【中英双语】若要成功，必先失败？
你经历过最棒的事情是什么？与伴侣相识，初为父母，还是事业成功的某个关键时刻？当记者梅根·麦克阿德（Megan McArdle）在网上做此项调查时，大部分受访者谈到的都是爱情、孩子和工作等主题。但是，当她搜索谷歌时，结果让她有些吃惊：排名最高的居然是离婚，然后是罹患癌症和丢掉工作的经历，甚至还有人提到坐牢。
What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you? Meeting your spouse? Becoming a parent? Some breakthrough moment of career success? When journalist Megan McArdle conducted a web survey on the topic, most respondents offered some variation on the love/kids/job theme. But then she turned to Google and found some surprises. Getting divorced ranks high. So does being diagnosed with cancer. And being fired. Rounding out the search results: Going to prison.
这项排名反映了当下社会对逆境的敬畏之情，很多人认为只要端正心态，逆境会给人生带来转机。很少有人会盼望陷入逆境，但不可否认，逆境能让我们有机会检验自身的韧性并展现勇气。
That list is evidence of society’s reverence for difficult experiences that, when viewed from the proper perspective, lead to revelatory transformation. Although few of us actively wish for trauma, we recognize that it can offer an opportunity to test our resilience and then celebrate our mettle.
从某种意义上说，这并非什么新鲜事。《圣经·约伯记》就探讨了个人苦难的命题，此后很多文学作品一直在审视人类承受重重磨难的能力。几十年来，心理学家一直在研究为什么有些人比其他人更容易从逆境中反弹，以及他们在这个过程中获得了什么。
In a way, this is nothing new. Since the biblical story of Job, many literary works have examined human beings’ ability to endure repeated hardship. And for decades now, psychologists have been studying why some people bounce back from adversity more easily than others—and what they gain in the process.
然而，过去几年里，韧性的重要性一下子被抬高，几乎成为“最重要的情商要素”，为此，我们四处寻找有韧性的员工，刻意去培养孩子的韧性品质，也希望打造自身的韧性。书店里也充斥着各种有关韧性的书。
In the past few years, however, resilience has emerged as perhaps the foremost emotional virtue—a characteristic we seek in employees, nurture in children, and hope to build in ourselves. No surprise, then, that bookshelves are filling up with treatises on how to achieve it.
其中一本就是麦克阿德的《失败的积极面》（The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success）。另一本是心理学教授大卫·费尔德曼（David B. Feldman）和记者李·丹尼尔·卡拉维兹（Lee Daniel Kravetz）合著的《超级幸存者》（Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success）。它讲述了一些历经重创者的故事，他们或差点被癌症夺去生命，或遭遇截肢或重度颅脑损伤，或经历丧子之痛，这些重创成了他们生命中的催化剂。“他们不仅仅是获得了成长；他们彻彻底底改变了自己的命运，”作者写道，“甚至在承受重创时，他们就已经重新认识并超越了自身的苦难。”
McArdle presents her findings in The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success. In addition, we have Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success, by psychology professor David B. Feldman and journalist Lee Daniel Kravetz. Supersurvivors relates the stories of people whose significant traumas—near-fatal cancer, limb amputation, severe brain injury, the loss of a child—become catalyzing events. “These people don’t just grow; they revolutionize their lives,” the authors write. “They transform and transcend their suffering even while enduring it.”
这些书籍与畅销书《儿童如何成功》（How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character）一脉相承，该书曾被连篇累牍地报道。在《儿童如何成功》一书中，作者保罗·图赫（Paul Tough）回顾了以往的学术研究，并向读者介绍了一些强调性格特征发展而非认知能力的创新教育项目。
These books follow the deeply reported best seller How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, in which Paul Tough surveys the academic research and takes readers inside innovative educational programs that prioritize the development of character traits instead of cognitive skills.
这类非虚构类作品无疑丰富了成功学书籍。图赫的作品实至名归，因为它会改变父母对儿童情感构成的看法，以及他们希望孩子培养的品质。阅读费尔德曼和卡拉维兹的作品，你会深受启发，了解影响韧性的一些因素，其中包括宗教信仰、原谅的能力和对死亡的认知，但对于如何走出逆境，你可能还看不到一幅清晰的路线图。麦克阿德的作品妙趣横生，有些方面也很有见地。
This genre of nonfiction certainly enriches the literature about success. Tough’s book deserves its acclaim, and it may change the way parents think about their children’s emotional makeup and the qualities they hope to instill in them. If you read Feldman and Kravetz, you will come away inspired and more attuned to the factors that influence resilience—including religious faith, the ability to forgive, and awareness of mortality—although you won’t get a clear road map for rebounding from calamity. McArdle’s book is engaging and at times insightful.
