你人生中最重要的问题

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money, and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.

每个人都想要那些感觉美好的东西。每个人都想过一种无忧无虑、幸福又轻松的生活，想坠入爱河，拥有美妙的性生活和亲密关系，想拥有完美的外表，赚很多钱，受欢迎、受尊重、受人仰慕，最好还牛到一种程度——你一走进房间，人群就像红海一样自动为你分开。

Everyone would like that—it’s easy to like that.

谁都会喜欢这些——喜欢这些东西太容易了。

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous it doesn’t even mean anything.

如果我问你：“你这一生想要什么？”而你的回答是：“我想幸福，想拥有一个美满的家庭，再有一份自己喜欢的工作。”这种回答实在太普遍了，普遍到几乎已经没有任何意义。

A more interesting question—a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before—is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.

一个更有意思的问题——也许是一个你以前从没认真想过的问题——是：你愿意在生活中承受什么样的痛苦？你愿意为了什么而挣扎？ 因为真正决定我们的人生最终会变成什么样的，似乎更多是这个问题。

What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?

你愿意在生活中承受什么样的痛苦？你愿意为了什么而挣扎？

Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence—but not everyone wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, and obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.

每个人都想拥有一份很棒的工作，想实现财务独立——但并不是每个人都愿意忍受每周工作60小时、漫长的通勤、烦人的文书工作，愿意在莫名其妙的公司等级制度里周旋，愿意困在永无尽头、令人麻木的格子间地狱里。人们想变得富有，却不想承担风险，不想做出牺牲，也不想接受积累财富所必需的延迟满足。

Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship—but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the emotional psychodrama to get there.

每个人都想拥有美妙的性生活和一段很棒的关系——但并不是每个人都愿意经历那些艰难的谈话、尴尬的沉默、被伤害的感受，以及一场又一场情绪上的拉扯，来得到这一切。

They view pain as an objectively negative thing to be avoided at all costs, whereas reality is much more nuanced. As I cover in my Resilience Episode, we are all capable of — and I’d argue responsible for — ascribing meaning to our pain, and this can actually give our life purpose.

他们把痛苦看成一种绝对负面的东西，认为无论如何都应该避免，但现实要复杂得多。正如我在关于“韧性”的那一期节目里讲过的，我们每个人都有能力——而且我甚至认为，我们有责任——赋予自己的痛苦某种意义，而这反过来可以让我们的人生拥有目的。

But most people don’t realize this. And so they settle. They settle and wonder “What if?” for years and years until the question morphs from “What if?” into “Was that it?” And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, “What was that for?” If not for their lowered standards and expectations 20 years prior, then what for?

但大多数人并没有意识到这一点。所以他们选择了将就。他们一边将就，一边年复一年地问自己：“如果当初……会怎么样？”直到有一天，这个问题从“如果当初……”变成了“难道人生就这样了吗？”等到律师离开，赡养费支票已经寄出，他们又会问：“这一切到底是为了什么？”如果不是因为20年前他们主动降低了自己的标准和期待，那又是因为什么呢？

Happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.

幸福需要挣扎。积极的体验，是你处理好消极体验之后产生的副产品。你只能暂时逃避负面经历，总有一天，它们会以更猛烈的方式重新找上门来。

At the core of all human behavior, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire, but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings.

归根结底，所有人的基本需求其实都差不多。正面的体验很好应对，真正让我们挣扎的，从定义上来说，本来就是负面的体验。因此，我们最终能从人生中得到什么，并不是由我们渴望得到什么样的美好感受决定的，而是由我们为了得到那些美好感受，愿意并且能够承受什么样的糟糕感受决定的。

What we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire, but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings

我们最终能从人生中得到什么，并不是由我们渴望什么样的美好感受决定的，而是由我们为了得到那些美好感受，愿意并且能够承受什么样的糟糕感受决定的。

People want an amazing physique. But you don’t end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.

人们都想拥有完美的身材。但除非你真的能够接受甚至欣赏长时间泡在健身房里带来的疼痛和身体压力，除非你喜欢计算并精确调整自己吃下去的每一样东西，把生活规划成一份份装在餐盘里的小份额，否则你最终不会拥有那样的身材。

People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and work insane hours on something you have no idea whether or not it will be successful.

