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演讲者：Casey Gerald 凯西·杰拉德
语言：英语
简介：作家凯西·杰拉德说，我们被教导生活的方式必须改变。 很多时候，我们隐藏自己的部分以适应环境，赢得赞美，被接受。 但是以什么为代价呢？ 在这个鼓舞人心的演讲中，杰拉尔德分享了他为在美国社会的高层取得成功而做出的个人牺牲，并说明为什么我们应该有勇气生活在我们自己原始奇怪的魔法中。
📃 中英对照演讲稿
[This talk contains mature content] My mother called this summer to stage an intervention. She'd come across a few snippets of my memoir, which wasn't even out yet, and she was concerned. It wasn't the sex.
[此演讲含少儿不宜内容]今年夏天，我母亲打电话来想对我进行干预，她偶然看到了我回忆录中的几段话这回忆录当时还没出版，她很担忧，让她担心的跟不是性取向。
It was the language that disturbed her.
而是其中的语言。
For example: "I have been so many things along my curious journey: a poor boy, a nigger, a Yale man, a Harvard man, a faggot, a Christian, a crack baby, alleged, the spawn of Satan, the Second Coming, Casey." That's just page six.
例如：“在我充满好奇的旅途中，我曾扮演过许多角色，一个穷小子，一个黑鬼，一个耶鲁学生，一个哈佛学生，一个基佬，一个基督徒，一个毒品婴儿，一位犯罪嫌疑人，撒旦之子，耶稣再临，凯西，”这仅仅是第六页。
So you may understand my mother's worry. But she wanted only to make one small change. So she called, and she began, "Hey, you are a man. You're not a faggot, you're not a punk, and let me tell you the difference.
所以你大概能理解我母亲的担忧。但是她仅仅是想做一点小小的改变。所以她打电话过来，说道，“嘿，你是一个男人。你不是个基佬，不是个小混混，让我来告诉你其中的区别。
You are prominent. You are intelligent. You dress well. You know how to speak. People like you. You don't walk around doing your hand like a punk. You're not a vagabond on the street. You are an upstanding person who just happens to be gay. Don't put yourself over there when you are over here."
你很杰出，充满智慧。你衣冠得体，谈吐不凡。大家都喜欢你。你不像小混混一样甩手在路上走来走去。你不是街上的流浪汉。你是个正直的人，只是碰巧是同性恋。当你处在世界的这一边时，就不要把自己放在另一边。”
She thought she'd done me a favor, and in away, she had. Her call clarified what I am trying to do with my life and in my work as a writer, which is to send one simple message: the way we're taught to live has got to change. I learned this the hard way.
她以为她帮了我，在某种程度上，她确实是帮了我。她的这通电话理清了我要在自己的生活中及作为一名作家在工作中去试着去做的事，那就是传递一个简单的信息：我们所被教导的生活方式得改变了。我通过一个惨痛的教训学到了这一点。
I was born not on the wrong side of the tracks, but on the wrong side of a whole river, the Trinity, down in Oak Cliff, Texas. I was raised there in part by my grandmother who worked as a domestic, and by my sister, who adopted me a few years after our mother, who struggled with mental illness, disappeared.
我并非生于一贫二白的轨道边，而是一贫二白的河岸边，位于德克萨斯州橡树崖地区的特里尼蒂河。在那里我曾被我的奶奶抚养过她是一个仆人，也被我姐姐抚养过，她在曾与精神疾病斗争的母亲失踪几年后收养了我。
And it was that disappearance, that began when I was 13 and lasted for five years, that shaped the person I became, the person I later had to un become. Before she left, my mother had been my human hiding place. She was the only other person who seemed as strange as me, beautifully strange, some mix of Blanche DuBois from "A Streetcar Named Desire" and a 1980s Whitney Houston.
