TED演讲｜不要为了结束单身，而选择匆忙去爱

Searching for love to escape ourselves

Hayley QuinnSo let me tell you a love story. Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a land I Googled to be 5,172 miles away, I met a guy, and he was perfect.

让我给你讲一个爱情故事。很久很久以前，在我搜索到的5172英里外的一片土地上，我遇到了一个男人，他很完美。

So I’ll tell you the meeting story. I’d just taped this really cool TV show about experimenting with your sexuality, and I met him at the after-party through one of our famous friends who was a DJ. He was tall, dark, handsome, kind of a rock star, and a little bit emotionally unavailable. 

所以我会告诉你约会的故事。我刚刚录制了一个关于尝试性行为的非常酷的电视节目，我在派对后通过我们的一位著名朋友认识了他，他是一名DJ。他又高又黑，又帅，有点像摇滚明星，而且有点情绪化。

Very soon, we were spending all of our time together. We threw these really cool parties for all of our cool friends, we went backstage at every festival, and, when my hands were cold, he would take them under his arms to warm them up.

很快，我们所有的时间都在一起了。我们为我们所有的酷朋友举办了这些非常酷的派对，我们在每个节日都会去后台，当我的手很冷的时候，他会把它们放在怀里暖和。

He was my best friend, and I thought we would be together forever. And so strong was that belief that when the warning signs came, I just ignored them. Until the day that I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I’d become quite unwell, I wasn’t so pretty anymore, and I definitely couldn’t go out to any of the parties. In fact, I was, for the first time in my life, actually vulnerable because I was miscarrying our baby.

他是我最好的朋友，我以为我们会永远在一起。这种信念是如此强烈，以至于当警告信号出现时，我就忽略了它们。直到有一天我再也不能忽视他们了。我变得很不舒服，我不再那么漂亮了，我肯定不能出去参加任何聚会。事实上，我有生以来第一次实际上很脆弱，因为我流产了我们的孩子。

And at that point, when I was at my weakest, he left. It’s not a joke. Ah ha, um – Coming downstairs – and you, you know what, but I would have followed him out of the door to the ends of Earth. But I couldn’t get out of my bed. When I did get up, I found that our house had been stripped bare.

就在那时，当我最虚弱的时候，他离开了。这不是玩笑。啊哈，嗯，下楼了，你知道吗，但我会跟着他走出家门，来到天涯海角。但我下不了床。当我起床时，我发现我们的房子被扒光了。

The paintings were gone from the walls, and the rooms that we used to dance in together were empty. I walked around those rooms like an animal, howling. Picking myself up off the literal floor that day, I had to recognize that after all of this excitement and this joy and this fantasy, at the end of all that love, I had nothing. And you know what, that wasn’t even the first time something like that had happened to me. I was a magnet for chaos.

墙上的画都不见了，我们以前一起跳舞的房间也空了。我像动物一样在那些房间里走来走去，嚎叫着。那天我从字面上爬起来，我不得不意识到，在经历了所有的兴奋、喜悦和幻想之后，在所有的爱结束时，我什么都没有了。你知道吗，这甚至不是我第一次遇到这样的事情。我是一个混乱的磁铁。

I liked chaos, because when I was in chaos, I didn’t have to confront anything about who I was. Truthfully, I hadn’t known who I was for years. Because on the floor that day, I did have someone, I had myself. But for a long time, that had come to feel like, it, well, meant nothing, and it was invaluable. So I know it seems a bit self-indulgent to come out here today and talk to you guys about, like, effectively a break-up story, but it was one of a chain of many incidences that made me think, “Maybe there’s other people like me, maybe there’s other people that aren’t approaching love in the right way.”

我喜欢混乱，因为当我陷入混乱时，我不必面对任何关于我是谁的事情。老实说，我已经好几年不知道自己是谁了。因为那天在地板上，我确实有人，我有自己。但很长一段时间以来，这让人觉得，它，嗯，毫无意义，而且是无价的。所以我知道今天来到这里和你们谈论分手的故事似乎有点自我放纵，但这是一系列事件中的一个，让我想，“也许还有像我这样的人，也许还有其他人没有以正确的方式接近爱情。”

Because I think we’ve all had experiences, right? They look like love, they feel like love, but when you open them up, there’s nothing loving about them. But we continued to chase love, because I think love is sold to us as almost like the ultimate solution to ourselves: the things that make our past okay, that gives us the direction for the future, and imbues our everyday reality with meaning.

