Around the time I turned 40, I went to see a therapist, a man who knew me well. I tended call him once or twice a year on an as-needed basis. I had reached the point of being able to sort through most problems on my own. But life had -- as it occasionally does -- grown suddenly complicated.

我40歲生日前后，我去看理療師，那個醫(yī)生很了解我。我試圖一年按需電話他兩三次。我都快可以自己解決所有問題的時候，生活突然變得復(fù)雜起來----有時候，生活就是這樣。

I had been trying with no success to have a second child. My husband and I werecontemplating egg donation and surrogacy. We had made an abrupt move from New York City to rural Connecticut in the wake of 9/11. My mother had recently died. My little boy had been seriously ill, and I was still reeling from a difficult and frightening year. I found myself questioning everything.

我一直想要生第二個小孩，但一籌莫展。我丈夫和我開始考慮捐獻卵子和代孕。911事件后，我們匆匆從紐約搬到康涅狄格州的鄉(xiāng)村。那時，我母親剛過世不久，我兒子還小，卻病入膏肓，那年我過得痛苦不堪、心驚膽戰(zhàn)，一直緩不過來。我覺得我質(zhì)疑周遭的一切。

I went through a box of tissues during that hour with my occasional therapist, and as he walked me to the door at the end of the session, I turned to him and asked urgently: does any of this make sense?

和理療師面對面的那一小時，我抽完了一整盒紙巾，問診結(jié)束，醫(yī)師陪我走到門口，我轉(zhuǎn)向他焦急地問道：這一切都有意義嗎?

Everything about you makes sense, he said.

你所有的一切都有意義，他說道。

I found these words enormously comforting. I so badly wanted the narrative of my life to make sense. Two brief failed marriages -- one at 18 the other at 28? Makes sense. My uneasy relationship to faith and doubt, having been raised in a strict, religious home? Makes sense. The emptiness I continued to feel at the early loss of my father? Makes sense. My impossibly fraught relationship with my mother? Sense. My fear and guilt at the increasing odds that my son would be an only child just like I had been? Sense.

他的話極度安慰我心。我多渴望我生活的一切都有意義。兩段婚姻轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝，一次18歲的時候，還有一次是28歲，都有意義?有。我成長于一個嚴(yán)苛又虔誠的家庭，信仰與疑惑，讓我惴惴不安，這也有意義?有。早年父親過世，我的空虛無助，有意義嗎?有。我與我母親關(guān)系緊張得不可想象、令人心焦，有意義嗎?有。我兒子越來越有可能和我一樣是獨生子女，我擔(dān)驚受怕、愧疚難捱，這有意義嗎?有。

Our lives grow so complex, so unwieldy, so difficult to explain as we get older. Haven’t we all had the experience of making a new friend in our 30s, 40s or 50s and wondering how in the world we can possibly explain ourselves? Our heartaches and our joys, our failures, losses, accomplishments, regrets? Who we’ve loved? Who we’ve wounded? What we’d do over -- if we possibly could -- if given the chance? As the trajectory of our lives stretches out from childhood well into adulthood, the arc is rarely smooth or clear.

我們的生命如此復(fù)雜、難以駕馭、越年長越無以解釋。我們都有這樣的經(jīng)歷，三十幾、四十幾和五十多歲的時候結(jié)交新朋友;也曾困惑在這世上，我們何以向自己解釋我們的心病和我們的喜悅，我們的失敗、沮喪、成功和懊悔?我們愛過誰，又傷害了誰?若可能、如有機會，我們會選擇什么重新來過?我們的人生軌跡，從童年一路延伸到成年，軌跡鮮有平滑和清晰的時候。

My husband, a screenwriter, is often asked to adapt biographies for film, and the struggle, he often says, is that lives have first acts, but they don’t have third acts (until they’re over) and second acts are just one damned thing after another. So how to understand the narratives of our lives? How to trust that everything about us makes sense?

我丈夫是電影劇本作家，常常應(yīng)要求把傳記改編成電影。此中困苦，如其所言，生命有第一幕，但沒有第三幕(除非劇目結(jié)束)，而第二幕總是惱人的事情接二連三地發(fā)生。所以，又怎能真正理解我們生命的歷程?又何以相信我們生命的一切都有意義?

Lately I’ve been wondering if perhaps the answer to this is not to even attempt to smooth things out. Sure, there are the fortunate few from whom the journey has thus far been smooth sailing, but for the vast majority of us, there are fits and starts, hiccups, confusion, mistakes, wrong turns, U-turns, gracelessmoments. Life’s road is nothing if not strewn with pebbles, potholes, unexpected surprises, both happy and not-so-happy ones.

最近，我一直在想，也許這一問題的答案就是，不要試圖去解決一切事情。誠然，少數(shù)幸運兒的人生迄今一帆風(fēng)順，但我們對大多數(shù)人而言，生命里會有斷斷續(xù)續(xù)、會有中斷的時候、會有困惑、錯誤、會拐錯彎、掉錯頭，還有顏面盡失的時候。若非有小石子兒、坑坑洼洼在，若非有意外與你不期而遇，或驚喜或驚愕，生命之路會一文不值。

As one of my dearest friends, the Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein says, "We are alwaysaccommodating to a new situation." That ever-changing new situation is, in fact, what makes up the shape of our lives. And that shape assumes its own kind of integrity, over time. This is how it is, how it has been. The truth of who we are is all we have to offer each other. And so often we want to edit it, to hide it, to cut and paste the story so that it will read like something intentional, something that we all meant to do all along.

正如我最親密的一位朋友、禪學(xué)教師西薇雅?布爾斯坦所言，“我們總是在適應(yīng)新環(huán)境。”不斷變化的新環(huán)境，事實上成就了我們生命的形態(tài)。而那一形態(tài)，經(jīng)久歷時，呈現(xiàn)出其特有的完整性。這就是生命的樣貌、生命緣何如此。我們真真正正是誰，也就是我們要相互展現(xiàn)的。太多次，我們想要修改、想要隱藏、想剪切復(fù)制事實情況，好像聽起來有意，是我們一直刻意追求的那樣。

And so it seems that the answer may well be to embrace the complexity of our lives. A beautiful piece of Buddhist wisdom known as "The Eight Vicissitudes" goes like this: pain and pleasure, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, gain and loss. All lives contain all of these. Not at once, not in order, not in equal amounts -- but nonetheless, all lives contain all of these. I find great solace in this. We are all here, trying our best, muddling through. We make choices, we re-group, we deepen. We learn from each other. We all make sense.

所以，似乎答案很有可能就是，去迎接生命的復(fù)雜性。禪學(xué)智慧有一條很出彩，即“八大人生起伏”，是這么說的：痛苦有享樂、贊譽與責(zé)備、美譽與惡名，及得與失。所有生命都包含這幾條。不是說來就來，也并非按序經(jīng)歷、平均分配----但不管怎樣，所有生命都會經(jīng)歷這一切。這讓我大為安慰。我們都在此，以己之能，揣摩前行。我們作選擇、我們重整旗鼓、我們深化生命的意義。我們相互學(xué)習(xí)，我們都活出有意義。