英国哲学家Alan Watts | 我们到底在追求什么？

What makes you itch? What sort of situation would you like? Let’s suppose--I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say:”Well, uh, we are getting out of college and we haven’t the fainest idea what we want to do.” So I always ask the question: “ What would you like to do if money were no object?” What well, how would you really enjoy spending your life?” Well, it’s so amazing as the result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say:”Well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets we’d like to be writers.”But as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way! Another person say:” Well, I’d like to live an out-of-door’s life and ride horses.” I said:” Do you want to teach in a riding school?”

你想要的是什么？哪一种生活是你想要的？假设一下当我在帮同学做职业咨询指导时，他们常跟我说：“我们就要毕业了，但不知道以后要做什么。”所以我常常会问他们：“如果金钱不是问题，你会想做什么？你会如何真正的享受你的人生？”我们教育体制下的产物令人瞠目结舌，许多学生会说：“我想成为画家，我想成为诗人，我想成为作家。”但是每个人都知道那样根本赚不到钱。其他人会说：“我渴望骑着马在野外生活。”我问道：“你想在骑术学校教书吗？”

Uh...Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him:”You do that! And forget the money!” Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You will be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing. Which is STUPID!

呃，让我们再想一遍。你想做什么？当我的学生跟我说他真的很想做某件事时，我会说：“去做吧，别考虑钱！”因为，如果你将赚钱视为最重要的事情，那么你终其一生完全是在浪费时间。为了维持生计，你将一直做你所厌烦的事情。这是多么的愚蠢！

Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in the miserable way. And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is. You can’t eventually turn it...uh you could eventually become a master of launch. The only way to become a master of something is to be really “with it”. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is.

与其过一种漫长而又漫长的生活，不如选择短暂却充满乐趣的人生。毕竟，倘若你真正爱你所做的，那么他是什么就不再重要了。最终，你将不能...呃，你终将成为你所热爱之事的能手。精于某件事的唯一途径就是你真心热爱它，然后你就得到它带给你美好的价值。

So don’t worry too much that everybody’s...somebody’s interested in everything. Anything you can be interested in, you’ll find out very soon. But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach your children to follow in the same track.

所以，别太担心所有人...有些人似乎对一切都满怀热情。因为不久，你也将找到你所热爱的东西。而为了生存，将时间白白耗在你所不喜欢的事情上，然后再教导我们的孩子循着我们的老路走是绝对愚蠢的！

Here what we’re doing is we’re bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we’re living, in order that that would...they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing. So it’s all wretch and no vomit. It never gets there!

这就是我们现在在做的：把孩子带大，然后教育他们遵照我们的生活方式去生活。大人可能会为自己辩解，从而找回人生中的满足感。通过教导自己的孩子，把他们抚养成去过千篇一律的生活。而这都是我们的不幸，永无止境！

And so therefore, it’s so important to consider this question: “What do I desire?”

因此，考虑这个问题至关重要：我想要的是什么？