There is a particularly poignant way to be a social disaster: through over-friendliness, a pattern of behaviour driven by the very best of motives which ends up feeling as irritating as outright rudeness.
有一種特別的方法可以把一個(gè)人變成社交悲劇。那就是過(guò)分友好,這種行為源自于最善良的動(dòng)機(jī),卻最終讓人感覺(jué)粗暴無(wú)禮令人惱火。
We meet the over-friendly at the office, laughing at the jokes of the senior management; behind the desk at the hotel, wishing Sir or Madam a highly enjoyable stay and across the table on a first date, lavishly endorsing their would-be partner's every opinion about recent books and films.
我們會(huì)在工作中遇到過(guò)分友好的人,他們應(yīng)和著上司說(shuō)話,在酒店也能遇到,他們站在服務(wù)后臺(tái)后面祝愿著每一個(gè)客人能住的開(kāi)心,在飯店也能看到,有些人第一次約會(huì)就無(wú)條件的奉承潛在對(duì)象的看法。
The over-friendly are guilty of three large errors:
過(guò)分友好的人犯了三個(gè)大的錯(cuò)誤:
Firstly, they believe they must agree on everything. If the other says the world is going to the dogs, they immediately nod in consent. If a second later, there is a prediction of a utopian technological future, they will agree just as much.
首先他們認(rèn)為他們必須同意每件事,如果別人說(shuō)這個(gè)世界糟透了,他們會(huì)立馬點(diǎn)頭同意。如果一秒鐘后有一個(gè)預(yù)言預(yù)測(cè)未來(lái)是烏托邦,他們也會(huì)欣然表示贊同。
When we say something clever, they are thrilled. When we say something equally daft, they like it no less. Their ritual approval may seem attentive. In truth, it’s a version of not listening at all.
當(dāng)我們說(shuō)一些有趣的話,當(dāng)我們說(shuō)一些愚蠢的事,他們同樣也喜歡他們禮節(jié)性的贊同,看起來(lái)非常貼心,事實(shí)上他們完全沒(méi)有聽(tīng)你在說(shuō)什么。
Secondly, their praise is ill-targeted. Plenty of nice things are being said, but they are not the ones we happen to value. They claim to love our umbrella, our credit card is from their favourite bank, our chairs are deeply beautiful.
其次,他們的贊美沒(méi)有意義,有很多話聽(tīng)起來(lái)在夸你,但卻都不是你在意的方面。他們會(huì)說(shuō)你的傘真漂亮,你的信用卡是從我最喜歡的銀行辦的,你的椅子真好看,
We apparently have a nice way of holding our fork… but none of this counts for us if it isn’t connected up with our own sense of meaning and achievement. Everyone loves being praised, but to be praised inaccurately is its own kind of insult.
你刀叉使得真好,但這一切對(duì)我們都不重要,因?yàn)樗c我們自己的意義和成就感沒(méi)有聯(lián)系,每個(gè)人都喜歡被稱贊,但被錯(cuò)誤的稱贊本身就是一種侮辱。
Thirdly, their friendliness is remorselessly upbeat. They point out how well we look, how impressive our job sounds, how perfect our family life seems. They want to make us feel good, but they dangerously raise the cost of revealing any of the lonelier, darker, more melancholic aspects of our characters.
第三,它們對(duì)友誼盲目樂(lè)觀,他們說(shuō)你看起來(lái)很精神,你的工作聽(tīng)起來(lái)很給力,你的家庭真完美,他們想讓我們感覺(jué)良好,但他們很危險(xiǎn)地提高了門檻,使你沒(méi)法說(shuō)出你并沒(méi)那么好,其實(shí)很孤獨(dú),很喪。
By contrast, the less ardently friendly and therefore properly pleasing person will keep three things closely in mind:
相比之下,不過(guò)分友好反而更討人喜歡,謹(jǐn)記以下三點(diǎn):
Firstly, that disagreement isn't necessarily or always terrible, that it may be exhilarating to be contradicted when we don’t feel that our dignity is at stake and that we are learning something valuable at the hands of a combative interlocutor.
首先意見(jiàn)存在分歧不一定是可怕的,當(dāng)我們不覺(jué)得尊嚴(yán)受到威脅時(shí),你甚至可以愉快的進(jìn)行反駁,我們可以從持不同意見(jiàn)的對(duì)手那里學(xué)到有價(jià)值的東西。
Secondly, that people only want to be complimented on things they are actively proud of. The value of the currency of praise depends entirely on it not being spent too freely – and so the truly pleasing person knows they must pass over many things in discreet silence, so that when they eventually do bestow a blessing, their words can have a proper resonance.
其次人們只想別人來(lái)稱贊那些他們?yōu)橹湴恋臇|西,贊美不講求數(shù)量,但講求質(zhì)量。真正討人喜歡的人知道什么時(shí)候該說(shuō)話什么時(shí)候不該說(shuō)話,所以,當(dāng)他們最終表達(dá)贊美時(shí),他們的話可以產(chǎn)生恰當(dāng)?shù)墓缠Q。
Thirdly, that we are cheered up not so much by people who say cheery things, as by people who appear to understand us, which usually means, sympathise with our sorrows and show a willingness to travel with us to the anxious, hesitant or confused parts of our psyches.
第三,讓我們高興的不是那些說(shuō)好聽(tīng)話的人,而是懂得理解我們的人。這通常意味著能感受我們的悲傷,并表示愿意陪我們?nèi)ソ忾_(kāi)我們心里中的焦慮,猶豫和困惑的部分。
What enables the pleasing person to please is their capacity to hold on in social encounters, even with rather intimidating and alien-seeming people, to an intimate knowledge of what satisfies them. They instinctively use their own experience as a base for thinking about the needs of others.
