Editor’s Note: This is a comparison between the source-language text and the third-prize version contributed by the winner Ha Wenting, a Grade-2012 student of China Women’s University (CWU). For more information about the “28th Han Suyin Youth Award Translation Contest”, please refer to Notices and News dated Nov. 24, 2016 on this website: CWU Graduate Won Third Prize at 28th Han Suyin Award Contest.

 

 

On Irritability
谈易怒

Translated by Ha Wenting
 

Irritability is the tendency to get upset for reasons that seem – to other people – to be pretty minor. Your partner asks you how work went and the way they ask makes you feel intensely agitated. Your partner is putting knives and forks on the table before dinner and you mention (not for the first time) that the fork should go on the left hand side, not the right. They then immediately let out a huge sigh and sweep the cutlery onto the floor and tell you that you can xxxx-ing do it yourself if you know better. It was the most minor of criticisms and technically quite correct. And now they’ve exploded.
易怒是指在旁人看来鸡毛蒜皮的小事就可引发烦躁情绪的倾向。比如你的伴侣问你工作进行的如何？而问话的方式让你觉得十分恼火。或者你的另一半在饭前摆放刀叉的时候，你提醒道（这已不是第一次了）该把叉子放在左手边而不是右手边，紧接着他们长吁一口气，然后一把把餐具横扫在地上，跟你说“你干得好你TM自己来！”这句提醒在以前是最轻微的批评了，严格的说还很在理，而现在他们已经爆发了。
 
There is so much irritability around and it exacts a huge daily cost on our collective lives, so we deserve to get a lot more curious about it: what is really going on for the irritable person? Why, really, are they getting so agitated? And instead of blaming them for getting het up about “little things”, we should do them the honour of working out why, in fact, these things may not be so minor after all.
易怒现象无处不在，而且它迫使我们在共同生活中付出巨大代价，所以我们需要搞清楚：易怒者到底是怎么回事？他们为何变得如此恼火？与其指责他们容易因小事而发怒，还不如让我们冷静下来究其根本，况且，这毕竟不是小事。

The journey begins by recognising the role of fear in irritability in couples. Behind most outbursts are cack-handed attempts to teach the other person something. There are things we’d like to point out, flaws that we can discern, remarks we feel we really must make, but our awareness of how to proceed is panicked and hasty. We give cack-handed, mean speeches, which bear no faith in the legitimacy (even the nobility) of the act of imparting advice. And when our partners are on the receiving end of these irritable “lessons”, they of course swiftly grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which seem more like mean-minded and senseless assaults on their very natures rather than caring, gentle attempts to address troublesome aspects of joint life.
我们首先要找到恐惧在夫妻的易怒情绪中所扮演的角色。大多数的爆发都源自于一方以蹩脚的方式“教导”对方。有些事情我们想要指出，有些缺点我们察觉到了，有些话让我们觉得必须要说，然而行动的方式却显得恐慌且草率。我们措辞不当，说了伤人的话，以不合理（更谈不上体面）的方式给予建议。这似乎就是对他们的一种卑劣且毫无意义的人身攻击，而非出于关爱，以温柔的方式去解决彼此生活中的问题。而当我们的伴侣接受这些愤怒“教训”的时候，他们当然会迅速地对这些建议产生防御心理，变得易怒。

The prerequisite of calm in a teacher is a degree of indifference as to the success or failure of the lesson. One naturally wants for things to go well, but if an obdurate pupil flunks trigonometry, it is – at base – their problem. Tempers can stay even because individual students do not have very much power over teachers’ lives. Fortunately, as not caring too much turns out to be a critical aspect of successful pedagogy.
一个教师之所以能保持冷静是因为对课程的成败抱有漠视的态度。他们自然希望事情顺利，但是如果一个差生在三角学上挂了科，从根本上说，那是他们自己的问题。教师之所以处之泰然，是因为学生个人在教师的生活中并不会有太大影响。庆幸的是，这种“不太关心”的处事方式，却成了教学成功的关键一面。
 
Yet this isn’t an option open to the fearful, irritable lover. They feel ineluctably led to deliver their “lessons” in a cataclysmic, frenzied manner (the door slams very loudly indeed) not because they are insane or vile (though one could easily draw these conclusions) so much as because they are terrified; terrified of spoiling what remains of their years on the planet in the company of someone who it appears cannot in any way understand a pivotal point about conversation, or cutlery, or the right time to order a taxi.
但这种心态却不是恐惧、易怒伴侣的选项。他们觉得非得要以一种打击性大的、狂怒的方式来给对方“教训”（比如大声摔门），这倒不是因为他们疯了或者心存邪恶（虽然很容易就得出这样的结论），而是因为他们感到害怕，害怕自己生活在这个星球上的有生之年被毁掉，因为陪伴自己的竟是一个谈话都找不到重点，或是连餐具都摆放不当，抑或是连预约出租车都掌握不好时间的人。
 
One knows intuitively, when teaching a child, that only the utmost care and patience will ever work: one must never shout, one has to use extraordinary tact, one has to make ten compliments for every one negative remark and one must leave oneself plenty of time…
人们都知道，教导一个小孩子的时候要保持最大限度的关爱与耐心：我们绝对不能吼，要运用非凡的智慧，每说出一句负面的话要用十句赞美去弥补，而且还必须给自己留有足够的时间去冷静……
 
