Marcus Aurelius – How to Live a Good Life
Someone passes away. A marriage ends. A job is lost. Are these events good or bad?
有人离开了人世，一段婚姻走到了尽头，丢掉了工作。这些事情是好还是坏呢？
It depends on the context. We’re sad if someone close to us passes away, but if it’s someone who tyrannized us, we might be glad. The end of our marriage is a bad thing, if we’ll lose our last chance with the person we love, and it’s a good thing if we’ll suffer more in the long run by remaining with the person. Losing a job can make us feel worthless, or it can be the moment we realize that we’re worth far more.
这取决于具体的情境。如果是我们亲近的人去世我们就会伤心，但是如果走的是一个欺压我们的人，我们可能会很高兴。如果我们失去了最后一次与我们所爱之人在一起的机会，那么婚姻的结束就是一件糟糕的事，如果和一个人保持婚姻关系使我们长期痛苦，那么结束婚姻就是一件好事。失去工作会使我们觉得没有价值，或许这也可能成为我们意识到自己更有价值的时刻。
We have the ability to write our own life stories and determine what everything means to us. Losing a job isn’t bad in itself; no event is bad or good in itself. The stories we write after we lose our job determine whether it’s a positive or negative event.
我们有能力书写我们自己的人生故事以及决定事物对我们的意义。失去工作本身不是一个坏的事情，甚至事件本身没有好坏之分。在我们失去工作之后我们对它的叙述决定了它是积极的还是消极的。
As we write more and more stories about our life, they all come together to form our philosophy: a pair of lenses that we see everything in the world through. It’s important that we craft a pair of lenses that empower us and lead us to a good life. The beautiful thing about being human is that we can share our stories with each other and modify each other’s lenses.
当我们写下我们生活中越来越多的故事时，他们汇聚在一起形成了我们的哲学：一副我们透过它来认识看待世界的镜片。重要的是我们精心制作好这副镜片，让它赋予我们力量引领我们走向美好的生活。关于人最美好的事物就是我们能够彼此分享我们的故事，不断完善我们的镜片。
In this video, I’d like to share with you the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, and we’ll discover the story that allowed him to become the last of the “Five Good Emperors” of Rome, an inspiration for leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela, someone who people still go to for advice over 1800 years after his death.
在这个视频里，我想要与你分享马可·奥里利乌斯的哲学，然后我们将会发现那个使他成为罗马“五贤帝”最后一位的故事，他是西奥多·罗斯福和纳尔逊·曼德拉这样领导者的灵感，在他死后的1800年里人们还向他寻求建议。
Marcus believed that we’re all parts of a greater whole which he called nature: you can think of it like a giant organism that we’re all tiny pieces of. We’re like the fingers on a hand of a body. And just like the fingers of a hand work together to serve the body, Marcus believed that all organisms were meant to work together to serve nature. As a small piece of this larger body, we can control our own perceptions and actions; we can control what we do, but we can’t control what happens to us. Marcus believed that nature had its own goals, and it was up to us to find these goals and live in accordance with them.
马可认为我们都属于我们称之为自然这个伟大的整体的一部分，你可以把它看成一个巨大的生物，我们都是它微小的组成部分。我们就像是一个身体手上的手指。就像手指会协同合作来帮助身体一样，马可认为所有的生命都应该齐心协力奉献自然。作为一个庞大身躯的一个小零件，我们能够控制我们自身的观念和行为，我们能够控制我们做什么，但是我们无法控制什么事情发生在我们身上。马可相信大自然有它本身的目的，这取决于我们去找到这些目的然后遵循它们来生活。
A finger that doesn’t serve the body is unnatural. All the parts of a body need to be harmonized to serve the goals of the whole body. For Marcus, a good life is one that’s lived in accordance with nature. With this worldview in mind, he believed that we needed mainly two virtues to live a good life: justice and piety.
如果一根手指不服从于身体是不自然的。身体所有的部位需要协调来完成整个身体的目标。对于马可来说，美好的人生是遵循自然之道生活。秉承着这样的世界观，他相信过上一个美好生活我们需要两个重要的美德：公正和虔诚。
Justice is when a finger cooperates with other fingers and does what’s good for the whole body: it’s about focusing on what’s in our control and doing what’s good for society. Think about all of the great ideas and technology that you have access to: most of them came from someone other than yourself. Someone sacrificed their time and energy to bring something new into the world and share it with us. Life is a lot better and richer when we cooperate.