正是在我13岁时开始且持续了5年的母亲失踪的经历塑造了我之后成为的人，以及后来我不得不改正而成为的人。在我母亲失踪之前，她是我的保护伞。她是唯独一个有别于其他人，似乎和我一样奇怪的人，美丽而奇怪，有点像《欲望号街车》里的布兰奇·杜包尔斯，及20世纪80年代的惠特妮·休斯顿。
I'm not saying she was perfect, just that I sure benefited from her imperfections. And maybe that's what magic is, after all: a useful mistake. So when she began to disappear for days at a time, I turned to some magic of my own. It struck me, as from above, that I could conjure up my mother just by walking perfectly from my elementary school at the top of a steep hill all the way down to my grandmother's house, placing one foot, and one foot only, in each sidewalk square.
我并不是说她是完美的，而是说我肯定从她的不完美中有所收益。毕竟，那有可能即是魔法：一个有用的错误。所以当她每次消失好几天时，我找到了我自己的某种魔法。像我母亲的魔法那样，它让我震惊，我可以召唤出我的妈妈，仅通过完成从位于陡峭山坡的小学到位于山谷的奶奶家的完美步行。在完美步行中，我会放一只脚，仅仅只放一只脚在每一块人行道的方块中。
I couldn't let any part of any foot touch the line between the square, I couldn't skip a square, all the way to the last square at the last blade of grass that separated our lawn from our driveway. And I bullshit you not, it worked -- just once though.
我不能让脚的任何一部分踩到方块边缘上，我不能越过一个方块，一直到挨着一大片草地的最后一个方块，这片草地分开了我们家门前口的草坪和家门前的公路。我不是在跟你胡扯，我的魔法起效了——不过仅有一次。
But if my perfect walk could not bring my mother back, I found that this approach had other uses. I found that everyone else in charge around me loved nothing more than perfection, obedience, submission. Or at least if I submitted, they wouldn't bother me too much.
但如果说我的完美步行没有带回我的母亲，我发现这个方法还有其他用处。我发现身边管制我的人对于完美、顺从、屈服的喜爱超过其他一切。或者说，如果我向他们屈服，他们就不会怎么烦扰我。
So I took a bargain that I'd later see in a prison, a Stasi prison in Berlin, on a sign that read, "He who adapts can live tolerably." It was a bargain that helped ensure I had a place to stay and food to eat; a bargain that won me praise of teachers and kin, strangers;
所以我给自己定了个协议，之后我在一个监狱，柏林的史塔西监狱，看到这样的协议，一个标示牌上写着，“适者生存。”正是这个协议确保我有地方可住，有食物可吃；这个协议让我赢得了老师、亲人、陌生人的赞赏；
A bargain that paid off big time, it seemed, when one day at 17, a man from Yale showed up at my high school to recruit me for Yale's football team. It felt as out of the blue to me then as it may to you now.
这个协议似乎让我受益无限，在我17岁的时候，一个耶鲁大学的男人来到我的高中招我进耶鲁大学的橄榄球队。当时这个消息让我感到意外，正如你们现在感到意外一样。
The Yale man said -- everybody said -- that this was the best thing that could ever happen to me, the best thing that could happen to the who lecommunity. "Take this ticket, boy," they told me. I was not so sure. Yale seemed another world entire: a cold, foreign, hostile place. On the first day of my recruiting visit, I texted my sister an excuse for not going. "These people are so weird." She replied, "You'll fit right in."
这个男人说道，每个人都说，这是发生在我身上最幸运的一件事，对我所在的社区而言发生的最好的一件事。他们告诉我，“收下这张通往耶鲁的票。”我不太确定。耶鲁似乎完全是另一个世界：一个寒冷、陌生、充满敌意的地方。在我访问耶鲁的第一天，我给我姐姐发短信，解释一个不去耶鲁的理由，我说道，“这些人太古怪了。”她回复道，“那不正适合你吗？”
I took the ticket and worked damn hard to fit right in. When my freshman advisor warned me not to wear my fitted hats on campus ... "You're at Yale now. You don't have to do that anymore," she said. I figured, this was just one of the small prices that must be paid to make it.
