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晚婚成了現在的一個趨勢，但很多青年還是避免不了被家人各種催婚。如果對愛情的追求只是為了結束單身，為了應付現實中的各種壓力，這還是愛嗎？本期TED演講者Hayley Quinn分享了從10萬對情侶的故事中總結出的愛情感悟，告訴大家如何去尋找真正的愛情，引起很多人共鳴。
演講全文（英文）
So let me tell you a love story. Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a land I Googled to be 5,172 miles away, I met a guy, and he was perfect.
讓我給你講一個愛情故事。很久以前，在一個我上網查到的5172英裡以外的地方，我遇到一個人，他很完美。
So I』ll tell you the meeting story. I』d just taped this really cool TV show about experimenting with your sexuality, and I met him at the after-party through one of our famous friends who was a DJ. He was tall, dark, handsome, kind of a rock star, and a little bit emotionally unavailable. Very soon, we were spending all of our time together. We threw these really cool parties for all of our cool friends, we went backstage at every festival, and, when my hands were cold, he would take them under his arms to warm them up.
所以我會告訴你見面的故事。我剛剛錄製了這個非常酷的電視節目，內容是關於性意識的實驗，我通過我們一個做DJ的著名朋友，在晚會後遇到了他。他高大、黝黑、英俊，有點像搖滾明星，而且在感情上有一點不成熟。很快，我們就把所有的時間都花在了一起。我們為我們所有的酷朋友舉辦了這些非常酷的派對，我們在每個音樂節的後臺，而且，當我的手冷的時候，他會把它們放在他的胳膊下，讓它們暖起來。
He was my best friend, and I thought we would be together forever. And so strong was that belief that when the warning signs came, I just ignored them. Until the day that I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I』d become quite unwell, I wasn’t so pretty anymore, and I definitely couldn’t go out to any of the parties. In fact, I was, for the first time in my life, actually vulnerable because I was miscarrying our baby.
他是我最好的朋友，我以為我們會永遠在一起。這種信念是如此強烈，以至於當警告信號出現時，我只是無視它們。直到有一天，我再也無法忽視它們了。我變得很不舒服，我不再那麼漂亮了，而且我肯定不能出去參加任何聚會了。事實上，我有生以來第一次真的很脆弱，因為我流產了我們的孩子。
And at that point, when I was at my weakest, he left. It’s not a joke. Ah ha, um – Coming downstairs – and you, you know what, but I would have followed him out of the door to the ends of Earth. But I couldn’t get out of my bed. When I did get up, I found that our house had been stripped bare.
而在那個時候，在我最脆弱的時候，他離開了。這不是一個玩笑。啊哈，嗯--下樓了--而你，你知道嗎，但我本想跟著他出了門，到天涯海角。但我無法從床上爬起來。當我真的起床時，我發現我們的房子已經被剝得精光。
The paintings were gone from the walls, and the rooms that we used to dance in together were empty. I walked around those rooms like an animal, howling. Picking myself up off the literal floor that day, I had to recognize that after all of this excitement and this joy and this fantasy, at the end of all that love, I had nothing. And you know what, that wasn’t even the first time something like that had happened to me. I was a magnet for chaos.
牆上的畫已經不見了，我們曾經一起跳舞的房間也空了。我像一隻動物一樣在那些房間裡走來走去，嚎啕大哭。那天，我把自己從地上撿起來，我不得不承認，在所有這些興奮、快樂和幻想之後，在所有這些愛的盡頭，我一無所有。你知道嗎，這甚至不是第一次發生在我身上的類似事情。我是一塊吸引混亂的磁鐵。
I liked chaos, because when I was in chaos, I didn’t have to confront anything about who I was. Truthfully, I hadn’t known who I was for years. Because on the floor that day, I did have someone, I had myself. But for a long time, that had come to feel like, it, well, meant nothing, and it was invaluable. So I know it seems a bit self-indulgent to come out here today and talk to you guys about, like, effectively a break-up story, but it was one of a chain of many incidences that made me think, 「Maybe there’s other people like me, maybe there’s other people that aren’t approaching love in the right way.」
我喜歡混亂，因為當我在混亂中時，我不必面對任何關於我是誰的問題。說實話，多年來我都不知道自己是誰。因為在那天的地板上，我確實有一個人，我有我自己。但在很長一段時間裡，我覺得這一點，嗯，毫無意義，而且是無價的。因此，我知道今天來到這裡和你們談論，比如，有效的分手故事，似乎有點自我放縱，但這是一連串事件中的一個，讓我想到，"也許還有其他像我這樣的人，也許還有其他沒有以正確方式對待愛情的人。"
Because I think we』ve all had experiences, right? They look like love, they feel like love, but when you open them up, there’s nothing loving about them. But we continued to chase love, because I think love is sold to us as almost like the ultimate solution to ourselves: the things that make our past okay, that gives us the direction for the future, and imbues our everyday reality with meaning.
