手機版
The voyage is one of self-discovery and self-realization:
David and I met because he was performing in a play based on short stories I'd written. He was playing a character I'd invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place...
David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle)...I had become addicted to David...It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose...of thunderous love and roiling excitement...When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore -- despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free)...
I have boundary issues with men...I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything...my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog...everything...I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.
Sound like someone you know, or suddenly know now?
Ms Gilbert's tale is a long, terrible, wonderful, personal story, and she is a master raconteur of small anecdotes and incidents with profound meaning:
"To find the balance you want," [the ancient Balinese medicine man] Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs instead of two. That way you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead."...
She intersperses her self-reflections and anecdotes with perceptive insights into Western culture: "Generally speaking, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure...Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one...Americans don't really know how to do nothing." Her description of Italian men's post-football-game rituals is side-splitting. And she describes Yoga in an astonishing and refreshing way, as grappling with
...the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment...Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul yourself away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek instead a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise.
Faith, she says, is "walking face-first and full speed into the dark". Our destiny, she asserts, is focusing attention on things we can control and accepting and adapting to those we cannot: "I can decide how I spend my time, who I interact with, who I share my body and life and money and energy with...And most of all, I can choose my thoughts... the same way [I] can select the clothes [I'm] going to wear...If you want to control things in your life...work on the mind...Drop everything else but that...Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow. I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore."
She describes her moment of Zen, of communion with God, painstakingly and passionately. Then, as she describes the balance she finds in Bali, she reports with astonishment: "I have so much free time, you could measure it in metric tons". And finally, in retrospect, she says, of her bliss: What keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years -- I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue...