因为我想我们都有过经历，对吧？它们看起来像爱，感觉像爱，但当你打开它们时，它们没有任何爱。但我们继续追求爱情，因为我认为爱情卖给我们就像是对我们自己的终极解决方案：让我们的过去变得美好的东西，给我们未来的方向，让我们的日常生活充满意义。

I think love can be beautiful, I think it can be exciting; but I think sometimes it can also be an act of escapism. And I’ve had a long time to think about this, as the introduction said, I am the artist formerly known as the UK’s leading dating expert. And before that I was a ghost writer in the pickup industry, and I vlog about the reality of love on my YouTube.

我认为爱情可以是美好的，我认为它可以是激动人心的；但我认为有时这也可能是一种逃避现实的行为。我花了很长时间来思考这个问题，正如介绍中所说，我是艺术家，以前被称为英国最顶尖的约会专家。在此之前，我是皮卡行业的幽灵作家，我在YouTube上视频讲述了爱情的现实。

And now I have a completely different approach, a very minimalist strategy when it comes to dating. And that’s really because I’m concerned that in our quest for love sometimes it can be the ultimate distraction to fixing ourselves and doing the real work that will actually make us happy. Because, don’t get me wrong, I think that the desire for attachment, for intimacy, for security, for love, those goals are natural, they’re human, and they’re good.

现在我有了一种完全不同的方法，一种非常简约的约会策略。这真的是因为我担心，在我们追求爱情的过程中，有时它可能会最终分散我们的注意力，让我们调整自己，做真正能让我们快乐的工作。因为，别误会我，我认为对依恋、亲密、安全、爱的渴望，这些目标是自然的，它们是人类的，是美好的。

But I think sometimes the way we go about them is a bit weird, whether that’s crazy, ridiculous, on-off, destructive relationships, or needing to go out on a date every single night of the week with a different person. You know, like the hip form of dating, where you have someone on the back burner, someone on the front burner, someone under the grill, and then someone else over there in the freezer just in case, God forbid, you spend a night by yourself.

但我认为有时候我们对待他们的方式有点奇怪，无论是疯狂的、荒谬的、断断续续的、破坏性的关系，还是需要在一周中的每一个晚上都和不同的人约会。你知道，就像臀部约会一样，你有人在后面，有人在前面，有人坐在烤架下，然后有人在冰箱里，以防万一，天哪，你一个人过一晚。

In this, it feels really like loneliness is the driver, or escapism is the driver, not love. So, I’m kind of starting to preach the opposite belief now, that, of course, the answer lies not in another person, but within yourself. Because I think, sometimes, the melodrama of love takes us further away, rather than closer, to who we actually are. So I find that my dating advice is gradually shrinking down to be essentially: go meditate, get some therapy, read a book. Ha, ha…It’s not what you would call a sexy strategy for the millennial generation.

在这种情况下，我感觉孤独是驱动因素，或者逃避现实是驱动因素而不是爱情。所以，我现在开始鼓吹相反的信念，当然，答案不在别人身上，而在你自己身上。因为我认为，有时候，爱情的情节剧会让我们离自己更远，而不是更近。所以我发现我的约会建议正在逐渐缩小，基本上是：去冥想，接受一些治疗，读一本书。哈哈…这不是你所说的千禧一代的性感策略。

A generation that is used to 4G download speeds, skyping a friend abroad, and Netflix and chill with someone you just met from Tinder. Um – So I think when we’re used to expecting everything we want right here, right now, when we can’t just vend an automatic level of human connection, we not only feel like we’re getting it wrong, but like we’re not getting what we’re entitled to.

一代人习惯了4G下载速度，向国外的朋友和Netflix打高价，并与Tinder刚认识的人保持冷静。嗯——所以我想，当我们习惯了在这里期待我们想要的一切，而现在，当我们不能只提供自动水平的人际关系时，我们不仅觉得我们错了，而且觉得我们没有得到应有的东西。

And then you just take one look at Instagram: everybody else has it sorted out. And we sort of live in the culture that surrounds us, telling us that we should have fallen in love or be falling in love, or at least have had great sex, right? Like yesterday!? You know, let’s face it, who actually enters into the arena of love looking to, maybe, become a better person, to be kinder, to have more integrity, to get more grounded? No one does that.

