评论
打印
There is a lot that is annoying, and even terrible, about aging. The creakiness of the body; the drifting of the memory; the reprising of personal history ad nauseam, with only yourself to listen.
变老有太多恼人和糟糕的事情：身体变差，记忆力下降，没完没了地重复个人的过去，并且只有你一个听众。
But there is also something profoundly liberating about aging: an attitude, one that comes hard won. Only when you hit 60 can you begin to say, with great aplomb: “I’m too old for this.”
不过变老还包含一种深刻的解放：获得一种得来不易的态度。只有到了60岁的时候，你才会开始泰然自若地说：“我太老了，这个不适合我。”
This line is about to become my personal mantra. I have been rehearsing it vigorously, amazed at how amply I now shrug off annoyances that once would have knocked me off my perch.
这句话将会成为我的个人箴言。我拼命地练习着这句话，然后惊讶地发现，对于那些曾经打击过自己虚荣心的恼人之事，现在的我竟然已经不屑一顾了。
A younger woman advised me that “old” may be the wrong word, that I should consider I’m too wise for this, or too smart. But old is the word I want. I’ve earned it.
一位比我小的女性建议我说，“老”这个字可能用得不对，应该换成我太“明智”或者太“聪明”了，这个不适合我。但是“老”是我想要的，是我争取到的。
And let’s just start with being an older woman, shall we? Let others feel bad about their chicken wings — and their bottoms, their necks and their multitude of creases and wrinkles. I’m too old for this. I spent years, starting before I was a teenager, feeling insecure about my looks.
先从作一个老女人开始吧？鸡翅胳膊，臀部，脖子，一层层的褶子和皱纹，这些东西让别人发愁去吧。我太老了，不在乎了。我已经花了太多时间忧心于自己的样貌，在进入青少年时期之前就开始了。
No feature was spared. My hairline: Why did I have to have a widow’s peak, at 10? My toes: too short. My entire body: too fat, and once, even, in the depths of heartbreak, much too thin. Nothing felt right. Well, O.K., I appreciated my ankles. But that’s about it.
没有哪个部位能够幸免。我的发际线：为什么我才十岁就非得有个寡妇尖？我的脚趾头：太短。我的全身：太胖。然后有一次伤心至极时，我又嫌弃身体太单薄。总之没有一个地方是称心的。好吧，我对脚踝还挺满意，不过仅此而已。
What torture we inflict upon ourselves. If we don’t whip ourselves into loathing, then mean girls, hidden like trolls under every one of life’s bridges, will do it for us.
我们在折磨着自己。如果不迫使自己厌恶自我，那么刻薄的女孩子们，就像一座座生命之桥下藏着的巨怪一样，会替我们来厌恶自己。
Even the vogue for strange-looking models is little comfort; those women look perfectly, beautifully strange, in a way that no one else does. Otherwise we would all be modeling.
连古怪模特的潮流都带不来什么安慰；她们看上去完美无瑕，怪得那么美，怪得别人无法企及。要不然我们都可以去当模特了。
One day recently I emptied out an old trunk. It had been locked for years; I had lost the key and forgotten what was in there. But, curiosity getting the best of me on a rainy afternoon, I managed to pry it open with a screwdriver.
最近有一天，我打开了一个旧箱子。因为把钥匙弄丢了，这个箱子被锁着很久，我也忘了里面装的都是些什么。不过，在一个下雨的午后，在好奇心的驱使下，我用螺丝刀成功地打开了箱子。
It was full of photographs. There I was, ages 4 to 40. And I saw for the first time that even when I was in the depths of despair about my looks, I had been beautiful.
箱子里面装满了我4岁到40岁的照片。我第一次发现，虽然对自己的长相曾深感绝望，可是曾经的我很美丽。
And there were all my friends; girls and women with whom I had commiserated countless times about hair, weight, all of it, doling out sympathy and praise, just as I expected it heaped upon me: beautiful, too. We were, we are, all beautiful. Just like our mothers told us, or should have. (Ahem.)
里面还有我所有朋友的照片。对于她们的头发、体重等，我曾无数次地表示同情，偶尔会给她们一些安慰和赞美。不过正如我所料，现在看来她们也很美丽。我们曾经、现在都很美丽。我们的母亲就是这么告诉我们的，或者应该这么告诉我们（嗯哼）。
Those smiles, radiant with youth, twinkled out of the past, reminding me of the smiles I know today, radiant with strength.