人们都想自己创业，或者实现财务独立。但除非你能找到一种方式去接受甚至欣赏风险、不确定性、一次又一次的失败，以及在一个你根本不知道最终能不能成功的东西上疯狂投入工作时间，否则你不会成为一个成功的创业者。

People want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attracting someone amazing without appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It’s part of the game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play.

人们都想找到伴侣，找到丈夫或妻子。但如果你无法接受恋爱过程中必然出现的情绪动荡——被拒绝、暧昧带来的性张力迟迟得不到释放、呆呆盯着一部始终不会响起的手机——你也很难遇到一个真正优秀的人。这些本来就是爱情游戏的一部分。你不下场，就不可能赢。

What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences, but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.

决定你能否成功的问题，不是“你想享受什么？”而是：“你愿意持续承受什么样的痛苦？”你的人生质量，并不是由你的正面体验有多好决定的，而是由你处理负面体验的能力决定的。学会处理负面的经历，也就是学会处理人生本身。

To get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.

擅长处理负面体验，就是擅长面对人生。

There’s a lot of crappy advice out there that says, “You’ve just got to want it enough!”

外面有很多糟糕的人生建议都会告诉你：“你只需要足够想要它！”

Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something enough. They just aren’t aware of what it is they want, or rather, what they want “enough.”

每个人都有自己想要的东西，而且每个人都有某些自己“足够想要”的东西。只不过他们往往不知道自己真正想要的究竟是什么——或者更准确地说，不知道自己究竟对什么“想要到了足够的程度”。

Because if you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the beach body, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off one person or ten thousand.

因为如果你想要人生中某件东西带来的好处，你也必须同时想要它附带的代价。如果你想拥有海滩身材，那你也得愿意要那些汗水、酸痛、早起和饥饿感。如果你想拥有游艇，那你也得愿意接受熬夜、冒险的商业决策，以及可能得罪一个人，甚至一万个人。

If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image, a false promise. Maybe what you want isn’t what you want—you just enjoy wanting. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all.

如果你发现自己一个月又一个月、一年又一年都说想要某样东西，但始终什么都没有发生，你也从来没有离它更近一步，那么也许你真正想要的只是一个幻想、一种理想化的想象、一幅画面、一个虚假的承诺。也许你所谓“想要”的东西，其实根本不是你真正想要的——你只是喜欢“想要它”的感觉。也许你根本就不想要它。

Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses.

有时候我会问别人：“你选择用什么方式受苦？”他们通常会歪着脑袋看着我，仿佛我脸上长了十二个鼻子。

But I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns.

但我之所以这样问，是因为这个问题比你的欲望和幻想更能说明你是一个怎样的人。因为你总得选择某种东西。你不可能拥有一个完全没有痛苦的人生。人生不可能永远只有鲜花和彩虹独角兽。

And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain.

最终，真正重要的就是这个困难的问题。快乐是一个很容易回答的问题，而且我们绝大多数人的答案都差不多。真正有意思的问题，是痛苦。

What is the pain that you want to sustain?

你愿意持续承受什么样的痛苦？

That answer will actually get you somewhere. It’s the question that can change your life. It’s what makes me, me and you, you. It’s what defines and separates us, and ultimately brings us together.

这个问题的答案，才真正能够把你带到某个地方。它是一个能够改变你人生的问题。它决定了为什么我是我、你是你。它定义了我们，让我们彼此不同，而最终，也正是这些不同把我们联系在一起。

For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being a musician—a rock star, in particular. Any badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and envision myself up onstage playing it to the screams of the crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet finger-noodling.

在我青春期以及刚成年的大部分时间里，我一直幻想着成为一名音乐人——更具体地说，是一个摇滚明星。每当我听到一首特别酷的吉他曲，我都会闭上眼睛，想象自己站在舞台上演奏，台下观众尖叫着，为我炫酷的吉他演奏彻底疯狂。

This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end. The fantasizing continued through college, even after I dropped out of music school and stopped playing seriously.

