英语励志美文精华27：面具让我窒息(mp3)

爱思英语编者按：只有成熟的爱才能带来幸福，它是内心真挚情感的流露，能够接受并理解他人，给予对方温柔与体贴。它不索求服务，而是处处提供服务。

A Mask was Stifling Me
面具让我窒息

Lucy Freeman
露西•弗里曼

I believe that everyone wants to love and be loved and that happiness stems from a facing and acceptance of self that allows you to give and receive love.
我相信，爱与被爱是每个人的渴望。一个人是否幸福，关键在于他是否拥有爱并能够接受爱。

Some think of love as a passionate, hungry, dramatic feeling, all consuming in intensity and desire. As I see it, this is, rather, immature love: it is a demand on others, not a giving of oneself. Mature love, the love that brings happiness, flows out of an inner fullness, and accepts, understands and is tender toward the other person. It does not ask to be served but only where it may serve.
在有些人看来，爱就是一种充满活力、渴望且极富戏剧性的情感，是zhan有一切的激情与yu望。而我认为，这种爱是极不成熟的爱：它是向他人的索求，而不是奉献。只有成熟的爱才能带来幸福，它是内心真挚情感的流露，能够接受并理解他人，给予对方温柔与体贴。它不索求服务，而是处处提供服务。

Six years ago I could hardly breathe because of acute sinus. My stomach was always upset and full of queasiness and I had trouble sleeping, even though I felt exhausted all the time. In desperation, after doctors who treated the physical symptoms failed to ease the pain, I tried psychoanalysis. I was lucky to find a wise, compassionate man who showed me what it meant to be able to trust myself and others.
6年前，由于身患急性鼻窦炎，我几乎难以呼吸。胃部也常感不适，易恶心呕吐。失眠问题也一直困扰着我，即使我感到疲惫不堪却依然辗转难眠。可是，医生对我的病症所做的治疗却毫不奏效，我的痛苦丝毫未减。绝望中，我尝试了心理疗法。很幸运的是，我找到了一位博学、热情的医生，他让我懂得了，能够相信自己与他人的意义所在。

The physical ills are gone, but more than that, I have at long last started to acquire a philosophy of living. I had never possessed one. I had lived on dogma and dicta which I had accepted unquestioningly through the years, even though I believed little of it, because I feared to question. But by being unable to live naturally and at peace with myself I was flying in the face of nature. She was punishing me with illness and, at the same time, informing me all was not well just in case I wanted to do something about it.
我身体的疾病得以治愈，而更多的是我最终开始学会一门生活的哲学。我一直是一个循规蹈矩的人，虽然我并不相信那些教条与格言，但多年来，由于不敢质疑，我一直不假思索地将其视为生活的准则。然而我却难以正常而平静地生活，总是坐立不安。最终，我受到了惩罚，病魔缠身，同时也得到了启示：必须对现状做出改变，否则将万事不顺。

In order to change, I needed help in facing myself. For me it was not easy to “know thyself”. All my life I had accepted the lesser of the two evils and run away from self because truth was more dangerous. Once I thought that to survive I had to put on a mask and forget what lay underneath. But masks are false protections and the inner part of me refused to go unheard forever.
为了改变现状，我需要帮助来面对自我。对我来说，“认识自己”并不是件简单的事。一生中，我选择了两个罪恶中较轻的一个：逃避自我，因为真相往往更为危险。曾经我以为，戴上面具，忘记面具下的一切，就能生存下去。

It caught up eventually, and unless it was to master me I had to face such feelings as fear, anger, envy, hatred, jealousy and excessive need for attention. When I realized I could not have done anything else except what I did, I was able to like myself more and be able to like others not for what they could give me but for what I could give to them.
然而，面具是虚假的掩护，我的内心决不肯永远缄默。最终这种情感占了上风，如果它不曾主宰我，我就依然得面对恐惧、愤怒、羡慕、仇恨、嫉妒和极其需要关注的情感。除了顺从自己的内心，我别无选择，当我意识到这一点时，我便更喜欢自己，也更爱他人。这并不是为了他人能给予我什么，而是我能给予他们什么。

The Bible shows the way to easy, happy living in many of its pages. It advises, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Those who expect the most are apt to receive the least. I had expected much and was filled with fury because nothing in the outside world relieved my emptiness and despair. Nothing did, either, until I could face the anger and fury, the emptiness and despair, and slowly start to know such new feelings as compassion, conviction, control, calm. I learned, too, of reason—that judicious combination of thought and feeling that enables me to take more responsibility for myself and others, that allows me to slay the ghosts of the past.
如何能简单幸福地生活，《圣经》中的众多例子都告诉了我们。它建议：“施比受更有福。”那些期望最多的人，往往收获最少。曾经，我期望颇多，内心却充满了愤怒与狂躁，因为外界任何事物都无法填补我内心的空虚与绝望。一切都于事无补，直到我能够面对愤怒、狂躁、空虚与绝望，并慢慢地开始懂得同情、信仰、自制与平静这些新的情感。我也明白了，理智正是思想与情感最明智的结合，它能够让我为自己与他人承担起更多的责任，驱除往昔纠缠我的幽灵。

For me there is much hard work ahead to achieve greater happiness. Yet, the very struggle I have put into achieving a measure of it makes happiness that much more dear.
对我来说，要想更加幸福，还需付出更多艰辛的努力。但是，为获得一定程度的幸福而付出的艰辛努力，才使得幸福弥足珍贵。