公正是指：当一根手指和其它的手指协同合作，一起为整个社会做出贡献。这需要我们关注我们掌控之中的事以及我们为社会做的贡献。想一想所有我们获得了的伟大的思想和技术，它们大部分来源于某个别人而不是你自己。有人牺牲了自己的时间和精力把新事物带到这个世界然后分享给我们大家。生活当我们合作的时候就会更加地美好和富足。
Marcus believed that what’s good for the body is good for the finger, or what’s good for the society is ultimately what’s good for the individual. On the other hand, an unjust person acts selfishly: they’re a finger that sabotages the body without realizing they’re attached to it. Helping one another is in accordance with nature and harming one another is not.
马可认为对身体有益的也是对手指有益，或者可以说对社会有益的最终对个人是有益的。另一方面，一个不公正的人行动起来是自私的。它们是一根蓄意破坏身体的手指，没有意识到它们依附于身体。帮助彼此是遵循自然，伤害彼此则不然。
This view of justice helped Marcus avoid getting angry with others; it oriented him towards being cooperative and understanding. He realized that being negative towards others would ultimately just harm himself: we’re two parts of the same whole.
公正的观念帮助了马可避免对他人动怒，这指引他变得充满合作性和善解人意。他意识到对其他人消极最终伤害的仅仅是他自己：我们都是同一个整体的两个部分。
On the other hand, how good could a relationship, a home, or a society get if everyone shared new ideas, technology, and invested their energy for the good of one another? How good could the world get if we acted justly?
另一方面，如果每个人都分享新思想、新技术，并为彼此的利益投入精力，那么一段关系、一个家庭或一个社会能会有多好呢？如果我们的行为公正我们的世界会变得多好呢？
Piety is when a finger realizes that it can’t control other fingers and that the whole body has its own goals. The finger can’t always control what happens to it. Even though we may set out to serve others, there’s no guarantee that they’ll let us, or that they’ll serve us back. There’s no guarantee that things will unfold how we expect them to, or that others will live justly.
虔诚是当一根手指意识到它无法控制其它的手指，与此同时身体有它自己的目标。手指不能总是控制发生在它身上的事情。即使我们可能已经做好为他人服务的准备，但是这并不能保证别人会允许我们这样做或者他们会相应地付出回报。事情不可能保证如我们所期待的那样展开，别人不一定会如我们所期待那样公正地生活着。
Marcus, like most Stoics, encourages us to love our fate. The whole body is smarter than the finger. Whatever happens to us was meant to happen as a part of the web of cause and effect. For Marcus, our only duty is to hold ourselves accountable for our own actions and do what’s in our power to serve the common good.
马可，就像大多数的斯多葛学派教徒一样，他鼓励我们热爱我们的生活遵循自己的天命。整体要比部分更加聪慧。无论发生在我们身上的是什么，都是因果关系网络的一部分。在马可看来，我们的使命就是对自己的行动负责，做自己力所能及的事情去为公众的利益服务。
This view of piety allowed him to endure hardship. No matter what happened to him, he did what was in his power to do, and for everything that wasn’t, he trusted the will of nature.
虔诚的观点使得他能够承受苦难。不管他发生了什么，他都做了他力所能及的事，而对于那些不能做的事，他相信自然的意志。
With the concepts of nature, justice, and piety in mind, we can see Marcus’ solution for a good life: serve the common good and love all that happens to you.
在他的心中秉持着自然，公正，虔诚的理念，我们能够发现马可过好一生的方法：为公众利益服务，热爱发生在你身上的一切。
【翻译后记】
为公众利益服务，热爱发生在你身上的一切。这个需要智慧，就算理解了，将其运用到自己的实际生活中也是不容易的。同时也要具体问题具体分析。也许我们不能保证自己做出的每一个决定都是正确的。但是我相信只要保持开放的心胸，能不停审视自己，认清自身和周遭的环境，我相信一切慢慢就会有所答案。