因為我想我們都有過經驗，對嗎？它們看起來像愛，感覺像愛，但當你打開它們時，沒有任何愛的東西。但我們繼續追逐愛情，因為我認為愛情被賣給我們，幾乎是對我們自己的終極解決方案：使我們的過去好起來的東西，給我們未來的方向，並使我們的日常現實充滿意義。
I think love can be beautiful, I think it can be exciting; but I think sometimes it can also be an act of escapism. And I』ve had a long time to think about this, as the introduction said, I am the artist formerly known as the UK’s leading dating expert. And before that I was a ghost writer in the pickup industry, and I vlog about the reality of love on my YouTube.
我認為愛情可以是美麗的，我認為它可以是令人興奮的；但我認為有時它也可以是一種逃避現實的行為。我花了很長時間來思考這個問題，正如介紹中所說，我是藝術家，以前被稱為英國領先的約會專家。而在這之前，我是泡妞行業的鬼才作家，我在我的YouTube上發表關於愛的現實的視頻。
And now I have a completely different approach, a very minimalist strategy when it comes to dating. And that’s really because I’m concerned that in our quest for love sometimes it can be the ultimate distraction to fixing ourselves and doing the real work that will actually make us happy. Because, don’t get me wrong, I think that the desire for attachment, for intimacy, for security, for love, those goals are natural, they’re human, and they’re good.
而現在我有一個完全不同的方法，當涉及到約會時，有一個非常簡約的策略。這真的是因為我擔心，在我們對愛的追求中，有時它可能會成為最終的分心，使我們無法修復自己，做真正的工作，這將真正使我們快樂。因為，不要誤會我的意思，我認為對依戀的渴望，對親密關係的渴望，對安全感的渴望，對愛的渴望，這些目標是自然的，它們是人類的，它們是好的。
But I think sometimes the way we go about them is a bit weird, whether that’s crazy, ridiculous, on-off, destructive relationships, or needing to go out on a date every single night of the week with a different person. You know, like the hip form of dating, where you have someone on the back burner, someone on the front burner, someone under the grill, and then someone else over there in the freezer just in case, God forbid, you spend a night by yourself.
但我認為有時我們處理這些問題的方式有點奇怪，無論是瘋狂的、荒謬的、斷斷續續的、破壞性的關係，還是需要在一周的每個晚上都和不同的人出去約會。你知道，就像約會的時髦形式，你有一個人在後面的爐子上，一個人在前面的爐子上，一個人在烤架下，然後還有一個人在那邊的冰箱裡，以防萬一，上帝保佑，你自己度過一個晚上。
In this, it feels really like loneliness is the driver, or escapism is the driver, not love. So, I’m kind of starting to preach the opposite belief now, that, of course, the answer lies not in another person, but within yourself. Because I think, sometimes, the melodrama of love takes us further away, rather than closer, to who we actually are. So I find that my dating advice is gradually shrinking down to be essentially: go meditate, get some therapy, read a book. Ha, ha…It’s not what you would call a sexy strategy for the millennial generation.
在這一點上，感覺真的像是孤獨是驅動力，或者逃避主義是驅動力，而不是愛。所以，我現在有點開始宣揚相反的信念，當然，答案不在於另一個人，而在於你自己。因為我認為，有時候，愛情的戲劇性會讓我們離真正的自己更遠，而不是更近。所以我發現我的約會建議逐漸縮減為：去冥想，接受一些治療，讀一本書。哈哈.這不是你所說的千禧一代的性感策略。
A generation that is used to 4G download speeds, skyping a friend abroad, and Netflix and Chill with someone you just met from Tinder. Um – So I think when we’re used to expecting everything we want right here, right now, when we can’t just vend an automatic level of human connection, we not only feel like we’re getting it wrong, but like we’re not getting what we’re entitled to.