这种幻想可以让我一连沉浸好几个小时。整个大学期间我都还在幻想这些，甚至在我从音乐学校退学、不再认真玩音乐之后也是如此。

But even then it was never a question of if I’d ever be up playing in front of screaming crowds, but when. I was biding my time before I could invest the proper amount of time and effort into getting out there and making it work. First, I needed to finish school. Then, I needed to make money. Then, I needed to find the time. Then… nothing.

但即便到了那个时候，在我脑子里，这仍然不是“我到底能不能站到尖叫的人群面前演奏”的问题，而只是“什么时候会发生”的问题。我觉得自己只是在等待时机，等到将来能够真正投入足够的时间和精力，把这件事做成。首先，我得先完成学业。然后，我得先赚钱。然后，我得先找到时间。然后……就没有然后了。

Despite fantasizing about this for over half of my life, the reality never came. And it took me a long time and a lot of negative experiences to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it.

尽管我人生超过一半的时间都在幻想这件事，它却始终没有成为现实。而我花了很长时间，也经历了很多糟糕的事情，才终于明白原因：其实我根本没有那么想要它。

I was in love with the result—the image of me onstage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I’m playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all.

我爱的是结果——我站在舞台上的画面，人们为我欢呼，我尽情地演奏，把全部情感灌注进音乐里——但我并不爱实现这个结果所需要经历的过程。正因为如此，我一次又一次地失败。见鬼，事实上我甚至都没有努力到足以称得上“失败”的程度。我几乎根本没有认真尝试过。

The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit. The broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling 40 pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car.

每天枯燥乏味地练习，寻找乐队成员、组织排练时的各种麻烦，寻找演出机会的痛苦，以及想办法让别人真的愿意到现场来看、愿意在乎你的演出。断掉的琴弦，烧坏的电子管音箱，还有在没有车的情况下，扛着40磅重的设备来来回回跑排练。

It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what took me a long time to discover was that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the top.

这个梦想就像一座山，而通往山顶是一段高达一英里的攀登。我花了很久才发现：我其实并不怎么喜欢爬山。我只是喜欢想象自己站在山顶上的样子。

Our culture would tell me that I’ve somehow failed myself, that I’m a quitter or a loser. Self-help would say that I either wasn’t courageous enough, determined enough or I didn’t believe in myself enough. The entrepreneurial/start-up crowd would tell me that I chickened out on my dream and gave in to my conventional social conditioning. I’d be told to do affirmations or join a mastermind group or manifest, or something.

按照我们社会里的主流叙事，我大概是辜负了自己，是一个半途而废的人，是个失败者。励志书会告诉我，我要么不够勇敢，要么不够坚定，要么就是还不够相信自己。创业圈的人则会告诉我，我在梦想面前怂了，最终向传统的社会规训投降了。然后大概还会有人让我每天做积极自我暗示，加入什么“智囊团”，练习显化之类的东西。

But the truth is far less interesting than that: I thought I wanted something, but it turns out I didn’t. End of story.

但真相远没有这么戏剧化：我以为自己想要某样东西，后来才发现，我其实并不想要。就这么简单。

I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love not with the fight, but only the victory.

我想要奖励，却不想要挣扎。我想要结果，却不想要过程。我爱的不是战斗本身，而只是胜利。

And life doesn’t work that way.

但人生不是这样运转的。

Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who get in good shape. People who enjoy long work weeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who move up it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of the starving artist life are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.

你是谁，是由那些你愿意为之挣扎的价值决定的。那些能够享受健身房里的痛苦和挣扎的人，才会真正练出好身材。那些能够接受漫长工作时间以及职场晋升中各种政治博弈的人，才会一路往上爬。那些能够接受穷艺术家生活里的压力和不确定性的人，最终才更可能真的过上那种生活，并且取得成功。

This is not a call for willpower or “grit.” This is not another admonition of “no pain, no gain.”

这并不是在号召你增强意志力或者培养所谓的“坚毅”。这也不是又一次对你喊“没有痛苦就没有收获”。

This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. So, my friend, choose your struggles wisely.

这只是人生最简单、最基本的规律：我们选择承受什么样的挣扎，决定了我们能够获得什么样的成功。 所以，我的朋友，请谨慎选择你愿意为之承受的痛苦。