Nobody's Perfect-But It Won't Stop Us Trying

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 在英语文摘中看到了这篇文章，文章本身写得很好，而且内容也吸引了我这半个完美主义者。所以在紧张的考研复习中抽出半天时间google到这篇文章，在尽量不受英语文摘翻译的影响下做一个全文翻译练习，算是英语实习作业吧。考研英语中也有翻译题，经过这次练习对于我把握英语写作的能力也会有所提高。作为半个完美主义者，希望这篇文章也能为我和也有类似困扰的人们带来些启示吧。文章中穿插了一些我的经历和感想，均标示出来。水平有限，翻译中出现不合理出现错误也是正常，大家不吝赐教。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> Nobody's Perfect-But It Won't Stop Us Trying</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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NOBODY’S PERFECT – but that doesn’t stop some of us from trying to be. And that’s the curse of perfectionism: putting yourself under enormous pressure to meet impossibly high standards, striving to keep everything in perfect order, beating yourself up for any little error.

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 没有人是完美的——但这并不会阻止我们中的一些人去尝试。这也是完美主义的祸根——将你自己置身于让自己达到高不可攀的标准的压力和努力让一切都完美有秩序的巨大压力之下，因为一点小错误而过分苛责自己。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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Taken to its extremes, perfectionism can even lead to a kind of paralysis where people get caught up in a cycle of endless procrastination: because they expect so much of themselves, the pressure to perform becomes overwhelming. It’s not surprising that so many of us find ourselves falling into this thankless trap: after all, we live in a culture where perfectionism is seen as a quality to be celebrated, a passport to success.

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 完美主义者常常走向极端，完美主义常常导致他们陷入到一种无止境拖延的循环之中：他们对自己报了如此大的希望，以至于达到期望的压力让他们崩溃。我们中的如此多的人会发现自己身陷于吃力不讨好的陷阱之中，这不会让我们惊讶：毕竟，我们生活在这样的文化之中，完美主义是值得称赞的品质，是通向成功的护照。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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Posters on the walls of school classrooms exhort pupils to never give up, to give their all, to aim for the skies. But there’s a price to be paid for adhering to such unrelenting standards: perfectionism is associated with anxiety, depression, self-harm, workaholism and eating disorders.

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 学校教室墙上的海报告诫学生永不放弃，全力以赴，立志高远。但是遵循如此严苛的标准却会付出代价：完美主义与焦虑、抑郁、自我伤害、工作狂和饮食失调息息相关。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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As Richard Winter, author of Perfecting Ourselves to Death, points out, “when a person’s self-worth depends on reaching those high standards, it is an inevitable script for self-defeat and their own personal hell of repeated failure and eternal regret”.

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正如《完美至死》的作者所说，“当一个人的自我价值建立在达到那些很高的标准之上时，陷入事与愿违和他们自己设立的不断地失败和无止境悔恨的炼狱是不可避免发生的事情”。

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I’m familiar with the demands of that inner perfectionist voice, finding it hard to leave tasks unfinished and spending far too long trying to make things just right. As for mistakes, let’s just say I try desperately not to make them. For instance, on one occasion, I stumbled over the pronunciation of the word “epidemiology” during a live radio debate. After several attempts to get it right, I gave up and moved on. But I was tortured for the rest of the day by that simple error, blushing anew and groaning with embarrassment every time I thought of it.

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 那些内心完美主义者的呼声很熟悉。当我发现任务无法完成时和当花费了不可思议的时间去把事情做好的时候，都会感觉到。至于错误，姑且说我竭尽全力不去犯错。比如有一次，我在一次电台直播的辩论中在说“epidemiology”这个单词时卡壳了，尝试了几次失败后我放弃了继续我的言论。但是这一天剩余的时间我都被这个小小的错误所折磨，每当想起它就会脸红、难为情地哀叹。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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My friend, who also suffers from her own unrelenting standards, thinks that people sometimes use the term as a veiled boast. “When people say, ‘I’m a perfectionist’, often what they’re saying is, ‘I won’t let any shoddy workmanship pass my fingers’.”

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 朋友也被她自己过高的要求折磨，她认为人们有些时候通过这个来含蓄地吹嘘自己。“当人们说‘我是个完美主义者’时，他们常常真正想说的是‘我不会让任何劣质品通过我的手指’”。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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But true perfectionism is nothing to be proud of. “It’s a kind of mental ball and chain. It’s the inner voice that tells you ‘Why bother writing that novel if it’s not going to be good enough to win the Booker prize?’ or ‘Why begin that painting when you know it can never compare with a Matisse canvas?’ Perfectionism stifles creativity. It’s about sacrificing joy in favour of control.”