這一代人已經習慣了4G的下載速度，習慣了和國外的朋友進行skype聊天，習慣了和剛從Tinder上認識的人進行Netflix和Chill。所以我認為，當我們習慣於在此刻期待我們想要的一切時，當我們不能自動賣出人與人之間的聯繫時，我們不僅覺得我們做錯了，而且覺得我們沒有得到我們有權得到的東西。
And then you just take one look at Instagram: everybody else has it sorted out. And we sort of live in the culture that surrounds us, telling us that we should have fallen in love or be falling in love, or at least have had great sex, right? Like yesterday!? You know, let’s face it, who actually enters into the arena of love looking to, maybe, become a better person, to be kinder, to have more integrity, to get more grounded? No one does that.
然後你只要看一眼Instagram就知道了：其他人都已經解決了。我們生活在圍繞著我們的文化中，告訴我們，我們應該已經墜入愛河或正在墜入愛河，或者至少有偉大的性生活，對嗎？就像昨天一樣！？你知道，讓我們面對現實吧，誰會真正進入愛的領域，尋找，也許，成為一個更好的人，更善良，更正直，更接地氣？沒有人這樣做。
It’s because our eyes are off ourselves, we’re looking for that next adventure, that greener grass, that new person, so we don’t have to deal with any of that stuff. And I understand how easily it happens, right? You just kind of meet someone sexy, I don’t know where, maybe it was at a party, on the train, or the Tube, as we would say in London.
這是因為我們的眼睛離開了自己，我們在尋找下一次冒險，更綠的草，新的人，所以我們不必處理任何這些東西。我明白這很容易發生，對嗎？你只是遇到一個性感的人，我不知道在哪裡，也許是在一個聚會上，在火車上，或者地鐵上，正如我們在倫敦所說的那樣。
Or maybe you just met them, you both joined Tinder that day, how magical! And before too long, you realize that you have some stuff in common, like wow, you both like almond butter, Star Wars, you can name all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles. And then, like, suddenly, you’re retelling how you met, like, this serendipitous coincidence of cosmic proportions – it’s like move over Romeo and Juliet. Not that that ended every well, let’s all remember that.
也可能你剛認識他們，那天你們都加入了Tinder，多神奇啊! 沒過多久，你就意識到你們有一些共同點，比如哇，你們都喜歡杏仁醬、星球大戰，你能說出四隻忍者英雄龜的名字。然後，就像，突然間，你在複述你們是如何相遇的，就像，這種偶然的宇宙性的巧合--就像移開羅密歐與朱麗葉。這並不是說結局很好，讓我們都記住這一點。
So, when you’re thinking about you’re not exactly being Romeo and Juliet, and we’re actually living in the real world, I think the thing is, the main sell, when you kind of fall for someone, is it 『s like: Yippee, I’m not alone anymore. Hooray! Nailed it! Uh ha Coz you get to – guess what you do? You get to go home every night, and you get to put your head on the pillow, and you don’t have to think about, you know, your needs, your wants, your past, and, actually, kind of all the stuff that’s really, probably, stopping you from becoming happy, because you’re not fixing it. Instead, you get to be entrapped by somebody else, you’re intrigued by them, your mind has someone new to spiral into and focus on.
因此，當你考慮到你不完全是羅密歐與朱麗葉，而我們實際上生活在現實世界中，我認為事情是，主要的賣點，當你有點愛上某人，是它's like: 耶，我不再孤單了。萬歲! 成功了! 因為你可以--猜猜你做什麼？你每天晚上回家，把頭放在枕頭上，你不必考慮，你知道，你的需求，你的願望，你的過去，以及，實際上，所有的東西，真的，可能，阻止你變得快樂，因為你沒有修復它。相反，你會被別人困住，你會被他們吸引，你的思想有一個新的人可以旋轉和關注。
But I think sometimes when you’re focusing on that perfect romance, you’re not actually doing the real work to fix the stuff that’s stopping you from becoming happy. And because of that, I think that most of us, when it comes to love and dating, kind of need an epic timeout and reset. For myself, I did six months cold turkey. No dating, no internet dating, and I went to all of two parties. Literally, you could have written up my love life on the back of a postage stamp, it was that exciting. And all this from the girl who used to – honestly, I used to pride myself on having a ridiculous love life.