All this wisdom we reliably forget in love’s classroom, sadly because increasing the level of threat seldom hastens development. We do not grow more reasonable, more accepting of responsibility and more accurate about our weaknesses when our pride has been wounded, our integrity is threatened and our self-esteem has been violated.
所有这些智慧在爱的课堂里都被彻底遗忘。不幸的是，不断升级的威胁很少会有助于事情的解决。当我们的骄傲受到伤害，正直受到威胁，自尊遭到践踏，我们就会变得更加不可理喻，不愿意承担责任，不能看到自己的缺点。
 
The complaint against the irritable person is that they are getting worked up over “nothing”. But symbols offer a way of seeing how a detail can stand for something much bigger and more serious. The groceries placed on the wrong table are not upsetting at all in themselves. But symbolically they mean your partner doesn’t care about domestic order; they muddle things up; they are messy. Or the question about one’s day is experienced as a symbol of interrogation, a lack of privacy and a humiliation (because one’s days rarely go well enough).
人们抱怨易怒者，说他们爱发“无名火”。但是种种迹象让我们看到，一件小事可能代表着更大更严重的问题。食品放错桌子本身并不会引人发怒，但这意味着你的伴侣不在意家里的秩序，他们喜欢随意丢放，混乱不堪。“你今天过得怎么样”这一问题被体验成了一种讯问，一种隐私的缺失，或是一种羞辱（因为人们不是每天都过得十分顺利）。
 
The solution is, ideally, to concentrate on what the bigger issue is. Entire philosophies of life stir and collide beneath the surface of apparently petty squabbles. Irritations are the outward indications of stifled debates between competing conceptions of existence. It’s to the bigger themes we need to try to get.
理想的解决办法是要将注意力放到关键的问题上。表面上琐碎的家庭口角下藏匿着不同生活理念的激荡和碰撞。而发怒是不同生活理念被压抑的、抗争的外在表现。我们需要去讨论的正是这些大问题。
 
In the course of discussions, one might even come face-to-face with that perennially surprising truth about relationships: that the other person is not an extension of oneself that has, mysteriously, gone off message. They are that most surprising of things, a different person, with a psyche all of their own, filled with a perplexing number of subtle, eccentric and unforeseen reasons for thinking as they do.
在交流过程中，人们甚至会直接面对关于夫妻关系的那个始终惊人的真相：你的另一半不是你的延伸，他们的思维已经出乎意料地改变了。他们是如此不可思议的一个不同的人，拥有自己的心智，有各种复杂、微妙、古怪且不可预见的思维方式，能让他们按所想去做。
 
The decoding may take time, perhaps half an hour or more of concentrated exploration for something that had until then seemed as if it would more rightfully deserve an instant.
解读他们需要时间，也许是半小时，也许更久，去集中探索此前看来似乎只需要瞬间就能明白的事物。

We pay a heavy price for this neglect; every conflict that ends in sour stalemate is a blocked capillary within the heart of love. Emotions will find other ways to flow for now, but with the accumulation of unresolved disputes, pathways will fur and possibilities for trust and generosity narrow.
我们为这种忽视付出了巨大代价，每一次以恼人的冷战收场的冲突最后都像是堵塞住了一条爱的心房中的毛细血管。此时，情绪就会寻找其他途径来宣泄，但随着未解决的争端的积累，各条通道都会生垢，信任及宽容的可能性会变得渺茫。

A last point. It may just be sleep or food: when a baby is irritable, we rarely feel the need to preach about self-control and a proper sense of proportion. It’s not simply that we fear the infant’s intellect might not quite be up to it, but because we have a much better explanation of what is going on. We know that they’re acting this way – and getting bothered by any little thing – because they are tired, hungry, too hot or having some challenging digestive episode.
最后一点原因，也许是困了或饿了：当一个孩子急躁的时候，我们不会想要去跟他们说教，要自控，要有分寸。不是因为我们担心婴儿的智商还不够，而是因为我们明白发生了什么。我们知道他们之所以如此表现，之所以让小事惹恼，是因为他们累了、饿了、太热或者消化不良。
 
The fact is, though, that the same physiological causes get to us all our lives. When we are tired, we get upset more easily; when we feel very hungry, it takes less to bother us. But it is immensely difficult to transfer the lesson in generosity (and accuracy) that we gain around to children and apply it to someone with a degree in business administration or a pilot’s license, or to whom we have been married for three-and-a-half years.
然而事实说明，同样的生理特征会影响我们一生。当我们累的时候，我们很容易沮丧；当我们饥饿的时候，丁点儿小事就会让我们心烦。但是我们很难把对待孩子的经验，宽容（一丝不差地）转用于一个取得工商管理学位或者飞行员驾照的人，抑或是结婚三年半的人。
 
We should try to see irritability for what it actually is: a confused, inarticulate, often shameful attempt to get us to understand how much someone is suffering and how urgently they need our help. We should – when we can manage it – attempt to help them out.
我们应该尽量看到易怒情绪的本来面目：它是一种迷茫困惑、言不由衷、往往又不够得体的尝试，想让我们明白易怒者正在经受着何等的痛苦，又是多么迫切地需要我们的帮助。如果力所能及，我们应尽力帮助他们走出困境。