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 正的完美主义完全不是引以为傲的东西。“它是你精神的羁绊。你内心的声音告诉你‘你又写不出优秀作品获得布克文学奖，干嘛要写’，或者‘你画的画又不能跟Matisse的油画相提并论，干嘛画画’。完美主义扼杀创造力。它牺牲你的快乐来获得控制。”</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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And perfectionists can never truly relax: every hour in the day must be used productively. As the author of the Perfectionist Mum blog wryly notes: “You can never let go and ‘just be’, because there is always something to be done to make you or your life more perfect. You fail to appreciate the good in your life already, because you are constantly striving for perfection or the next better thing.”

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 主义者永远无法得到放松：一天中的每一个小时都要高效高产。就像博客完美主义老妈的博主所说：“你永远无法放手或者就‘凑合一下’，因为你心里总有要做的事让你的生活更完美。你已经无法欣赏你生活中已经拥有的美好，因为你总是不停歇地追求下一个更好的事情。”</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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The anxious need to feel in control – of yourself, of your work, of your immediate environment – does seem to be central to the perfectionist mindset, and there is a strong link between perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Many perfectionists seem to work from the unconscious assumption that by pushing themselves extremely hard and by being constantly vigilant, they will be beyond reproach, safe from harm. Essentially, they are in search of a feeling of safety, of certainty, in a terribly uncertain world. Clinical psychologist Roger Bailey says this behaviour has ancient origins. “In order to survive and adapt to a hostile environment, our ancestors had to be mentally agile. Our intellect is what kept us alive: we had to be able to predict what would happen next, to know what was safe and what wasn’t. The nervous system developed as an incredible alarm system, a mechanism to keep us safe. That’s why anxiety is the most intolerable human emotion: it is designed to save our lives, but sometimes it translates into behaviour that becomes dysfunctional.”

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 迫切需要感觉你自己，你的工作，你所处环境都要处于掌控之中——这些让你焦虑的需求——似乎是完美主义者心智的核心。而且在完美主义和强迫症行为间有非常强的关联。许多完美主义者在这种没有意识到的假设——通过极其严厉地逼迫自己和保持持续地警觉——下工作，他们就会无可指摘，就会远离伤害。本质上说，他们在一个非常不确定的世界中追求安全感和确定的感觉。临床心理学家Roger Bailey说这种行为有很古老的起源。“为了在充满敌意的环境中生存和适应，我们的祖先必须在心智上非常敏锐。我们的智慧让我们生存下来：我们不得不能够下一步会发生什么，知道什么是安全的什么不是。神经系统为我们发展成为一套令人难以置信的警报系统，一种让我们保证安全的机制。这也是为什么焦虑感是最让人无法忍受的人类情感：它被设计为了拯救我们的生命，但有些时候它转化为行为失常。”</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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Most psychotherapists agree that at the root of perfectionism is a fragile sense of self-worth. Ann Twomey, a Dublin-based cognitive behavioural therapist, says that if you have low self-esteem, you will work all the harder in an attempt to prove that you are a worthwhile person. She says that perfectionism is often associated with black and white, all-or-nothing thinking.

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 数精神疗法医生同意完美主义的根源是脆弱的自我价值感。Ann Twomey，一个在都柏林工作的认知行为治疗师，她说如果你缺乏自我认同感，你将会愈来愈全力地去尝试证明你是一个有价值的人。她说完美主义通常与绝对化的非黑即白或者很极端的思想息息相关。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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“Take the example of the perfectionistic crash diet that many women go on. You have lettuce for lunch, lettuce for dinner, and you probably don’t even like lettuce. How long is that going to last? It’s better to aim lower, but reach higher: do something sustainable and achievable to change your lifestyle, like switch from white bread to brown bread. The idea is that you can drop your standards and still have self-worth.”