但我認為有時當你專注於完美的浪漫時，你實際上沒有做真正的工作來解決那些阻止你變得快樂的東西。正因為如此，我認為我們中的大多數人，當涉及到愛情和約會時，需要一個史詩般的暫停和重置。就我自己而言，我做了六個月的冷火雞。沒有約會，沒有網絡約會，我只參加了兩個聚會。從字面上看，你可以把我的愛情生活寫在郵票的背面，它是那麼令人興奮。而這一切都來自於那個曾經--說實話，我曾經為自己有一個可笑的愛情生活而感到自豪的女孩。
The stories – if I was here two years ago guys, I』d have told you some amazing stories. But you know what? After all of that, and after everything that happened, I thought I would quite like to know who I am again. Because, and I think I’m not alone here, if you’re experiencing a Groundhog Day when it comes to your dating life, I think that the thing is you think that it’s because you’re meeting loads of players, or nice guys finish last, or you just haven’t met the one yet, or that dating is a numbers game, but I think actually these truisms that surround dating aren’t in fact true at all.
這些故事--如果兩年前我在這裡，夥計們，我會告訴你們一些驚人的故事。但是你知道嗎？在所有這些之後，在所發生的一切之後，我想我很想再次知道我是誰。因為，我想我不是一個人在這裡，如果你正在經歷一個土撥鼠日，當它涉及到你的約會生活，我認為事情是你認為這是因為你遇到了大量的球員，或者好人最後完成，或者你只是還沒有遇到那個人，或者約會是一個數字遊戲，但我認為實際上這些圍繞著約會的真理，事實上根本不是真的。
In fact, I think they lead us away from what the real issue is. Because the problem, and I know this doesn’t make for comfy listening, the problem, it’s with you, it’s with me, it’s with our ridiculous ideas around romance, it’s with our needs that we haven’t realized yet, it’s with our past that we don’t want to talk about, it’s with our desires, it’s with our inability to get through one day without picking up our smartphones, and it’s with what we value.
事實上，我認為它們使我們遠離了真正的問題所在。因為問題，我知道這不會讓人聽得舒服，問題，是在你身上，是在我身上，是在我們關於浪漫的荒謬想法上，是在我們尚未實現的需求上，是在我們不想談論的過去上，是在我們的欲望上，是在我們無法在不拿起智慧型手機的情況下度過一天，是在我們的價值上。
So I decided after all of that – I was like, you know what, I’m done with Groundhog Day in love, I actually want to discover a bit more about myself. Because the truth is, I wasn’t even born Hayley Quinn. Right!? Right!? I chose that name, I thought it sounded cool. I was actually born Hayley Whittle. And when I was born – I grew up in a poor family, my parents were disabled, I was really teased at school a lot for being the weird girl, I used to work as a dishwasher, and because of that, there was so much pain and shame in my past; I just didn’t want to touch it.
所以我決定在所有這些之後--我想，你知道嗎，我已經受夠了愛情中的土撥鼠日，我實際上想發現更多關於自己的東西。因為事實是，我甚至沒有出生海莉-奎因。對嗎？對吧！？我選擇了這個名字，我覺得它聽起來很酷。實際上，我出生在海莉-惠特爾。當我出生時--我在一個貧窮的家庭長大，我的父母是殘疾人，我在學校真的經常被嘲笑是個怪女孩，我曾經當過洗碗工，正因為如此，我的過去有很多痛苦和羞恥；我只是不想去碰它。
And the way I ran away from it is I ran away from it with love and with fantasy. But I decided after all that running, I wasn’t really getting anywhere, I was just re-creating the same mistakes time and time again. So I thought I』d better stop. I was like I want to actually feel something. And I can tell you, when I stopped, I did feel.
而我逃避的方式是我用愛和幻想來逃避它。但我決定，在所有這些奔跑之後，我並沒有真正得到任何東西，我只是一次又一次地重複同樣的錯誤。所以我想我最好停下來。我當時想，我想真正感受到一些東西。我可以告訴你，當我停下來時，我確實感覺到了。
I think I cried every single day for the first month on the phone to my Mum, which was awkward because I hadn’t really spoken to her for about a decade at that stage. And then I』d come home, and I』d come home to this empty, dirty house, with no guy and no baby and no possessions left in it. And then some days I』d wake up and the pain would be so bad that it felt like my heart was burning. And to resist the temptation at that stage to not reach out and take that little plaster of dating or love or some attention to fix how I was feeling was really hard.