然后你只需看一眼Instagram：其他人都把它整理好了。我们有点生活在我们周围的文化中，告诉我们我们应该坠入爱河或者正在坠入爱，或者至少应该有一次很棒的性爱，对吧？就像昨天一样！？你知道，让我们面对现实吧，谁真正进入了爱情的舞台，希望，也许，成为一个更好的人，更善良，更正直，更接地气？没有人这么做。

It’s because our eyes are off ourselves, we’re looking for that next adventure, that greener grass, that new person, so we don’t have to deal with any of that stuff. And I understand how easily it happens, right? You just kind of meet someone sexy, I don’t know where, maybe it was at a party, on the train, or the Tube, as we would say in London.

这是因为我们的目光离开了我们自己，我们正在寻找下一次冒险，那片更绿的草地，那个新的人，所以我们不需要处理任何这些事情。我知道这很容易发生，对吧？你只是遇到了一个性感的人，我不知道在哪里，也许是在派对上，在火车上，或者在地铁上，就像我们在伦敦所说的那样。

Or maybe you just met them, you both joined Tinder that day, how magical! And before too long, you realize that you have some stuff in common, like wow, you both like almond butter, Star Wars, you can name all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles. And then, like, suddenly, you’re retelling how you met, like, this serendipitous coincidence of cosmic proportions – it’s like move over Romeo and Juliet. Not that that ended every well, let’s all remember that.

或者也许你刚认识他们，那天你们都加入了Tinder，真神奇！不久之后，你就会意识到你们有一些共同点，比如哇，你们都喜欢杏仁酱，星球大战，你可以说出所有四个青少年变种忍者英雄海龟的名字。然后，就像，突然间，你在复述你是如何遇见的，就像，这个宇宙比例的偶然巧合——这就像是越过了罗密欧和朱丽叶。并不是所有的一切都结束了，让我们都记住这一点。

So, when you’re thinking about you’re not exactly being Romeo and Juliet, and we’re actually living in the real world, I think the thing is, the main sell, when you kind of fall for someone, is it ‘s like: Yippee, I’m not alone anymore. Hooray! Nailed it! Uh ha Coz you get to – guess what you do? You get to go home every night, and you get to put your head on the pillow, and you don’t have to think about, you know, your needs, your wants, your past, and, actually, kind of all the stuff that’s really, probably, stopping you from becoming happy, because you’re not fixing it. Instead, you get to be entrapped by somebody else, you’re intrigued by them, your mind has someone new to spiral into and focus on.

所以，当你想你不完全是罗密欧和朱丽叶，而我们实际上生活在现实世界中时，我想最重要的是，当你爱上一个人的时候，是这样的：伊佩，我不再孤单了。好极了钉住了！呃，哈，因为你可以——猜猜你是干什么的？你每天晚上都可以回家，你可以把头枕在枕头上，你不必去想，你知道，你的需求，你的愿望，你的过去，实际上，所有的事情都可能阻止你变得快乐，因为你没有解决它。相反，你会被其他人陷害，你会对他们产生兴趣，你的头脑中会有新的人需要盘旋并专注。

But I think sometimes when you’re focusing on that perfect romance, you’re not actually doing the real work to fix the stuff that’s stopping you from becoming happy. And because of that, I think that most of us, when it comes to love and dating, kind of need an epic timeout and reset. For myself, I did six months cold turkey. No dating, no internet dating, and I went to all of two parties. Literally, you could have written up my love life on the back of a postage stamp, it was that exciting. And all this from the girl who used to – honestly, I used to pride myself on having a ridiculous love life.