我收下了那张票，费心费力地去马上适应。当我大一的指导老师警告我别在学校里戴我的棒球帽，她说，“你现在在耶鲁，你没必要戴那种帽子了。”我想，这是要适应耶鲁所必须付出的小带价之一。
I paid them all, or tried, and sure enough they seemed to pay me back: made me a leader on the varsity football team; got me into a not-so-secret society and a job on Wall Street, and later in Washington. Things were going so well that I figured naturally I should be President of the United States.
我付出了或者尝试了所有的代价，当然，他们也给了我一定回报：让我成为橄榄球代表队的领导者，加入算不上秘密的社团，得到一份在华尔街的工作，以及后来在华盛顿的工作。这一切都进展得如此顺利，以至于我自然而然认为我怕是要成为美国总统。
But since I was only 24 and since even presidents have to start somewhere, I settled instead on a run for Congress. Now, this was in the afterglow of that great 2008 election: the election during which a serious, moderate senator stressed, "The message you've got to send more than any other message is that Barack Obama is just like us."
但因为我才24岁，因为甚至总统也要从某一处开始，于是我从竞选国会开始。那时，国会选举还在伟大的2008总统选举后的余晖中，在国会选举中，一位严肃谦逊的参议员说道，“你得向外所传播一条比其他任何都要传播得多的信息，那就是奥巴马就像咱们。”
They sent that message so well that their campaign became the gold standard of modern politics, if not modern life, which also seems to demand that we each do whatever it takes to be able to say at the end of our days with peace and satisfaction, "I was just like everybody else." And this would be my message, too.
他们传递这条信息如此到位，以至于他们的竞选成为了现代政治的黄金标准，如果不是现代生活的黄金标准的话，现代政治也要求我们每一个人不惜一切代价，这样在我们最后的日子里可以带着宁静与满意对自己说，“我只是像其他任何人一样。”而我也会这么说。
So one night, I made one final call to my prospective campaign manager. We'd do the things it'd take to win, but first he had one question: "Is there anything I need to know?" I held the phone and finally said, "Well, you should probably know I'm gay."
于是在一个晚上，我最后打电话给我的未来的竞选经理。我们这么做，我们就可以赢，但他有一个问题；“还有其他需要我知道的事情吗？”我拿着手机，最后说道，“嗯，你大概应该知道我是同性恋。”
Silence.
一阵沉默
"Hmm. I see," he nearly whispered, as if he'd found a shiny penny or a dead baby bird.
“嗯，我明白了。”他几乎是在私语，像他捡到一颗闪亮的1美分或者一只死去的幼鸟。
"I'm glad you told me," he continued. "You definitely didn't make my job any easier. I mean, you are in Texas. But it's not impossible, not impossible. But Casey, let me ask you something: How are you going to feel when somebody, say, at a rally, calls you a faggot? And let's be real, OK? You do understand that somebody might want to physically harm you. I just want to know: Are you really ready for this?"
“我很高兴你告诉了我，”他继续说道，“你绝对没把我的工作变得更简单，我的意思是，你在德克萨斯州。但是这绝非不可能，绝非不可能。但是凯西，我想问你一些事情：当有人在集会上叫你基佬时，你是什么感觉？让我们面对现实，好吗？你要知道会有人想给你造成身体伤害。我只是想让你明白：你真的准备好这一切了吗？”
I wasn't. And I could not understand --could hardly breathe or think, or say a word. But to be clear: the boy that I was at that time would have leapt at the chance to be harmed, to sacrificee verything, even life, for a cause. There was something shocking, though -- not that there should have been, but there was -- in the notion that he might be harmed for nothing more than being himself, which he had not even tried to do in the first place.