我想在第一個月裡，我每天都在給我媽媽打電話哭，這很尷尬，因為在那個階段我已經有十年沒有真正和她說過話了。然後我回到家，看到這個空蕩蕩、髒兮兮的房子，裡面沒有男人，沒有孩子，沒有任何財產。然後有些天我醒來時，疼痛會如此嚴重，感覺我的心在燃燒。在那個階段，要抵制誘惑，不伸手去拿那個約會的小膏藥或愛或一些關注來解決我的感覺，真的很難。
But gradually, you know what? A great thing happened, is that I came back into the room, I became aware again, my mind started to work, I reconnected with my family, the friends that were left were the good ones, and I stopped being so obsessed with going out every night of the week or whether someone had read my messages on WhatsApp.
但漸漸地，你知道嗎？一件偉大的事情發生了，就是我回到了房間裡，我又變得有意識了，我的思想開始工作了，我和我的家人重新建立了聯繫，剩下的朋友都是好朋友，我不再那麼執著於每周的每個晚上都要出去，或者是否有人讀過我在WhatsApp上的信息。
And so that’s why, if you’re listening to what I’m saying, if you even see a shadow of yourself, a little shadow of your story in my ridiculous life, I would advise just taking a time to take that pause, and I’m going to tell you why, I’m actually going to sell it to you.
所以這就是為什麼，如果你在聽我說的話，如果你甚至在我可笑的生活中看到自己的影子，看到你的故事的一點影子，我建議只要花點時間暫停一下，我要告訴你為什麼，我實際上要把它賣給你。
So here I go, first things first: when you come home and your evening plans are make chicken soup and read a book, this no longer sounds bad, this sounds awesome. Although I』d like to point out my chicken soup literally still has the consistency of porridge, it’s so bad. Work in progress! Work in progress!
所以我開始了，首先：當你回到家，你晚上的計劃是做雞湯和看書，這聽起來不再是壞事，這聽起來很好。雖然我想指出，我的雞湯從字面上看仍然有粥的濃度，它是如此糟糕。進展中的工作! 進展中的工作!
Second thing, when you stop waiting for your prince or your princess to come crashing through the door and save you and solve your life, you start kind of living in the here and now more. And when you live in the here and now, you become more grounded, you become more confident, you become stronger.
第二件事，當你不再等待你的王子或公主撞門而入，拯救你，解決你的生活，你就開始更多地生活在此時此地。而當你活在此時此地時，你會變得更有底氣，你會變得更自信，你會變得更強大。
You also become more self-aware. And when you’re aware, you become more aware of the people around you. And you know what I saw, and what I see? I see people running away all the time, every single day of their lives. And then you see those situations, and you have the foresight to step back for a change rather than get involved. I also learned that life is pretty dramatic as it is, and it throws you plenty of challenges, so you don’t really need to create any more and go out there on a mission to have more drama, you can just leave it.
你也變得更有自我意識。而當你意識到的時候，你會變得更加了解你周圍的人。而你知道我看到了什麼，我看到了什麼？我看到人們一直在逃跑，他們生活的每一天。然後你看到這些情況，你有先見之明，退後一步，改變一下，而不是捲入。我還了解到，生活本身就很有戲劇性，它向你拋出了很多挑戰，所以你其實不需要再創造什麼，也不需要到外面去執行任務，去擁有更多的戲劇性，你可以直接離開它。
I also finally realized, you know, well, those people say to you, they say, you need to be alone, or be by yourself, before you can meet someone else. I used to think those people were boring; now I think they’re right, they’re definitely, probably right. Because I think, sometimes, actually, when we actually confront our aloneness, and we start to deal with our needs and the past and all that horrible pain that, you know, as people, we just collect and carry with us throughout our lives, when we deal with that, and we’re not running from it in endless people or endless dates, when we don’t have anything to prove anymore, when you don’t need a destructive, ridiculous on-off relationship in order to feel alive, in order to feel like you exist, when you can just be, I kind of actually think that’s real love.
我也終於意識到，你知道，好吧，那些人對你說，他們說，你需要獨處，或者自己一個人，然後才能遇到其他人。我曾經認為那些人很無聊；現在我認為他們是對的，他們肯定，可能是對的。因為我認為，有時候，實際上，當我們真正面對我們的孤獨，我們開始處理我們的需求和過去，以及所有那些可怕的痛苦，你知道，作為人，我們只是收集和攜帶我們整個生命，當我們處理這些。而我們不是在無休止的人或無休止的約會中逃避它，當我們不再有任何東西需要證明，當你不需要一個破壞性的、荒謬的、時斷時續的關係來感受生命，來感受你的存在，當你可以僅僅是，我實際上認為那是真正的愛。
Thanks very much！
非常感謝！