但我认为，有时当你专注于完美的浪漫时，你实际上并没有做真正的工作来修复那些阻碍你变得幸福的东西。正因为如此，我认为我们大多数人在谈及恋爱和约会时，都需要史诗般的暂停和重置。就我自己而言，我做了六个月的冷火鸡。没有约会，没有网络约会，我参加了所有两个聚会。从字面上看，你本可以把我的爱情生活写在邮票的背面，真是太令人兴奋了。而这一切都来自曾经的女孩——老实说，我曾经为自己拥有荒谬的爱情生活而自豪。

The stories – if I was here two years ago guys, I’d have told you some amazing stories. But you know what? After all of that, and after everything that happened, I thought I would quite like to know who I am again. Because, and I think I’m not alone here, if you’re experiencing a Groundhog Day when it comes to your dating life, I think that the thing is you think that it’s because you’re meeting loads of players, or nice guys finish last, or you just haven’t met the one yet, or that dating is a numbers game, but I think actually these truisms that surround dating aren’t in fact true at all.

故事——如果我两年前在这里，伙计们，我会告诉你们一些惊人的故事。但你知道吗？在这一切发生之后，我想我很想再次知道我是谁。因为，我认为我并不孤单，如果你正在经历一个土拨鼠日，当涉及到你的约会生活时，我认为问题是你认为这是因为你遇到了很多玩家，或者好人最后完成了比赛，或者你只是还没有遇到那个人，或者约会是一场数字游戏，但我认为实际上这些围绕约会的真理根本不是真的。

In fact, I think they lead us away from what the real issue is. Because the problem, and I know this doesn’t make for comfy listening, the problem, it’s with you, it’s with me, it’s with our ridiculous ideas around romance, it’s with our needs that we haven’t realized yet, it’s with our past that we don’t want to talk about, it’s with our desires, it’s with our inability to get through one day without picking up our smartphones, and it’s with what we value.

事实上，我认为他们让我们远离了真正的问题。因为问题，我知道这不利于舒适的倾听，问题在于你，问题在于我，问题在于我们对浪漫的荒谬想法，问题在于尚未意识到的需求，问题在于不想谈论的过去，问题在于欲望，这是因为我们无法度过一天而不拿起智能手机，这是我们所珍视的。

So I decided after all of that – I was like, you know what, I’m done with Groundhog Day in love, I actually want to discover a bit more about myself. Because the truth is, I wasn’t even born Hayley Quinn. Right!? Right!? I chose that name, I thought it sounded cool. I was actually born Hayley Whittle. And when I was born – I grew up in a poor family, my parents were disabled, I was really teased at school a lot for being the weird girl, I used to work as a dishwasher, and because of that, there was so much pain and shame in my past; I just didn’t want to touch it.

所以我决定在所有这些之后——我想，你知道吗，我已经结束了土拨鼠日的恋爱，我真的想发现更多关于我自己的东西。因为事实是，我甚至还没有出生海莉·奎因。正确的正确的我选择了这个名字，我觉得听起来很酷。事实上，我出生于海莉·惠特尔。当我出生的时候——我在一个贫穷的家庭长大，我的父母都是残疾人，我在学校里经常被嘲笑是个古怪的女孩，我曾经做过洗碗机，正因为如此，我的过去有太多的痛苦和耻辱；我只是不想碰它。

And the way I ran away from it is I ran away from it with love and with fantasy. But I decided after all that running, I wasn’t really getting anywhere, I was just re-creating the same mistakes time and time again. So I thought I’d better stop. I was like I want to actually feel something. And I can tell you, when I stopped, I did feel.

我逃离它的方式是我带着爱和幻想逃离它。但我决定，在跑了这么久之后，我并没有真正取得任何进展，我只是一次又一次地重复犯同样的错误。所以我想我最好停下来。我觉得我想真正感受到一些东西。我可以告诉你，当我停下来的时候，我确实感觉到了。

I think I cried every single day for the first month on the phone to my Mum, which was awkward because I hadn’t really spoken to her for about a decade at that stage. And then I’d come home, and I’d come home to this empty, dirty house, with no guy and no baby and no possessions left in it. And then some days I’d wake up and the pain would be so bad that it felt like my heart was burning. And to resist the temptation at that stage to not reach out and take that little plaster of dating or love or some attention to fix how I was feeling was really hard.

