哈佛醫學教授TED演講：什麼樣的人活得更美好（中英文）

什麼樣的人才能活得更美好？

演講者：羅伯特.瓦爾丁格

翻譯：同濟大學趙旭東教授

——羅伯特.瓦爾丁格教授在TED-X關於75年研究報告的勵志演講稿

生命進程中，是什麼讓我們保持健康和幸福？如果你現在開始着手規劃未來最好的人生，你會把時間和精力花在哪裏？回答有很多種，我們已經被無以計數的有關生活中最重要事物的圖景轟炸了。媒體上充斥着那些富有、高聲望、建立起自己事業帝國的成功人士故事。並且我們對這些故事堅信不疑。有個最新的調查，詢問1980-2000年生的年輕人，他們最重要的人生目標有哪些。超過80%的人說，他們主要的生活目標是要變富有。這羣年輕人中，還有50%說他們另一個主要生活目標是成名。

What keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life? If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your time and your energy? There are lots of answers out there. We are bombarded with images, what’s most important in life. The media are filled with stories of people who are rich and famous and building empires at work. And we believe those stories. There’s a recent survey of millennials asking them what their most important life goals were. And over 80% said that the major life goal for them was to get rich. And another 50% of those same young adults said another major life goal was to become famous.

我們總是被告誡要投入工作，努力奮鬥，完成更多。我們似乎覺得要生活得更好，這些就是我們需要追求的。可事實真是這樣嗎？這些真的是在人類生命歷程中幫助他們保持幸福感的東西嗎？

And we are constantly told to lean into work, and to push harder, and achieve more. We are given the impression that these are the things that we need to go after in order to have a good life. But is that true? Is that really what keeps people happy as they go through life?

人一生中所做的選擇以及這些選擇怎樣影響他們，我們幾乎無從得知。我們對於人生絕大多數的理解，是從他人的回憶中獲得的。我們知道，人是不可能有完整清楚的記憶的。我們生命中大部分發生過的事情我們都遺忘了。有時我們記憶形成過程簡直充滿創造性。馬克·吐溫曾經說過類似的話。他說道，“我人生中一些最悲慘的事情根本就沒發生過。” 研究顯示，隨着年齡的增長，我們實際上以一種更積極的方式在保存我們的記憶。我想起一張廣告上說的：“任何時候開始擁有幸福的童年，都不算晚。”

Pictures of entire lives, of the choices that people make and how those choices work out for them,those pictures are almost impossible to get. Most of what we know about human life, we know from asking people to remember the past. And as we know,hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in our lives. And sometimes memory was downright creative. Mark Twain understood this. He’s quoted as saying, “some of the worst things in my life never happened”.(Laughter) And research shows us that we actually remember the past more positively as we get older. And I’m reminded of a bumper sticker that says, ‘it’s never too late to have a happy childhood”. (Laughter)

但要是我們能夠觀察整個人生呢？要是我們能從人們青少年時期一直追蹤到老年，去觀察到底什麼纔是真正能夠幫助人們保持幸福、健康的東西呢？我們已經做到了。

But, what if we could watch entire lives as they unfold through time? What if we could study people from the time that they were teenagers all the way into old age, to see what really keeps people happy and healthy? We did that.

哈佛成人發展研究可能是目前有關成年人生活研究中歷時最長的。75年間，我們追蹤了724位男性。年復一年，我們詢問他們的工作、家庭生活、他們的健康狀況，當然我們在詢問過程中並不知道他們的人生將會怎樣。

這樣的研究極爲稀少。幾乎所有類似的研究都在10年內流產了，原因可能是失訪率太高，或者沒有足夠的經費支撐，或者研究者興趣點轉移或去世以後沒有其他人接手。但是多虧了運氣以及幾代研究者的堅持，這項研究成活下來了。

在最早的724名男性中，大約有60位還在世，並繼續參與這項研究，他們絕大多數都已經超過90歲了。現在我們正開始研究他們總數超過2000個的孩子們。而我是這項研究的第四任領導者。

The Harvard Studyof Adult Development may be the longest study of adult life, that’s ever been done. For 75 years, we’ve tracked the lives of 724 men. Year after year asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.Studies like this are exceedingly rare. Almost all projects of this kind fallapart within a decade, because too many people drop out of the study or funding for the research dries up, or the researchers get distracted or they die and nobody moves the ball further down the field. But through combination of luck and persistence of several generations of researchers, this study has survived. About 60 of our original 724 men are still alive, still participating in the study, most of them in their nineties. And we are now beginning to study themore than 2000 children of these men. And I’m the 4th director of the study.

從1938年起，我們追蹤了2組男性。第一組在加入研究時還是哈佛大學大二的學生。他們屬於Tom Brokaw所說的“最偉大的一代”。他們都在第二次世界大戰期間完成大學學業。之後絕大多數人爲戰爭工作。

另外一組我們追蹤的羣體是波士頓最貧窮區域的男孩。正是因爲他們來自於20世紀30年代波士頓麻煩最多、最底層的家庭，才被選入我們的研究。多數人都住在出租屋裏，許多甚至沒有熱的或冷的自來水。當他們入選研究之後，所有的青少年都接受面談和醫學檢查。我們去他們家裏對他們的父母進行訪談。

後來這羣青少年長大成人，進入社會各行各業。有的成了工廠工人，成了律師、泥瓦匠、醫生，有一位成爲美國總統。有的成了酒精依賴者，一些患上精神分裂症。有的從社會底層一路爬升到上流社會。而一些人卻沿着相反的方向走過這段人生旅程。

Since 1938, we’ve tracked the lives of 2 groups of men. The first group started in the study when they were sophomores at Harvard College. They were from, what Tom Brokaw has called, the greatest generation. They all finished college during World War II. And then most went off to serve in the war. And the second group that we followed was a group of boys from the Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. Boys, who were chosen for this study specifically because they were from some of the most troubled and disadvantaged families in Boston of the 1930s. Most lived in tenements, many without hot and cold running water. When they entered the study, all of theseteenagers were interviewed, they were given medical exams. We went to their homes and we interviewed their parents. And then these teenagers grew up into adults who entered all walks of life. They became factory workers and lawyers and bricklayers and doctors, and one president of the United States. Some developed alcoholism. A few developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottom all the way to the very top. And some made that journey in the opposite direction.