但是，我很担心这些作品太过理想化。战胜逆境当然值得称赞，但如今它有时被视为个人经历的必要组成部分。“一窥成功人士的人生，你会发现他们的成功都是建立在失败之上的。”麦克阿德写道。这种说法有些过度夸张。事实上，我更赞同她的另一项观察：很多被我们定义为“失败”的事情其实只是由随机事件造成的意外或简单的失误，通常情况下毫无意义，也无法从中找到获得成功的启示。
Yet I worry that the narrative of surmounting adversity is becoming too idealized. Triumph over disaster is rightly seen as a laudable part of a person’s experiences, but it’s now sometimes presented as a requirement. “Peek into the basement of any successful life and you’ll see that they, too, are founded on failure,” McArdle writes. That argument overreaches. In fact, I am more taken by her observation that many of the things we consider “failures” are really accidents (driven by random events) or simple mistakes, and often there’s no lesson to be learned or silver lining to be found.
韧性的概念被过度炒作，但是当我进一步阅读时，我渐渐看到一些修正这种做法的迹象。在创业圈，有些人已在谴责某种“失败癖”。他们指出，快速失败然后摒弃初创公司另起炉灶的行为或已变成荣誉勋章。“从失败中获得耻辱是一件令人兴奋的事，”著名风险投资家马克·安卓森说，“但我们发现创业者们太快放弃了……或许，现在我们真要为这种行为增加点耻辱感。”
Indeed, the more I read about resilience, the more I’m seeing the early signs of a correction to the excessive hype surrounding this idea. In the entrepreneurship world, some people are decrying a “failure fetish,” arguing that one’s ability to “fail fast” and abandon one start-up for the next has become too much of a badge of honor. “Taking the stigma out of failure is very exciting,” says Marc Andreessen, a leading venture capitalist. “But we see founders who give up too quickly…. Maybe it’s time to add a bit more stigma.”
一些教育家已经开始质疑韧性和毅力的重要性。在《被宠坏的孩子的神话》（The Myth of the Spoiled Child）中，知名作家兼演说家阿尔菲·科恩（Alfie Kohn）认为，过分强调勤奋和自控能力往往会削弱儿童的创造力，阻碍自我意识的发展，并磨灭他们的个性。他指出韧性研究的逻辑是循环逻辑，比如，西点军校的一项研究发现，那些认为自己勇气卓越的人更容易完成艰巨的暑期培训课程。“（这项研究）貌似证明只有有毅力的人才能坚持下去。”他写道。他说得有道理：只要我们对“成功”的定义是对那些努力工作之人的巨大回报，那么只要坚持不懈，克服困难，任何人都可能成功。这难道不是基本常识吗？
In education, at least a few thinkers are starting to question whether resilience and persistence are really the most important qualities to instill in kids. In The Myth of the Spoiled Child, Alfie Kohn, a prominent writer and lecturer, argues that emphasizing diligence and self-control often undercuts creativity and self-awareness and promotes bland conformity. He sees a circularity in the logic of resilience research. For instance, a study of West Point cadets found that those who rated themselves high in grit were most likely to complete an arduous summer training course. “[This] seems to prove only that people who are persistent persist,” he writes. He has a point: So long as we define “success” as the pot of gold that’s the reward for hard work, isn’t it common sense that by plugging away, despite obstacles, you are most likely to obtain it?
毫无疑问，有韧性是一种美德，谁不想自己或者心爱之人身上具有一点这项品质呢？但是，随着时间的推移，我想人们对韧性的认知也会有所改变，它将不再是最重要的情感组成部分，在构成性格和人品的理想要素中，它也不再占据核心位置。我渴望成为有韧性、有毅力、有勇气之人，但我也希望通过聪明、合理的手段尽量减少创伤。
It’s impossible to argue against resilience as a virtue—who wouldn’t want some measure of that quality in themselves or their loved ones? But instead of viewing it as the be-all and end-all of our emotional makeup, I expect that over time we will give it a less central place within the broader mosaic of desirable personal attributes. I aspire to be resilient and persistent and gritty—but I also hope to minimize trauma (to the extent possible) by taking smart, reasonable risks.
这是柯南-奥布莱恩在被解雇为 "今夜秀 "主持人后不久在达特茅斯学院毕业典礼上的讲话中所表达的一种情感。 "虽然你不应该害怕失败，但你应该尽最大努力避免失败。尼采有句名言：'凡是不会杀死你的东西都会让你变得更强大'。但他没有强调的是，它几乎杀死了你。"
It’s a sentiment that Conan O’Brien captured in his commencement address at Dartmouth College shortly after being fired as host of The Tonight Show: “Though you should not fear failure, you should do your very best to avoid it. Nietzsche famously said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you.”
我们真正需要的是一条不需要濒临死亡就能通往强大和成功的道路，希望未来不再有那么多人将坐牢视为最棒的经历。
What we really need is a pathway toward strength and success that doesn’t require a near-death experience—and a future in which fewer people rank prison as the best thing that’s ever happened to them.
(李茂/译 王晨/校 万艳/编辑)
丹尼尔·麦金是《哈佛商业评论》英文版高级编辑。
