如何找到真正的自我？How To Know Yourself？

如何找到真正的自我？How To Know Yourself？
Many of us are wandering the earth, accomplished in many ways, capable of fulfillment at many points,
我们很多人在世上游走，各方面都有所成就，也能在很多时刻找到满足感，
but with a fundamental wound that stops us from becoming who we truly might be: we don't quite know who we are.
但一个根深蒂固的问题阻碍了我们成为更好的自己：我们不太清楚自己究竟是谁。
It isn't, of course, that we can't remember the basics of our biographies.
当然，这并不意味着我们忘记了自己生平的基本情况。
We're unsure around two things in particular: firstly, we don't have a stable sense of what we are worth, and secondly, we don't have a secure hold on our own values or judgements.
我们在两个方面特别不确定：第一，我们不太认识到自己的价值，第二，对自己的价值观和判断也缺乏坚定的信念。
Without knowing who we are, we tend to have particular trouble coping with either denigration or adulation.
如果我们对自己的身份缺乏了解，面对贬低或过度赞扬时，我们往往会难以应对。
If other people decide that we are worthless or bad, there will be nothing inside us to prevent us from swallowing their verdicts in their entirety, however wrong-headed, extreme or unkind these might be.
如果别人判定我们一无是处或品行不端，我们内心将缺乏阻力，容易全盘接受他们的评价，不管这些评价多么荒谬、偏激或刻薄。
We will be helpless before the court of public opinion.
在公众舆论面前，我们将变得无能为力。
We'll always be asking other people what we deserve before seeking inside for an answer.
我们总是先向他人询问自己应得什么，而不是先从内心寻找答案。
Lacking an independent verdict, we also stand to be unnaturally hungry for external praise: the clapping of an audience will matter to us far more than would ever be wise.
在没有独立判断的情况下，我们同样会对外界的赞赏产生不切实际的渴求：观众的掌声对我们来说，重要性超乎常理。
We'll be prey to rushing towards whatever idea or activity the crowd happen to love.
我们会盲目追随人群喜爱的任何理念或活动。
We will laugh at jokes that aren't funny, uncritically accept undeserving concepts that are in vogue and neglect our truer talents for easy popular wins.
我们会对那些其实不好笑的笑话，挤出笑容，不加思考地接受那些当前盛行却不甚有价值的观念，为了迎合大众的喜好而忽略自己真正的才华。
We'll trail public opinion slavishly, constantly checking the world's whims rather than consulting an inner barometer in order to know what we should want, feel and value.
我们将盲目跟随公众意见，不停地检视世界的喜好，而不是依据内心的指引来决定自己该追求什么、感受什么、重视什么。
We need to be kind on ourselves.
我们应该对自己更加温柔。
No one is born with an independent ability to know who they are.
没有人生来就能独立地知道自己是谁。
We learn to have an identity because, if we are blessed, in our early years, someone else takes the trouble to study us with immense fairness, attention and kindness and then plays us back to us in a way that makes sense and that we can later emulate.
我们之所以形成自我认同，是因为有幸在成长的早期，有人愿意用公正、细心与温柔去了解我们，随后以一种我们能理解并愿意模仿的方式，将我们的样子呈现给我们自己。
They give us the beginning of a true portrait of our identity which we can then take on and enrich over the years and use as a defence against the distorting verdicts from hurried or ill-intentioned others.
他们给予我们真实身份的初步轮廓，这个轮廓随着时间的流逝，我们接纳并不断充实。它成为我们用来对抗那些匆忙评断，或别有用心之人歪曲观点的防御盾牌。
Knowing who one is is really the legacy of having been known properly by somebody else at the start.
真正了解自己，其实源于起初有人正确深刻地认识我们。
This early identity-building tends to unfold with apparently innocuous but life-saving small steps.
这种初期的身份构建，通常是通过一些看似无害、却对生命至关重要的小步骤展开的。
"Oh, that must really have hurt," a parent might say in response to an upset, thereby validating an infant's own feelings.