我没有。并且我无法理解，几乎无法呼吸、思考、或者说一个字。需要说明的是：当时的我愿意欣然接受被伤害的后果，愿意牺牲一切，甚至是生命，去完成一项伟大事业。但是这一过程中有一点让人感到震惊，让人震惊的不是事物佯装而有的样子，而是想到一个男孩仅因为做自己而可能会受到伤害，而这个男孩并无本意。
All that he -- all that I -- had tried to do and be was what I thought was asked of me. I was prominent for a 24-year-old: in telligent,I spoke well, dressed decent; I was an upstanding citizen. But the bargain I had accepted could not save me after all, nor can it save you.
他所--我所--尝试做的事，尝试成为的人都是我认为别人所要求的。对于一个24岁的人来说，我杰出有望：聪明，谈吐得体，衣着有型；我是一位正直的公民。但是我曾接受的协议最后并不能让我免于伤害，这个协议也不能让你们免于伤害。
You may have already learned this lesson, or you will, regardless of your sexuality. The queer receives a concentrated dose, no doubt, but repression is a bitter pill that's offered to us all. We're taught to hide so many parts of who we are and what we've been through: our love, our pain, for some, our faith.
你可能已经吸取了这个教训，或者说你将来会，无论你的性取向是什么。毫无疑问，酷儿群体接受了大量这样的协议，但是对自己的压抑是给予我们每个人的苦涩药片。我们被教导隐藏大部分的自我以及经历：我们的爱，我们的痛苦，以及对于有些人我们的信念。
So while coming out to the world can be hard, coming in to all the raw, strange magic of ourselves can be much harder. As Miles Davis said, "It takes a long time to sound like yourself." That surely was the case for me.
所以尽管走出自己的隐藏，向世界公开自己的身份很困难，但走入并包容自己的原始、奇异魔法则更艰难。米勒·大卫曾说，“听起来像自己要花很长时间。”我就是这样的。
I had my private revelation that night at24, but mostly went on with my life. I went on to Harvard Business School, started a successful nonprofit, wound up on the cover of a magazine, on the stage at TED.
在我24岁的那个晚上我有了自己的私人启示，这一启示大部分时间继续存在于我的生活中。我成为了哈佛商学院的一个学生，开创了一个成功的非营利组织，异常激动地上了杂志封面，登上了TED的讲台。
I had achieved, by my late 20s, about everything a kid is supposed to achieve. But I was real cracked up: not exactly having a nervous breakdown, but not too far off, and awful sad either way. I had never thought of being a writer, didn't even read, in earnest, until I was nearly 23. But the book business is about the only industry that will pay you to investigate your own problems, so --
在我20多岁晚些时候，我已经达成了一个孩子在那时应当实现的一切。但是我倍感焦虑：虽不完全是精神崩溃，但也离那不远了，同时我也极度悲伤。我从未想过成为一个作家，直到我快23时，都从未正经地阅读一本书。但是书本行业是唯独一个付给你钱让你深入调查自己问题的行业，所以--
So I decided to give it a try, to trace those cracks with words.
所以我决定试一试，用文字理清那些焦虑。
Now, what came out on the page was about as strange as I felt at that time, which alarmed some people at first. A respected writer called to stage his own intervention after reading a few early chapters, and he began, much like my mother, "Hey, listen. You've been hired tow rite an autobiography.
最后写出的书和我当时感觉的一样奇怪，这本书最开始让有些人感到惊恐。一个颇有名誉的作家在阅读了几篇早期的章节后，打电话给我做出干涉，像我母亲那样，他说道，“嘿，听着，你被雇佣写一部自传。
It's a straightforward exercise. It's got a beginning, middle and end, and is grounded in the facts of your life. And by the way, there's a great tradition of autobiography in this country, led by people on the margins of society who write to assert their existence. Go buy some of those books and learn from them. You're going in the wrong direction."
这是个简单明了的事情，这本书得有开头，发展，和结尾，并且基于你人生中的事实。并且，这个国家有着自传的伟大传统，这一传统由处于社会边缘，以写作维护自己存在的人引领。出去买些这样的书，从里面学习吧。你写的方向是错误的。”
But I no longer believed what we are taught-- that the right direction is the safe direction. I no longer believed what we are taught -- that queer lives or black lives or poor lives are marginal lives. I believed what Kendrick Lamar says on "Section.80.": "I'm not on the outside looking in. I'm not on the inside looking out. I'm in the dead fucking center looking around."
