One of our great fears, which haunts us when we go out into the world and socialize with others is that we may in our hearts be really rather boring.

在社交活动时，一种恐惧常伴着我们，我们可能会打心底里觉得无聊。

But the good news and a fundamental truth too, is that no one is ever truly boring.

但是好消息同时也是基本真理是：没有人是真正无趣的。

They're only in danger of coming across as such when they either fail to understand their deeper selves or don't dare or know how to communicate them to others.

只有濒临无聊的人，他们不是无法了解自我，就是不敢或不知道怎么与他人交流。

That there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing is one of the great lessons of art.

从来没有一件事或人是生来无聊的，这是艺术教给我们重要的一课。

Many of the most satisfying artworks don't feature exulted or rare elements.

许多让人满意的艺术作品不具备欢悦或是罕见的元素。

They are about the ordinary, looked at in a special way with unusual sincerity and openness to unvarnished experience.

它们是普通的内容，却需要用不同的视角来看。特别之处在于，都诚挚开放对待未粉饰的经验。

Take for example some grasses painted by the Danish artist Christian Kobke in the suburb of Copenhagen in 1833.

举一个丹麦艺术家Christian Kobke所描绘的这幅1833年哥本哈根郊区的野草的例子。

Outwardly the scene is utterly unremarkable and could initially appear to be deeply unpromising material for a painting.

表面来看，这个场景再寻常不过了，甚至一开始看就不像是名画的材料。

And yet, like any great artist, Kobke has known how to interrogate his own perceptions in a fresh unclouded, underivative manner and translated them accurately into his medium, weaving a small masterpiece out of the thread of everyday life.

然而，就像任何伟大的艺术家，Kobke 知道如何询问自己，没有被世俗遮掩的感知，然后准确通过周围的媒介表现出来，编织出了这幅日常的杰作。

And just as there's no such thing as a boring riverbank, tree or dandelion, so too they can be no such thing as an inherently boring person.

就像是不会有无聊的河岸，树或是蒲公英，从来没有一个天生无聊的人。

The human-animal witnessed in its essence with honesty and without artifice is always interesting.

人肉目睹了它的本质，从根本上来看总是有趣的。

When we call a person boring, we're just pointing to someone who's not had the courage or concentration to tell us what it's like to be them.

当我们说一个人无聊时，我们只是指出一个人没有勇气，或是没有耐心的表现自我的灵魂。

By contrast, we invariably prove compelling how and what we truly desire, envy, regret mourn and dream.

相比之下，我们会一贯地表达出想法，当我们成功地说什么是我们是真正渴望的，羡慕的，遗憾的，哀悼的，梦想的东西的时候。

Anyone who faithfully recuperates the real data on what it's like to exist, is guaranteed to have material with which to captivate others.

当任何人真诚地重写对如何生活的问题，他必定有独特的地方。

The interesting person isn't someone to whom obviously and outwardly interesting things have happened:

有趣的人并不一定让你明显感到有趣的事情会发生。

Someone who's traveled the world, met important dignitaries or been present at large geopolitical events.

不是一个环游了世界,会见显贵的人,或者经历过大型地缘政治事件的人。

Nor is it someone who speaks in learned terms about the weighty themes of culture, history or science.

也不是一个用文化，历史，科学的学术术语说话的人。

There's someone who's grown into an attentive, self-aware listener and a reliable, honest correspondent of the tremors of their own mind and heart and who can thereby give us faithful accounts, the pathos, drama and strangeness of being alive.

而是一个成长为细心的，有自我意识的听者和一个忠于自己想法和内心的可靠，诚实的叙事者能给予我们活着的悲哀感，戏剧感和陌生感。

What then are some of the elements that get in the way of us being as interesting as we in fact are?

那么到底是什么元素阻碍我们变得有趣？或是我们其实是有趣的？

Firstly and most crucially, we bore when we lose faith that it really could be our feelings that would stand the best chance of interesting others.

