of shape our stomach is. The people in the restaurant where we’re eating alone are undoubtedly spending considerable time wondering why we have no friends. At work, they’re still dwelling on that slightly stupid thing we said last month about the US sales strategy. A person we went to bed with four years ago is to this day thinking ill of us in some powerful but undefined way. 而在我们大脑的另一侧，我们还未能真正接受别人的漠不关心，而实际上我们不仅意识到了，还受到别人对我们的看法(自以为是的)的深深伤害。当我们请求服务员给牛奶续杯时，我们会很担心自己的声音太高昂，或者声音太难听。我们也很确定买衣服时，售货员一定注意到了我们肥凸的肚子。当我们独自用餐时，餐厅里的人一定很长时间都在讨论为什么我们没有朋友。工作时，同事还在念叨上个月我提出的那个愚蠢的美国销售方案。我们四年前的交往对象，仍然在以一种能感受到却捉摸不透的方式，恨着我们。We don’t really have any evidence for this, and yet it can feel like an emotional certainty. It can feel intuitively clear that our foolishness and less-than-impressive sides are being noted and dwelt on all the time by everyone at large. Every way in which we depart from what the world considers to be normal, upstanding and dignified has been registered by the widest constituency. 我们没有任何实际证据证明别人在关注我们，但情感上却坚信别人一定会关注。我们能凭直觉感受到，所有人都在注意和关注着我们的愚蠢与平平无奇，所有人一直广泛关注着我们身上背离正常社会的方方面面，比如关注着我们不正常的、不正直的以及没有尊严的行为举止。To liberate us from this kind of punitive story, we may need to conduct a deliberately artificial thought-exercise; we may have to set ourselves the challenge of examining how long we spend on the foolishness (or just existence) of other people. How we think and feel about other people we don’t particularly know is perhaps the best guide to the workings of the average human imagination: to pretty much the rest of the world, we are the very same sort of strangers or casual acquaintances as we know and deal with in our own daily experience.为了能从这种具有惩罚性的妄想中解脱出来，我们需要有意识地进行人为的思维练习，我们必须质问自己，审视自己有多少时间浪费在别人的愚蠢（或者别人的生存）上。对那些我们实际并不认识的人，我们怎么看待他们、怎么想他们，也许是了解人类大脑运作原理的最好指南：对于世界上大多数人来说，我们都是熟悉的陌生人，或者说泛泛之交，只是在日常生活中打交道而已。And now here, the results can be surprising. Imagine that we’re in an elevator, standing next to someone on our way to the 20th floor. They think they know that we disapprove of their choice of jacket. They think they know that we should have picked another one and that they look silly and pinched in this one. But in reality, we haven’t noticed the jacket. In fact, we haven’t noticed they were born – or that one day they are going to die. We’re just worrying about how our partner responded when we mentioned our mother’s cold to them last night.此时此刻，结论已经让人惊掉大牙。想象一下我们正在乘坐通往20楼的电梯，旁边站着一个人，那个人以为知道我在想什么，他以为我不喜欢他穿的这件夹克。他以为我会选另一件夹克，他以为自己穿的夹克显得又蠢又憔悴，但我其实根本没有注意他穿的夹克。实际上我根本还没注意到旁边有人，甚至我们根本不关心他的生死，我们只是在担心，昨天晚上提起妈妈得了感冒后，我们的伴侣会如何反应。Or imagine it’s well on the way into the last bit of a two-hour meeting that we sense that a colleague’s hair really is a bit different today, though we can’t quite put a finger on how – even though they spent a small fortune on their cut and thought intensely about the wisdom of visiting a new salon.或者想象一下，两小时的会议已经接近尾声，我们突然发现同事的发型今天确实有一点不一样，即使我们并不能确认到底哪里不一样，即使同事为了这个新发型花了不少钱，并认真想了很久所选新的托尼老师是否是明智的选择。In other words, when we take our own minds as a guide, we get a far more accurate – and far less oppressive – vision of what’s likely to be going on the heads of other people when they encounter us, which is, in the nicest way, not very much. This kind of news is both very bad and strangely good: on the one hand, no one may notice when we die; on the other, they are also sure not to have noticed when we spill some orange juice on our front or do our hair the wrong way. It’s not that we – or they – are horrible.换句话说，当我们以自己的大脑（怎么想别人）为导向，也许就不会那么压抑，我们就会更准确地把握我们遇见的那些人脑袋里在想什么，从完美角度看，当然也不是很准确。当然，这样的思维可以说是一把双刃剑，不好的一面是，我们死去时也许没有人会注意到，而好的一面是，别人肯定也不会注意到我们不小心打翻了橙汁，或者做了个难看的发型，但这并不能说明，我们或者他们是糟糕的人。Our lack of caring isn’t absolute. If we really saw a stranger in trouble in the water, we would dive in. When a friend is in tears, we are sympathetic. It’s just that for the most part, we need to filter. Our everyday lack of care occurs for a perfectly sane and forgivable reason: we need to spend most of our waking energies on navigating, and doing justice to, our own intimate concerns. Once we’ve had to think about our relationship, our career, our finances, our health, our close relatives, our offspring, our upcoming holidays, our friends and the state of our household, there is just going to be very little time left to reflect on the suddenly high-pitched voice of a customer or the outfit of a colleague. 我们对他人缺乏关心并不是绝对的。如果我们真的看见陌生人溺水了，我们肯定会挺身而出，当朋友撕心裂肺时，我们也会对他产生同情。只是在大多数情况下，我们需要做出筛选。我们日常缺乏关心是出于完全理智并且是值得原谅的理由：我们需要把大量精力放在正确的方向，以及公平对待切身利益上。一旦我们要开始考虑身边的关系、事业、经济情况、健康、近亲、子女，即将到来的假期、朋友和家庭状况时，就很少有时间能留给留意一位顾客突然高亢的声音，或者同事的穿着了。We are owed the upside of an otherwise tragic insight. We shouldn’t just suffer from the indifference of other people, we should – where it matters – properly reciprocate it. We shouldn’t merely suffer from being ignored, we should accept the liberation implicit in the fact that we are being so. And then, in turn, we should embark more courageously on those situations and adventures where a touch of foolishness is always going to be a possibility, like the start of a new business, a romantic invitation, or asking a question at a conference…We may fail, but we can believe with new certainty that almost no one will give a damn if we do, an idea that may – above anything else – help to contribute to our future success – something which, as we now know, no one is going to much notice or care about anyway.我们欠缺从不同的、悲剧式的视角积极思考，我们不应该只是从别人的冷漠中感受到伤害，重要的是 我们应该适当地换位思考。我们不应该只感受到被忽视的伤害，而应该真正接受隐藏在漠不关心背后的自由，然后反过来更勇敢地踏上险象环生的征程。征程中极有可能会发生一些蠢事，比如开始一项新的事业，赴一次浪漫的约会，或者在会议上提问，我们都可能会挫败，但我们能确定的是，几乎没有人会在意我们做什么，这样想比什么都重要，这样想比什么都重要，对我们未来的成功十分有益。现在我们多少已经这个道理：事不关己，高高挂起。
Why You Keep Failing at Self-DisciplineThere’s a widely-held belief that self-discipline means being able to do something when you don’t actually want to do i