但我不再相信我们所被教导的——“正确方向”是安全的。我不再相信我们被教导的——酷儿人群的生命、黑人生命、或者穷人的生命是微不足道的。我相信肯德里克·拉马尔在《Section.80.》里所唱的那样：“我没在里面看着里面，我没在外面看着外面，我在他妈该死的中央到处看。”
That was the place from which I hoped to work, headed in the only direction worth going, the direction of myself, trying to help us all refuse the awful bargains we've been taught to take. We're taught to turn ourselves and our work into little nuggets that are easily digestible;
那就是我渴望工作的方向，仅朝着一个值得走的方向，也就是我自己的方向，试图帮助我们拒绝那些我们被教导承担的可怕协议。我们被教导把自己和自己的工作变成易于消化的小鸡块；
Taught to mutilate ourselves so that we make sense to others, to be a stranger to ourselves so the right people might befriend us and the right schools might accept us, and the right jobs might hire us, and the right parties might invite us, and, someday, the right God might invite us to the right heaven and close his pearly gates behind us, so we can bow down to Him forever and ever. These are the rewards, they say, for our obedience: to be a well-liked holy nugget, to be dead.
残害改变自己，这样他人可以认识我们，和自己做陌生人，这样正确的人可能会和我们做朋友，正确的学校可能会接受我们，正确的工作可能会招纳我们，正确的派对可能会邀请我们，并且，某一天，正确的神可能就会邀请我们去正确的天堂，打开我们后面通往天堂的珍珠大门，这样我们就可以永永远远向他鞠躬。他们说，这些都是你顺从而得到的奖励：做一个人人喜爱的好好先生，然后死去。
And I say in return, "No, thank you." To the world and to my mother. Well, to tell you the truth, all I said was, "OK, Mom, I'll talk to you later."
于是我对那位作者、对这个世界、对我的母亲说，“不用了，谢谢你。”好吧，说实话，我给我妈妈说的是，“好的，妈妈，我等会儿给你讲。”
But in my mind, I said, "No, thankyou." I cannot accept her bargain either. Nor should you. It would be easy for many of us in rooms like this to see ourselves as safe, to keep ourselves over here. We speak well, we dress decent, we're intelligent, people like us, or act like they do.
但在我心里，我说道，“不用了，谢谢。”我不能接受她给出的协议，同样你们也不该。在类似于这样的房间里，如果我们认为自己是安全的，把自己留在这个区域里，一切都会简单很多。我们谈吐得体，穿着得当，我们都充满智慧，他人认可我们至少他们装作那样。
But instead, I say that we should remember Lot's wife. Jesus of Nazareth said it first to his disciples: "Remember Lot's wife." Lot, in case you haven't read the Bible recently, was a man who set his family down in Sodom, in the midst of a wicked society that God decided he had to destroy.
但是，我认为我们应当记住罗德之妻。拿撒勒人耶稣首先对他的信徒说：“记住罗德之妻。”若你们最近没有读《圣经》，罗德和他的家人在所多玛安家，所多玛是一个罪恶之城，上帝决定要毁灭它。
But God, being cruel, yet still a sap in part, rushed two angels out to Sodom to warn Lot to gather up his folks and get out of Dodge. Lot heard the angel's warning, but delayed. They didn't have all day to wait, so they grabbed Lot's hands and his two daughters' hands, and his wife's hands, and hurried them out of Sodom.