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 许多女士都在采用的追求完美的快速减肥食谱来说。你拿生菜做午饭，做晚饭，你可能甚至都不喜欢吃生菜。你可以坚持多久？更好的办法是目标更低一点，实际效果更好的方法：做一些可持续的可达到的事情来改变你的生活方式，比如把精粉面包换成黑麦面包。这种方法就是让你降低标准同时仍然拥有自我价值感。”</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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Challenging that rigid black and white thinking is key to changing perfectionist impulses. Cognitive therapist Jeffrey Young says that perfectionists believe that something is either perfect or it is a failure: “you cannot imagine just doing something well. On a scale of 0 to 100, if your performance is not 100, or maybe 98 or 99, then it might as well be 0, the way it feels to you. You have to learn that it is possible to do something 80 per cent or 70 per cent and still do a very good job. Between perfection and failure there is a whole grey area.”

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 完美主义者的冲动的关键是挑战这种硬性的非黑即白的绝对化思想。认知疗养师Jeffrey Young表示完美主义者相信事情总是不是完美的就是失败的：“你不可能想象只是把事情做好。在1~100范围内，如果你的表现不是100，或者98或者99，对于你来说，感觉就和0分差不多。你必须了解你做一件事情达到70%或80%时你仍然做的很好。在完美与失败间仍然有很宽广的空间。”</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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In a recent blog post, Perfectionist Mum described how she made pancakes with her children on Shrove Tuesday: “I congratulate myself at allowing the process to get crazy, chaotic and imperfect, and not losing it somewhere in the middle. Not so many months ago, I might have given up, shouted, cried, and basically had a tantrum because it didn’t all run smoothly. I can’t say that will never happen again, but I’m proud of myself for letting go of the need to be in control, and of celebrating imperfection with my children.”

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<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 在最近的一篇博文中，完美主义老妈描述了她与她的孩子在忏悔日做薄饼的经历：“我庆幸我自己在变得疯狂，混乱和不完美的过程中没有发狂。就在几个月之前，我或许会放弃克制的努力，吼叫，哭泣，就是因为做饼过程不顺利而大发脾气。我不敢保证这不会再次发生，但我对我摒弃了控制欲和与孩子们享受这种不完美而感到自豪。”</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

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Celebrating imperfection – now there’s a radical idea. For those of us in thrall to the impossible dream of perfection, it may be the very medicine we need.

<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr> 享受不完美——这也是一个激进的想法。但对那些受完美主义的不可能梦想控制的人们来水哦，这或许就是我们最急需的良药。</wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>

(From<wbr><em>The Irish Times</em> Jun. 14,2011)</wbr>

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写在后面：

<wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr><wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr></wbr>我不想否认我不能说完全，但也肯定是半个完美主义者，想法时常很偏激，做自己在乎的事时几近偏执，异常苛刻。在曾经的人人网状态、QQ心情中常常可以看到一些教条的、如文章所说black and white、有时苛刻、让人感觉你处在什么要紧关头面临如何抉择却实际可能并没严重到那个地步的言语。可以说是一些“大而空的话”。想起许多时候，比如跟同学踢实况的时候，不管自己领先还是落后，一个操作上的瑕疵和一个传球的不完美，或者电脑AI控制球员的一个漏防、失位或者无球跑动的不合理，都会引起我的不满。我比较喜欢那种水银泻地的配合，或者千钧一发、天马行空的最后一传，或者如入无人之境的过人撕破防线，这样的进攻，即使不进球也会兴奋半天。而我很鄙视那种没有道理的远射（不是晃开角度取巧的射门），你们有影响否，比如2007年小组赛德罗巴半转身抽射巴萨的那个和以德罗巴为首的风格的远射，或者比如C罗无视队友跑位的离门N远的A门。还有那些与我意图不符靠运气混进的球，我进了也不会兴奋。就是其实这种偏执的思想快成了一种病态。我有时会不爽，经常不是因为别人，恰恰是不爽自己，对自己要求很高，却没有达到而不爽。虽然有的时候它也会带来好处。编程的时候，一个很小的bug的存在会让我坐立不安，睡不着觉，满脑子那个有时候突然想到了解决方案会不顾第二天的课下床开电脑去make it right。上学期也常常熬夜地编程，熬到2、3点。在考研复习数学的过程中一个定理的证明或者一个积分就会花费我好长时间去扣，有时候是钻牛角尖，最后放弃了看了答案也会愤恨自己。这个可能也是我保持进步的动力之一。呵呵，我可能也如文章中所说含蓄地自吹自擂开了。但更多时候也带来了很多的焦虑与对自己的愤恨。但这许多已经是过去，在学会满足，学会适应这个世界的不完美这方面我也有很大进步。学会与不完美的自己和谐相处，学会与消极情绪共存，喜欢自己，与自己做朋友，it really matters.