首先，最关键的是，当我们失去信心时，我们会变得无聊，这可能真的是我们的感受。无法用最好的方式使别人产生兴趣。

Out of modesty and habit , we push some of our most interesting perceptions to one side, in order to follow respectable but dead conventions of what might impress.

出于谦虚和习惯，我们把一些最有趣的看法推到一边，却接受刻板的约定习俗从而求得别人的好印象。

When we tell anecdotes who was there, when we went, rather than maintaining our nerve to report on the layer of feelings beneath the facts.

当我们讲轶事时，我们强调外在的细节：谁在那里，我们什么时候去，温度是多少而不是将我们的思维来报道事实之下的感情层。

The moment of guilt, the sudden sexual attraction, the humiliating sulk, the carreer crisis, the strange euforia at 3 a. m.

感到羞愧的时刻，突然的性冲动，不堪的沮丧，职业危机，在凌晨3点奇怪的兴奋。

Our neglect of our native feelings isn't just an oversight, it can be a deliberate strategy to keep our minds away from realizations that threaten our ideas of dignity and normality.

我们忽视自我原始的感觉不只是无心的，这可能是一个故意的策略来让我们的思想远离现实，让我们的尊严和观念收到威胁。

We babble inconsequentially to the world because we lack the nerve to look more closely and unflinchingly within.

我们不顾一切唠叨世事，因为我们缺乏神经，来更贴近地看清自己的能力。

It feels significant that most five-year-olds are far less boring than most 45-year-olds.

重要的是，大多五岁的孩子都远远比大多数45岁的人有趣。

What makes these children gripping is not so much that they have more interesting feelings than anyone else, far from it, but that they are especially uncensored correspondents of these feelings.

让这些孩子有趣的并不是说他们比别人有更多有趣的想法，相反的是，他们都特别没有注重过自己的情绪。

Their inexperience of the world means they are still instinctively loyal to themselves and so they will candidly tell us what they really think about Granny and their little brother, what their plans for reforming the planet are and what they believe everyone should do with their boogies.

他们对世界的经验不足意味着他们仍然本能地忠于自己，所以他们会坦率地告诉我们他们的真实想法关于奶奶和他们的小弟弟的事，他们改造星球的计划是什么以及他们认为每个人都应该怎样跳舞。

We are rendered boring not by nature so much as by a fateful will that begins its malevolent reign over us in adolescence to appear normal.

我们的无聊不是天生的，而是一种意愿，在青春期开始时，我们期望自己显得正常。

Yet, even when we're honest about our feelings we may still prove boring and so we get stuck at the level of insisting on an emotion rather than explaining it.

然而，即使我们对自己的感受是诚实的，我们可能仍然会觉得无聊，因为我们不了解这些情绪，所以我们被困在强调自己情感的层面而不是解释它。

We'll assert with ever greater emphasis that a situation was extremely exciting, or awful, or beautiful, but not be able to provide those around us with any of the sort of related details and examples that would help them viscerally understand why.

我们将更加强调一个情况是非常极度兴奋的，或可怕的，或美丽的，但不能为我们身边的人，提供任何相关的细节和例子，从而来帮助他们理解为什么。

We can end up boring, not so much because we don't want to share our lives, as because we don't yet know them well enough to do so.

我们可以结束无聊，不是因为我们不想分享我们的生活，而是因为我们还不了解他们的情况。

Fortunately, the gift of being interesting is neither exclusive nor reliant on exceptional talent.

幸运的是，”变得有趣“的天赋既不排斥也不依赖于特殊的人才。

It requires only direction, honesty and focus.

它只是需要方向，诚实和专注。

The person we call interesting is in essence someone alive to what we all deeply want from social intercourse, which is an uncensored glimpse of what the brief waking dream called life looks like through the eyes of another person.

我们所说的有趣的人实质上是一个很想从社交中得到什么的人，我们只是不经意的一瞥，想从对方的眼中看透他们对于生活和梦想的想法。所有这些感觉中最令人迷惑的情绪，是内心的困惑，古怪强烈的情绪，告诉我们并不完全孤单。

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