父母在安慰情绪不稳的孩子时，可能会说：“这肯定很痛吧。” 从而肯定了孩子自己的感受。
Or: "it's OK not to feel happy on your birthday", the parent might say at another point, delicately upholding an infant's less typical response to certain events.
或许父母会在某个时刻说：“生日那天不开心也是可以的”，这样细腻地认可了孩子对某些事件不那么常见的反应。
Ideally, the child isn't just known, he or she is also interpreted as likeable.
理想情况下，儿童不仅被理解了，还会被认为是值得被爱的。
A good parent offers generous interpretations; they are on the side of the child and are always ready to put the best possible gloss on moments of ill-temper or of failure, which forms the basis upon which resilient self-esteem can then later emerge.
一位优秀的父母总是能给出宽宏的理解；他们始终支持孩子，并且随时准备以最积极的角度来看待孩子的坏脾气或失败——这样的态度为孩子后来建立起强大的自尊心提供了坚实的基础。
Now, that's the ideal, but it can of course go very wrong, and often does.
这是理想的情况，但实际上经常会出现问题，有时情况甚至会变得非常糟糕。
A parent may offer mirroring that is out of synch with the reality of the child.
父母可能提供的镜像与孩子的实际情况不一致。
"Look who is such a happy little boy/girl", a parent might insist when actually the opposite is clearly the case, thereby badly scrambling the child's ability to connect with their own emotions.
当父母坚持说“看，这个小男孩/小女孩多快乐”，而实际情况恰好相反时，这样的做法可能严重扰乱孩子识别和连接自己情绪的能力。
Or the parent might only lend the child a very harsh, punitive way of interpreting itself, repeatedly suggesting that the child is ill-intentioned or no good.
或者，父母可能只以一种极为严厉的方式教导孩子自我解读，反复暗示孩子存有恶意，或毫无价值。
Or the parent may simply not show very much interest in the child, focusing themselves elsewhere, so that the child grows up with a feeling that not only is it not worth cherishing.
或许，父母对孩子缺乏足够的兴趣，总是将自己的注意力分散到别处，这让孩子在成长的道路上形成了一种感觉——认为自己不仅不值得被珍惜。
But also because it has not been adequately seen and mirrored that it doesn't quite exist.
而且，由于缺乏足够的关注和映射，感觉自己仿佛根本就不存在。
A feeling of unreality is the direct consequence of emotional neglect.
情感被忽略直接导致了一种不真实的感觉。
Realising that we lack a stable identity is a sobering realisation.
意识到自己没有稳定的身份认同，这是一次触目惊心的领悟。
But we can, with a fair wind, start to correct the problem at any point.
但是，只要条件允许，我们随时都能开始解决这个问题。
We need to seek out the help of a wise and kindly other person, perhaps a good psychotherapist, someone who can study us closely, mirror us properly and then validate what they see.
我们需要找到一个智慧且善良的人来帮忙，可能是一位出色的心理治疗师，他能细致地观察我们，准确地映射我们的状态，然后确认他所观察到的。
Through their eyes, we can learn to study, perhaps for the first time, how we really feel and take seriously what we actually want.
通过他们的眼光，我们能够开始学习——这可能是首次——去真正了解自己的感受，并严肃地考虑自己真正想追求的是什么。
We can, by being witnessed generously, more often learn to take our own sides and feel increasingly solid inside, trusting ourselves more than we trust the crowd, feeling that we might be able to say no.
通过别人的慷慨关注，我们可以更频繁地支持自己，内心逐渐变得坚定，相较于跟随大众，我们更信任自己。我们觉得自己有能力拒绝。
Not always swaying in the wind and feeling that we are in possession of some of the ultimate, important truths about us.
不再随波逐流，并且自己掌握了一些关于自身的根本的，重要的真理。
Having come to know ourselves like this, we will be a little less hungry for praise, a little less worried by opposition and a lot more original in our thinking.
通过这样了解自己，我们对赞扬的渴望会减少，对反对的担忧也会降低——这使我们的思考更具原创性。
We will have learnt the vital art of both knowing and befriending who we really are.
我们将掌握一门至关重要的技能——既了解自我，又能与真实的自己成为朋友。