为什么普通生活也可以是好生活
（英文原文来自The School of Life）
我们生活在一个非常关心不同寻常生活的时代，那种我们绝大多数人永远不会有的生活。我们的英雄们创造了特大的财富，出现在巨大的屏幕上，展示着独一无二的美德和天赋。他们的成就很耀眼而且持续不断，但是这些的反面，是耻辱。
在1650年代晚期，荷兰艺术家约翰尼斯维米尔画了一幅叫做“小街”的画。这样做，是一种悄无声息却是重要的，具有革命性的举动，它的影响，挑战着我们当前的价值观。它在外观上所表现的，并没有比一条维米尔的家乡德尔夫特的普通的街道更加引人注目。有些人在做小的针线活；小孩儿在门廊上玩儿，一个女人在院子里忙活着。这是世界上最伟大的画作之一。
到目前为止，声誉最高的文化作品强调贵族，军人和宗教人士生活的优点和价值，就是那些充满非凡时刻和优越性的生活。伟大的史诗诗人，荷马和维吉尔，曾经写下英勇的战士；文艺复兴时期的艺术家创作了很多圣徒和天使壮丽的画面。而且，国王、王后和贵族的日常活动接二连三地被庆祝着，并且在最有声誉的画布上被保存下来用以赞颂。
但是约翰内斯·维米尔走向了另外一边。他想展示给我们那些可以很吸引人和倍感光荣的不同活动：保持家里整洁，打扫院子，照看小孩儿，做针线活，或者，像他同样重要的厨房女仆的画，准备午饭。几个同时期年轻的荷兰人加入了维吉尔的安静的变革。其中一人，皮特德胡奇，关注着一天中几乎是随便挑选的时刻，没有什么特别的事情发生：在家里度过的日常的下午，从商店回来，或许带着一包蔬菜。也许人们将把洗的衣服晾到外面。有人在后门装一个小的藤架。也许是在周末修修补补。（德胡奇在人类历史上第一个指出组合碗柜吸引人。）
他画过一个相当富裕的商人的屋子，但是真正让他感兴趣的是洗衣服时用的篮子，还有屋子主人和助手正在把毛巾和床单叠起来，放到一边。这个，德胡奇似乎想告诉我们，也是生活的意义，如果适当理解的话。
维米尔的另一个追随者，卡斯帕内切尔，钦佩那些做着通常认为无聊并且卑贱的工作的人：比如做蕾丝花边，微小难弄而又工钱不高。内切尔他自己改变不了人们的收入，但是他有意改变我们对那些靠微薄收入生活的人们的感觉。尽管这些艺术家很出名——他们的作品在最杰出的美术馆而且可售得很高的价格，如果它们出现在拍卖会上的话——他们试探性的变革还没有那么完全成功。
如今，现代版本的史诗，贵族或者神学的艺术，广告和电影继续向我们说明这些东西的吸引力，像跑车、热带岛屿假期、出名、头等舱飞机出游和昂贵的石灰岩厨房用具。这些吸引力通常真实地没有瑕疵。但是累积效果，就是逐渐灌输我们一种观念，一个好的生活是在那些几乎没人能付得起的要素环绕中建立起来的。在此前提下，我们太容易推出一个结论了，那就是，我们的生活接近毫无价值。
维米尔，做了他的努力，坚持认为，普通生活以它自己的方式英勇着，因为听上去普通的事情，并不是轻易能经营的。这里需要极大的技巧和真正的高尚：将一个孩子培养成为适度地独立并且安定的人；尽管在某些地方极度的困难，还是和伴侣维持着多年的足够好的关系；让一个家保持秩序井然；早点睡；负责地、乐意地干着一份并不令人兴奋或高新的工作；适当地聆听别人；总之，不能由于生存中包含的看似矛盾的事物和妥协而屈从于疯狂或暴怒。维米尔也不是说所有普通的东西都令人印象深刻。他只是用善意将我们导向一个观点，我们通常忽略很多事情，而这些事情恰好既普通又好。
面临着出众的天赋，维米尔用一种观点说服我们，我们应该敢于持着这样的观点在面对极大的压力时设想，我们应该以一种高贵的方式生活：当我们学着去看它们，不带有偏见或自我憎恨去看，我们的生活已经有很多值得感激和尊敬的。如果你喜欢这个影片，请订阅我们的频道，并点击铃铛，打开消息提醒。
Why an Ordinary Life Can Be a Good Life
We live in an age with a high regard for extraordinary lives – that is, lives that the vast majority of us will never lead. Our heroes have made outsized fortunes, appeared on gigantic screens and demonstrated unique virtue and talent. Their achievements are both dazzling and continuously, in the background, humiliating.