照片中的笑容，洋溢着青春的气息，提醒着自己今日我所知的笑容散发着一股力量。
Young(er) women, take this to heart: Why waste time and energy on insecurity? I have no doubt that when I’m 80 I’ll look at pictures of myself when I was 60 and think how young I was then, how filled with joy and beauty.
年轻的女性们，你们要铭记在心：为何要把时间和精力浪费在安全感的缺乏上？毫无疑问，当我80岁的时候看着自己60岁的照片时，我就会想到自己当年是多么的年轻，美丽和喜悦。
I’m happy to have a body that is healthy, that gets me where I want to go, that maybe sags and complains, but hangs in there. So maybe I’m too old for skintight jeans, too old for six-inch stilettos, too old for tattoos and too old for green hair.
我很高兴自己有着健康的身体，它让我能去自己想去的地方，或许它松松垮垮，偶有不适，不过还是坚持住了。所以可能我太老了，已经不适合穿紧身牛仔裤，不适合穿6寸的细高跟鞋，也不适合纹身，把头发染成绿色了。
Weight gain? Simply move to the looser end of the wardrobe, and stop hanging with Ben and Jerry. No big deal. Nothing to lose sleep over. Anyway, I’m too old for sleep, or so it seems most nights.
体重增加了？那就穿拿衣柜里的宽松款衣服好了，别整天跟本和杰瑞厮混（指Ben & Jerry's牌冰激凌——译注）。这没什么大不了。不值得为之辗转难眠。而且，我这把年纪不需要睡觉了，至少大多数的夜晚看起来是这样。
Which leaves me a bit cranky in the daytime, so it is a good thing I can now work from home. Office politics? Sexism? I’ve seen it all. Watching men make more money, doing less work. Reading the tea leaves as positions shuffle, listening to the kowtow and mumble of stifled resentment.
睡眠减少会让我在白天有点烦躁，所以现在能在家办公还不错。办公室政治？性别歧视？我都见识过了。看着男人们干活少拿钱多。在人事变动时看着杯中的茶叶读解未来。听着唯唯诺诺、敢怒不敢言的低语。
I want to tell my younger colleagues that it doesn’t matter. Except the sexism, which, like poison ivy, is deep-rooted: You weed the rampant stuff, but it pops up again.
我想对比我小的同事们说，这些都不重要。只有性别歧视不一样，这东西就像毒漆藤，根深蒂固：它们遍地丛生，拔掉了也还会再冒出来。
What matters most is the work. Does it give you pleasure, or hope? Does it sustain your soul? My work as a climate activist is the hardest and most fascinating I’ve ever done. I’m too old for the dark forces, for hopelessness and despair. If everyone just kept their eyes on the ball, and followed through each swing, we’d all be more productive, and not just on the golf course.
最重要的是工作。它让你感到快乐，或者有希望吗？它能滋养你的心灵吗？我目前是一名气候环境活动人士，这是我所做过的最艰难、也最让我着迷的工作。年纪大了，我已经没兴趣为黑暗势力服务，也无意做无望和让人绝望的工作。只要眼睛盯着球，每次挥杆都一个跟进动作，我们都会更有效率，不只是在高尔夫球场上。
The key to life is resilience, and I’m old enough to make such a bald statement. We will always be knocked down. It’s the getting up that counts. By the time you reach upper middle age, you have started over, and over again.
还原能力在生活中很关键，到了这个年纪，我大可以这么直白地讲。我们总有被生活击倒的时候，能重新站起来才有价值。等到了中年，你就会发现，自己已经把人生重来不止一次了。
And, I might add, resilience is the key to feeling 15 again. Which is actually how I feel most of the time.
我还可以再加上一点，还原能力是重新找回自己15岁时感觉的秘诀。实际上，我现在大部分时间都像活在15岁。
But I am too old to try to change people. By now I’ve learned, the very hard way, that what you see in someone at the beginning is what you get forevermore. Most of us are receptive to a bit of behavior modification. But through decades of listening to people complain about marriages or lovers, I hear the same refrains.