但是上帝尽管残忍，还是免不了犯傻的时候，派出两个天使去往所多玛，警告罗德召集他的家人朋友，避而远之。罗德听闻了天使的警告，但是却遭耽搁。天使没有一整天在罪恶之城等待，所以他们抓着罗德的手、他两个女儿的手、还有他妻子的手，赶快逃离所多玛。
And the angels shout, "Escape to the mountain. Whatever you do, don't look back," just as God start sraining down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. I can't figure out how Gomorrah got dragged into this. But Lot and his folks are running, fleeing all that destruction, kicking up dust while the Lord rains down death, and then, for some reason, Lot's wife looks back. God turns her into a pillar of salt. "Remember Lot's wife," Jesus says.
同时天使们大声说道，“跑到山那边去。无论你做什么，千万不要回头看，”这个时候，上帝开始降天火于所多玛与蛾摩拉。我不懂蛾摩拉是怎么被牵扯到里面去的。但是罗德和他的家人朋友在逃跑，避开所有的毁灭，激起尘土，这时上帝开始降尘土，然后，出于某个原因，罗德的妻子回头看了一眼。上帝把她变成了盐柱。耶稣说，“记住罗德之妻。”
But I've got a question: Why does she lookback? Does she look back because she didn't want to miss the mayhem, wanted one last glimpse of a city on fire? Does she look back because she wanted to be sure that her people were far enough from danger to breathe a little easy?
但我有个问题：为什么她要回头望？她回头看是因为她不想错过这场大混乱，想要最后看一眼城市起火的样子吗？她回头看是因为她想确定她的家人朋友是否已经离危险足够远，而舒一口气？
I'm so nosy and selfish sometimes, those likely would have been my reasons if I'd been in her shoes. But what if something else was going on with this woman, Lot's wife? What if she could not bear the thought of leaving those people all alone to burn alive, even for righteousness's sake? Isn't that possible?
有时我会很好管闲事、自私，上面的推测极有可能是我回头看的理由如果我遇到她的情况的话。但如果是有其他别的事情缠着这个女人，罗德的妻子？万一她不忍心离开城市里的人，让他们独自被活生生烧死，即便这一切都是为了正义？这难道不能可能吗?
If itis, then this backward glance of a disobedient woman may not be a cautionary tale after all. It may be the bravest act in all the Bible, even braver than the act that holds the whole Book together, the crucifixion. We are told that up on Calvary, on an old rugged cross, Jesus gave his life to save everybody: billions and billions of strangers for all time to come. It's a nice thing to do. It made him famous, that's for sure.
如果有可能，那么这个不服从上帝指令的女人往后一瞥的故事最后可能不是一个警示性故事。而有可能是《圣经》里最英勇的行为，可能比凝聚《圣经》这本书的行为，耶稣被钉在十字架上受刑，更为英勇。我们被告之在骷髅地，在破旧生锈的十字架上，耶稣放弃了他的生命拯救了每一个人：一共救了数百万的陌生人。这是件好事，毫无疑问，这也让他出名了。
But Lot's wife was killed, turned into a pillar of salt, all because she could not turn her back on her friends, the wicked men of Sodom, and nobody even wrote the woman's name down.
但是罗德之妻死了，变成了一根盐柱，仅因为她无法背叛自己的朋友，也就是在所多玛的邪恶人类，并甚至且没有一个人记下这个女人的名字。
Oh, to have the courage of Lot's wife. That's the kind of courage we need today. The courage to put ourselves over there. The courage that says that either all of us have to be faggots, or none of us can be faggots, for any of us to be free. The courage to stand with other vagabonds in the street, with all the wretched of the earth, to form an army of the least of these, with the faith that from the naked crust of all we are, we can build a better world.
我们要有罗德之妻的勇气。今天我们需要这种勇气，这种把我们置身于安全之外的勇气，这种勇气赋予我们每一个人自由，要么我们所有人得是基佬，要么我们都不能是基佬。这种勇气让我们同街上其他的流浪者并肩，同地球上一切的不幸站在一起，用被忽视的少数人群组成一支军队，带着做真实自己的信念，我们能建设一个更美好的世界。
Thank you. (Applause)
谢谢大家。（掌声）
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