Thinking about ourselves, our feelings, our past, our desires and our hopes, is a hugely tricky task that most of spend a good deal of effort trying very hard to avoid.
思考我们自己、我们的感觉、过去、愿望和希望是一项非常棘手的任务，大多数人花了大量努力极力避免这件事。
We keep away from ourselves.
我们远离自己。
Because so much of what we could discover threatens to be painful.
因为我们能发现的很多事实都可能带来痛苦。
We might find that we were, in the background,deeply furious with,and resentful about, certain people we were only meant to love.
我们可能会发现，在生活中，我们对某些自己注定要爱的人深感愤怒和怨恨。
We might discover how much ground there was to feel inadequate and guilty on account of the many errors and misjudgments we have made.
我们可能会发现，自己有多少理由为所犯的诸多错误和所做的诸多误判而觉得能力不足和内疚。
We might find that though we wanted to be decent, law-abiding people, we harbored fantasies that went in appallingly deviant and aberrant directions.
我们可能会发现，尽管我们想成为正派、守法的人，但我们怀有的幻想却惊人地离经叛道。
We might recognize how much was nauseatingly compromised and needed to be changed about our relationships and careers.
我们可能会认识到，在我们的人际关系和事业方面，有多少令人作呕的妥协，又有多少需要改变。
We don't only have a lot to hide.
我们不仅有很多东西要隐藏。
We are liars of genius.
我们还是天才说谎者。
It is part of the human tragedy that we are such natural self-deceivers.
我们是如此坦然自若的自欺者,这是人类悲剧的一部分。
Our techniques are multiple and close to invisible.
我们自欺的方法多种多样，几乎无法被注意到。
Two are worth focusing on in particular.
其中两个方法需特别小心。
Our habit of thinking too much.
即我们思考太多的习惯。
And our habit of thinking too lttle .
和我们思考太少的习惯。
When we think too much, in essence, we are filling our minds with impressive ideas, which blatantly announce our itelligence to the world.
当我们思考太多时，本质上，我们用令人印象深刻的想法填满我们的大脑，这些想法公然向世界宣告我们的智慧。
But subtly ensure we won't have much room left to rediscover long distant feelings of ignorance or confusion.
但是，与此同时，这也巧妙地确保大脑不会有太多空间去重新发现遥远的无知或困惑。
Upon which the development of our personalities may nevertheless rests.
然而，我们的个性发展可能有赖于此。
We perhaps write dense books on the role of government bonds in the Napoleonic wars or publish extensively on Chaucer's influence on the mid-19th century Japanese novel.
我们可能会大写特写有关政府债券在拿破仑战争中所起作用的复杂的书，或者大量出版关于乔叟对19世纪中期日本小说影响的书。
We secure degrees from Institutes of Advanced Study or positions on editorial boards of scientific journals.
我们从高级研究机构获得学位，在科学期刊编辑部占有一席之地。
Our minds are crammed with arcane data.
我们的大脑里塞满了晦涩难懂的数据。
We can wittily inform a dining table of guests who wrote the Enchiridion (Epictetus) or the life and times of Dogen (the founder of Zen Buddhism).
我们可以机智地告诉餐桌上的客人，《手册》 的作者(爱比克泰德)或者道元禅师(佛教禅宗创始人)的生平和所处时代。
But we don't remember very much at all about how life was long ago, back in the old house, when father left, mother stopped smiling.
但是，我们已经不太记得很久以前自己生活的样子，回到故居，父亲离开时，母亲停止了微笑。
And our trust broke in pieces.
我们之间的信任支离破碎。
We deploy knowledge and ideas that carry enormous prestige to stand guard against the emergence of more humble, but essential knowledge from our emotional past.
我们运用很有威望的知识和思想，防止平淡无奇但必不可少的知识从我们情绪化的过去涌现。
We bury our personal stories beneath an avalanche of expertise.
我们把自己的故事隐藏于浩瀚的专业知识。
The possibility of a deeply consequential intimate enquiry is deliberately left to seem feeble and superfluous.
一场意义深远的自我发问的可能性被有意忽略， 显得苍白而多余。.
Next to the supposedly grander task of addressing a conference on the political strategies of Dona Maria the First or the life-cycle of the Indonesian octopus.
下一个重要任务可能是在多纳玛丽亚一世的施政策略会议上或者是印度尼西亚章鱼的生命周期会议上发表演讲。
We lean on the glamour of being learned to make sure we won't need to learn too much that hurts.
我们依赖被学习的魅力来确保自己不必学习太多带来伤害的东西。
Then there is our habit of thinking too lttle.
然后是我们思考太少的习惯。
Here we pretend that we are simpler than we actually are.
在这种情况下，我们假装我们比真实的自己更简单。
And that too much psychology might be nonsense and fuss about nothing.
而且，太多心理活动可能毫无意义且无事生非。
We lean on a version of robust common-sense to ward off intimations of our own awkward complexity.
我们自己很复杂，笨拙不堪，且依赖一种强大的常识来抵御这种暗示。
We imply that not thinking very much is, at base, evidence of a superior kind of intelligence.
我们暗指不思考太多本质上是大智若愚的证据。
In company, we deploy bluff strategies of ridicule against more complicated accounts of human nature.
在公司里，我们直截了当地用嘲笑的办法来应对更复杂的人性。
We sideline avenues of personal investigation as unduly fancy or weird, implying that to lift the lid on inner life could never be fruitful or entirely respectable.
我们不参与个人调查,认为这种方法不合时宜或稀奇古怪，这意味着，揭露内心的真相永远不会有成效，也不会完全受人尊敬。
We use the practical mood of Monday morning 9 am to ward off the complex insights of 3 am the previous night.
我们利用周一早上九点实实在在的情绪来避开昨晚凌晨三点的复杂想法。
When the entire fabric of our existence came into question against the backdrop of a million stars, spread like diamonds on a mantle of black velvet.
在繁星闪烁的天幕下，星星像黑色天鹅绒斗篷上的钻石一样散开，此时，我们整个人的存在受到质疑。
Deploying an attitude of vigorous common sense, we strive to make our moments of radical disquiet seem like aberrations.
我们采用一种充满活力的常识态度，努力使极度不安时的自己看起来如同失常。
Rather than the central occasions of insight they might actually be.
而不是发挥洞察力时应有的样子。
We appeal to the understandable longing that our personalities be non- tragic, simple and easily comprehended.
我们渴望自己的性格不悲剧、简单且容易理解，我们呼吁人们理解这种渴望。
So as to reject the stranger, but more useful facts of our real, intricate selves.
从而拒绝接受更陌生但更有用的事实，这些事实是关于真实而复杂的自己。
A defense of emotional honesty has nothing to do with high minded morality.
捍卫情感诚实与高尚的道德无关。
It is ultimately cautionary and egoistic.
根本上，它警示他人且利己。
We need to tell ourselves a little bit more of the truth.
我们需要告诉自己更多的真相。
了解更多英文外刊和资讯，在公众号英语时代。关注公众号，让思维与时代接轨！