我想我第一个月每天都在给妈妈打电话，这很尴尬，因为在那个阶段我已经有十年没和她说话了。然后我会回到家，回到这间空荡荡的脏房子里，里面没有人，也没有婴儿，也没有任何财产。然后有几天我会醒来，疼痛会很严重，感觉我的心在燃烧。在那个阶段，要抵制诱惑，不伸出手来，用约会、爱情或一些关注来弥补我的感觉，真的很难。

But gradually, you know what? A great thing happened, is that I came back into the room, I became aware again, my mind started to work, I reconnected with my family, the friends that were left were the good ones, and I stopped being so obsessed with going out every night of the week or whether someone had read my messages on WhatsApp.

但渐渐地，你知道吗？发生了一件伟大的事情，我回到房间，我再次意识到，我的大脑开始工作，我与家人重新联系，留下的朋友都是好朋友，我不再那么痴迷于一周中的每晚外出，或者有没有人在WhatsApp上读到我的消息。

And so that’s why, if you’re listening to what I’m saying, if you even see a shadow of yourself, a little shadow of your story in my ridiculous life, I would advise just taking a time to take that pause, and I’m going to tell you why, I’m actually going to sell it to you.

这就是为什么，如果你在听我的话，如果你甚至在我荒谬的生活中看到了你自己的影子，你故事的一点点影子，我建议你花点时间暂停一下，我会告诉你为什么，我真的会把它卖给你。

So here I go, first things first: when you come home and your evening plans are make chicken soup and read a book, this no longer sounds bad, this sounds awesome. Although I’d like to point out my chicken soup literally still has the consistency of porridge, it’s so bad. Work in progress! Work in progress!

所以我来了，第一件事是：当你回家，晚上的计划是做鸡汤和看书时，这听起来不再糟糕，这听起来很棒。虽然我想指出，我的鸡汤确实仍然有粥的稠度，但它太糟糕了。工作正在进行中！工作正在进行中！

Second thing, when you stop waiting for your prince or your princess to come crashing through the door and save you and solve your life, you start kind of living in the here and now more. And when you live in the here and now, you become more grounded, you become more confident, you become stronger.

第二件事，当你不再等待你的王子或公主破门而入，拯救你并解决你的生活时，你开始有点生活在这里，现在更多。当你生活在当下，你会变得更加接地气，更加自信，更加坚强。

You also become more self-aware. And when you’re aware, you become more aware of the people around you. And you know what I saw, and what I see? I see people running away all the time, every single day of their lives. And then you see those situations, and you have the foresight to step back for a change rather than get involved. I also learned that life is pretty dramatic as it is, and it throws you plenty of challenges, so you don’t really need to create any more and go out there on a mission to have more drama, you can just leave it.

你也会变得更加自我意识。当你意识到的时候，你会更加意识到周围的人。你知道我看到了什么吗？我看到人们每天都在逃跑。然后，你看到了这些情况，你有远见，可以退一步进行改变，而不是参与其中。我还了解到，生活本来就是很戏剧化的，它给你带来了很多挑战，所以你不需要再去创造，去完成一个任务，去创造更多的戏剧，你可以离开它。

I also finally realized, you know, well, those people say to you, they say, you need to be alone, or be by yourself, before you can meet someone else. I used to think those people were boring; now I think they’re right, they’re definitely, probably right.

我也终于意识到，你知道，那些人对你说，他们说，你需要独处，或者独自一人，然后才能遇见其他人。我过去认为那些人很无聊；现在我认为他们是对的，他们肯定，可能是对的。

Because I think, sometimes, actually, when we actually confront our aloneness, and we start to deal with our needs and the past and all that horrible pain that, you know, as people, we just collect and carry with us throughout our lives, when we deal with that, and we’re not running from it in endless people or endless dates, when we don’t have anything to prove anymore, when you don’t need a destructive, ridiculous on-off relationship in order to feel alive, in order to feel like you exist, when you can just be, I kind of actually think that’s real love. Thanks very much.

因为我想，有时候，实际上，当我们真正面对孤独时，我们开始处理我们的需求、过去和所有可怕的痛苦，你知道，作为人，我们只是在生活中收集和携带这些痛苦，当我们处理这些痛苦时，我们不会在无尽的人或无尽的约会中逃避，当我们再也没有什么可以证明的时候，当你不需要一段破坏性的、荒谬的断断续续的关系来感受生活，为了感觉你存在，当你可以只是存在的时候，我觉得这才是真正的爱。非常感谢。