I have become...liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself.
Her journey represents the journey of all of us, to get rid of the gunk that prevents us from being, simply, naturally, ourselves. It is my belief that wild creatures do not need to make this journey. They know who they are, and they live in that "eternal presence" without the need to unlearn and relearn and achieve self-mastery to do so. We have moved out of that world, into our heads, and our "spiritual" journeys are all, to some extent, in search of that way home to that place where we are our authentic selves, where we belong.
It takes both great courage and exceptional self-awareness for an author to reveal herself so honestly that the reader can learn from her mistakes and her struggles. For that reason alone this book is a remarkable accomplishment, a profound and purely unselfish autobiography. Forget the self-help books -- read this wonderful story and become, by association, a better, more focused, more aware, more directed, more self-knowing, more sensuous, spiritual and loving person.
參考譯文：
這次遠行是一種自我發現和自我領悟的朝圣之旅。
我和大衛的相識，是因為他出演一部根據我的短篇小說改編的戲。他在扮演一個我虛構出來的人物，這就足以說明問題。在絕望而不顧一切的愛情中往往是這樣的情形，不是嗎？在絕望的愛情中，我們總是將情侶人物虛構出來，苛求他們變成我們所需要的人，然后，當他們不愿意表演我們最初所創造的角色……
考慮到我是這個星球上最富情感的生命形式（類似于一種金毛獵犬與藤壺屬生物的雜交品種），即便在最好的情況下，大衛突然的情感變故對我來說本來很可能是災難性的……我癡迷于大衛已經到了無力自拔的地步……當你崇拜的對象給予你某種令人飄然陶醉的迷幻藥時，這種毒癮就開始上身了……是那種電閃雷鳴的驚天動地強烈的愛……當這種迷藥停止供給時，你立即感到惡心、瘋狂和枯竭（更不要說對當初鼓勵你上癮但現在卻拒絕花錢再供給你這種好東西的毒販子的怨恨……既便你明知他將迷幻藥藏在某處，該死，因為他過去是免費給你的）……
我在處理與男人們之間的關系上常常把握不好尺度……我往往在心愛的男人面前迷失自己。我是透性膜。如果我愛你，你可以得到我的每一樣東西……我的時間，我的虔誠的愛，我的臀部，我的金錢，我的家人，我的狗……我的一切……我會給你一切甚至更多，直到我精疲力竭，一無所有，最后，唯一讓我恢復精力的方式就是癡迷上另一個人。
聽起來象是你的一個熟人，或者現在突然認識的人吧？
吉爾伯特女士講述了她豐富漫長而又不堪回首的個人往事，而且她還十分健談，是一個善于講述各種含意雋永的逸聞趣事和佳話插曲的行家：
［那位古巴厘藥學世家］曾通過他的翻譯告訴我說：“尋求你想要的平衡，這是你必須做的。你必須讓雙腳牢牢踩在地上，堅定得如同你有四條腿而不是兩條腿。那樣，你才可能活在世上。但你必須停止用頭腦看世界。相反，必須運用自己的心靈去感知世界……
通過對西方文化獨特的認識和見解，她經常進行自我反省并講述自己的一些軼事：“一般說來，美國人不具備放松下來去純粹地享樂的能力” …… 我們美國人是一個追求娛樂的民族，但未必是一個追求享樂的民族……美國人并不真正懂得如何做到“無所事事。” 她對意大利男人足球比賽后的儀式的描繪真是令人捧腹。她描述瑜伽的方式也是令人耳目一新：
……那種令人心碎無法承受的滿足……瑜伽是關于自我駕馭和虔誠靈修的藝術，努力使自己擺脫對過去的無邊的沉思以及對未來的無休止的焦慮，那樣你便能找到一個永恒所在，在這種狀態下，你以鎮靜和平和的心態對自己和周圍的環境加以關注。
關于信仰，她說，就是"從表面開始，義無反顧地通往靈魂深處的一段心路歷程。” 她斷言，我們的命運就是專注于我們能駕馭的事物，同時接受并適應那些我們無法駕馭的事物：“我可以決定怎樣度過自己的時間，我與誰相互影響，我與誰分享我的身體生命金錢及精力……而至關重要的，我可以選擇自己的思想……如同選擇要穿的衣服……如果你想掌控你生活中的事物……專注于內心……放下此外的一切……每當一種逐漸衰微的念頭出現時，我就重復這句誓言。我不會再庇護任何不健康的思想。”
她描述自己悟禪的瞬間，與上帝靈交的瞬間，她是那么刻苦和熱情。然后，當她描述自己在巴厘島所找到的平衡時，她用驚訝的口吻寫到：“我現在有大量空閑時間，多得可以用公噸來計算”。最后，在回顧一年來的生活的福祉時，她寫道：一個明確的事實使我現在不會陷入一個完美神話的美麗光環，而這一事實在過去幾年里也鍛煉了我的筋骨，那就是－－拯救我的不是哪位白馬王子；行施自我拯救的執行者正是我自己……
我曾經在一場鬧劇中扮演除自己之外的任何角色，現在我已經從這場鬧劇中解放出來了。
她的旅程代表著我們所有人從泥濘中爬出來的歷程－－這種泥濘阻礙我們簡單而自然地做我們自己。我相信，野生動物無須這樣的朝圣．它們知道自己是誰，它們無須忘卻和記憶，無須實現自制去尋求＂永恒的存在＂。我們已經離開那個世界進入了自己的頭腦，在某種程度上，我們的 “精神”朝圣之旅都是為了尋求那條通向＂永恒存在＂的歸程，在那里，我們回歸真正的自我，那才是我們的歸宿。
一位作者需要超人的勇氣和特別清醒的自我意識才能去揭露自己，她是非常真誠的，如此，讀者便能從她的過錯和她的抗爭中有所借鑒。僅僅因為這一理由，這就是一本了不起的書，一本深奧的純粹無私的自傳。忘記那些尋求自我幫助的書來讀讀這本精彩的故事吧，并通過思考成為更好，更專注，更清醒，方向更明確，更加自知，更加敏感，更加崇高和忠誠的人。
注：本書英文名為《eat, pray, love》，中文名為《一輩子做女孩》。