但年纪大了，我就不愿意费力去改变别人。付出大代价之后，我现在已经明白，你一开始看到一个人是什么样，他/她就永远是什么样。大多数人都能接受一些行为习惯的矫正。但这几十年听人们抱怨自己的婚姻或爱人，我听到永远是一样的内容。
I have come to realize that there is comfort in the predictability, even the ritualization, of relationship problems. They become a dance step; each partner can twirl through familiar moves, and do-si-do until the music stops.
我开始意识到，人际关系中的可预见性，甚至仪式化的东西，也会让人觉得舒服。它们变成了一种舞步，每个伴侣都以熟悉的动作舞蹈，绕步换位，直到音乐停止。
Toxic people? Sour, spoiled people? I’m simply walking away; I have little fight left in me. It’s easier all around to accept that friendships have ebbs and flows, and indeed, there’s something quite beautiful about the organic nature of love.
碰上毒舌、脾气不好和骄纵的人怎么办？直接走开，我已经没什么跟人斗的劲头了。接受友情有起有落这一点会好过很多，而且爱的有机本质也的确有它动人的地方。
I used to think that one didn’t make friends as one got older, but I’ve learned that the opposite happens. Sometimes, unaccountably, a new person walks into your life, and you find you are never too old to love again. And again. (See resilience.)
过去我认为人年纪大了就不会再交朋友，但我已经发现也不是这么回事。有时候，会有人莫名走进你的生活，然后你发现，自己并没有老到不能爱的那一天。而且还会有下一次（这也是还原能力）。
One is never too old for desire. Having entered the twilight of my dating years, I can tell you it is much easier to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of anticipation and disappointment when you’ve had plenty of experience with the shoals and eddies of shallow waters. Emphasis on shallow. By now, we know deep.
也不要说自己太老了，不该有什么欲望。我已经进入约会时光的晚期，可以负责任地告诉你，当你在浅水区见识了足够多的浅滩和漩涡，哪天要面对斯库拉(Scylla)和卡律布狄斯(Charybdis)这个级别的希望与失望起落时，会容易许多。把注意力放在浅水上。到如今，我们已经知道深水是什么样了。
Take a pass on bad manners, on thoughtlessness, on unreliability, on carelessness and on all the other ways people distinguish themselves as unappealing specimens. Take a pass on your own unappealing behavior, too: the pining, yearning, longing and otherwise frittering away of valuable brainwaves that could be spent on Sudoku, or at least a jigsaw puzzle, if not that Beethoven sonata you loved so well in college.
对于别人的不礼貌、欠考虑、不靠谱和粗心大意，以及所有令人生厌的品质，忽略它们吧。也改改自己一些讨人厌的习惯：执念、向往、强求和诸如此类浪费宝贵脑细胞的活动，这些脑细胞蛮可以用来玩数独，或至少能玩个拼图，如果不想听大学时最爱的贝多芬奏鸣曲的话。
My new mantra is liberating. At least once a week I encounter a situation that in the old (young) days would have knocked me to my knees or otherwise spun my life off center.
我最新的箴言是解放自己。每周至少一次，我会遇到状况，放在以前（年轻的时候），它会让我崩溃，或让生活失去重心。
Now I can spot trouble 10 feet away (believe me, this is a big improvement), and I can say to myself: Too old for this. I spare myself a great deal of suffering, and as we all know, there is plenty of that to be had without looking for more.
如今，在离它十英尺远的地方，我就认出这类麻烦（相信我，这是个很大的进步），而且还能跟自己说：太老了，折腾不起。这让我少受很多折磨，而且我们都知道，就算你不自找麻烦，这种事也有一大堆在前面等着你呢。
If there can be such a thing as a best-selling app like Yo, which satisfies so many urges to boldly announce ourselves, I want one called 2old4this. A signature kiss-off to all that was once vexatious. A goodbye to all that has done nothing but hold us back. That would be an app worth having. But, thankfully, I’m too old to need such a thing.
既然这世上会有Yo这样满足很多人大声宣示自我需求的产品存在，还成为最畅销应用，那我也想要一个叫“2old4this”（年纪大了，用不着）的应用。把它作为一个标签，用来拒绝那些曾经让你大伤脑筋的东西，用来跟所有无所助益却又牵绊我们的事物说再见。这样的应用应该挺值拥有。但是，谢天谢地，我年纪大了，用不着了。