In the late 1650s, the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer painted a picture called The Little Street. Doing so was a quiet but momentous and revolutionary act, with an impact that challenges our values to this day. Johannes Vermeer - Gezicht op huizen in Delft, bekend als 'Het straatje' - Google Art Project.jpg It showed nothing more outwardly impressive than an ordinary street in Vermeer’s home town of Delft. Someone was doing a little sewing; some kids were playing on the stoop, a woman was busy in the yard. It is one of the greatest paintings in the world.
Up to this point, the most prestigious cultural works had emphasised the merits and value of aristocratic, military and religious lives, that is, of lives filled with extraordinary moments and advantages. The great epic poets, Homer and Virgil, had written of heroic warriors; Renaissance artists had produced magnificent visions of saints and angels. And the routines of kings, queens and aristocrats were constantly celebrated and held up for admiration on the most prestigious canvases.
But Johannes Vermeer went in another direction. He wanted to show us what could be appealing and honourable about very different sorts of activities: keeping a house tidy, sweeping the yard, babysitting, sewing or – as in his equally significant painting of a kitchen maid – preparing lunch. Several younger Dutch contemporaries joined Vermeer’s quiet revolution. One of them, Pieter de Hooch, focused on almost random moments of the day, when nothing particular is going on: a routine afternoon at home, coming back from the shops, perhaps with a bag of vegetables. Maybe the people will be hanging out the washing later. Someone’s rigged up a little arbour by the back door; it could do with some mending at the weekend. (De Hooch was the first artist in the history of humanity to point out the charms of organising a cupboard.)
He did one picture that depicted a rather well-off merchant’s house, but the thing that really interested him was the laundry basket and how the owner of the house and her assistant are folding and putting away towels and bed sheets. This, de Hooch seems to be telling us, is also the meaning of life, properly understood.
Another of Vermeer’s follower, Caspar Netscher, admired people doing jobs that were often considered rather boring and lowly: like lace-making, which was fiddly and not very well-paid. Netscher couldn’t himself alter what people earnt, but he was intent on changing how we might feel about those on a modest salary. Although these artists are famous – their works are in the greatest galleries and fetch enormous prices if they come up at auction – their tentative revolution hasn’t as yet properly succeeded.
Today – in modern versions of epic, aristocratic, or divine art – adverts and movies continually explain to us the appeal of things like sports cars, tropical island holidays, fame, first-class air travel and expansive limestone kitchens. The attractions are often perfectly real. But the cumulative effect is to instill in us the idea that a good life is built around elements that almost no one can afford. The conclusion we too easily draw is that our lives are close to worthless.
Vermeer, for his part, was insisting that ordinary life is heroic in its own way, because ordinary-sounding things are very far from easy to manage. There is immense skill and true nobility involved in bringing up a child to be reasonably independent and balanced; maintaining a good-enough relationship with a partner over many years despite areas of extreme difficulty; keeping a home in reasonable order; getting an early night; doing a not very exciting or well-paid job responsibly and cheerfully; listening properly to another person and, in general, not succumbing to madness or rage at the paradox and compromises involved in being alive. Vermeer was not claiming that everything ordinary was invariably impressive. He was merely directing us with grace to the idea that there are a host of things that we too often ignore and that happen to be both ordinary and good.
With extraordinary talent, Vermeer was convincing us of an idea we should dare to hold on to in the face of immense pressures to imagine that we should be living in more exalted ways: that there is already much to appreciate and venerate in our lives when we learn to see them without prejudice or self-hatred. If you liked this film, please subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon to turn on notifications.
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