討人喜歡的人被喜歡,是因?yàn)樗麄冊(cè)谏缃粓?chǎng)合中能hold住場(chǎng)面,即使與讓我們感到畏懼的人相處也知道怎么讓對(duì)方滿意。他們會(huì)本能地用自己的經(jīng)驗(yàn)作為思考他人需求的基礎(chǔ)。
By contrast, the over-friendly person allows themselves to forget their own likes and dislikes, under the pressure of an excessive humility which suggests to them that anyone impressive could not possibly share in the principles that drive their own psychology.
相比之下,過(guò)分友好的人,讓自己忘記自己的喜惡,在過(guò)度謙卑的壓力下,使他們中任何人都不可能分享他們心里真實(shí)的想法。
At the core of the pleasing person’s charm is a metaphysical insight: that other people cannot, deep down, ever be very ‘other’ and therefore that, in core ways, what one knows about oneself will be the master-key to understanding and getting along with strangers.
討人喜歡的人的核心魅力是一種形而上的獨(dú)到見(jiàn)解,每個(gè)人都不可能真正成為別人。因此,核心是,一個(gè)人先了解他們自己,將是他們理解和與陌生人相處的關(guān)鍵,
Not in every case, but enough of the time to make the difference.Over-friendliness isn't just a feature of one-to-one encounters. It’s an entrenched flaw within modern consumer society more generally.
雖然不是全然適用,但也足以產(chǎn)生不同。過(guò)分友好,不僅是發(fā)生在一對(duì)一的情況,它實(shí)際在現(xiàn)代消費(fèi)社會(huì)非常普遍。
This explains why the airline exuberantly wishes us a perfect day upon landing in a new city, why the waiter hopes we’ll have a truly wonderful time around the first course and why the attendant in a clothes shop pulls such a large smile along with their suggestion that we try on a new pair of trousers.
這解釋了為何航空公司熱忱的祝愿我們抵達(dá)目的地并愉快地開(kāi)始一天,或者為何希望我們能在用餐時(shí),享受到真正美好的時(shí)光,以及為何帶著夸張的笑容推薦我們?cè)嚧┬碌难澴印?/p>
Here too, the cause of an asphyxiating friendliness is a sudden modesty and loss of confidence around using oneself as a guide to the temperament and needs of a stranger.
在這些情況,他們極度友好的原因是突然的羞怯和失去自信,用自己當(dāng)向?qū)?lái)滿足陌生人的性格和需要。
Companies become over-impressed by the apparent‘otherness’of their clients and thereby overlook how many aspects of their own selves are being trampled upon in a service context.
公司對(duì)客戶表面上的“差異性”過(guò)于重視,從而忽略了自身的各方各面,反而在服務(wù)中對(duì)客戶內(nèi)心造成了踐踏。
They sidestep the knowledge that just after landing back home after a trip abroad, we may feel horrified at the thought of our responsibilities in the family; or that moods of introversion and sadness can accompany us even inside a clothes boutiques.
他們回避從國(guó)外旅行回家會(huì)遇到的問(wèn)題,我們可能會(huì)在想到我們的家庭責(zé)任時(shí)壓力很大,或在逛服裝精品店時(shí),我們懷著內(nèi)向和憂傷的情緒,
They behave as if they were cheerful Martians encountering broken, complex humans for the very first time. The fault of the excessively over-friendly person can, in the end, be traced back to a touching modesty.
他們卻表現(xiàn)得就像是快樂(lè)的火星人第一次遭遇到玩壞了的人類。過(guò)分友好的人的問(wèn)題,最后可以歸結(jié)到他們的羞怯上。
They are guilty of nothing more than a loss of confidence in the validity of their own experiences as a guide to the pleasure of others.
他們只不過(guò)是喪失信心而已,他們想在自己的經(jīng)驗(yàn)的有效指導(dǎo)下,讓他人感覺(jué)愉快。
The failure of the over-friendly types teaches us that in order to succeed at pleasing anyone, we must first accept the risk that we might well displease them through a candid expression of our being. Successful charm relies on an initial secure sense that we could survive social failure.
過(guò)分友好的失敗告訴我們想要成功取悅他人,我們必須首先承擔(dān)風(fēng)險(xiǎn),我們很可能會(huì)因?yàn)槲覀兲拐\(chéng)的表達(dá)而得罪他們。成功的魅力依賴于一種初級(jí)的安全感,認(rèn)為我們可以承受社交失敗。
Rehearsing how it would in the end be OK to make a hash of seducing someone is perhaps the best way to seduce them properly and confidently. We must reconcile ourselves to the risk of not making friends to stand any chance of actually making any.預(yù)想最后沒(méi)巴結(jié)到那個(gè)人是不是也沒(méi)問(wèn)題,也許是最好的方法,也是恰當(dāng)和自信的吸引別人的方法,我們必須說(shuō)服自己要冒交不到朋友的風(fēng)險(xiǎn),才有機(jī)會(huì)真正交到朋友。
瘋狂英語(yǔ) 英語(yǔ)語(yǔ)法 新概念英語(yǔ) 走遍美國(guó) 四級(jí)聽(tīng)力 英語(yǔ)音標(biāo) 英語(yǔ)入門 發(fā)音 美語(yǔ) 四級(jí) 新東方 七年級(jí) 賴世雄 zero是什么意思河源市泰和花園(建設(shè)大道)英語(yǔ)學(xué)習(xí)交流群
英語(yǔ)在線翻譯 | 關(guān)于我們|網(wǎng)站導(dǎo)航|免責(zé)聲明|意見(jiàn)反饋
英語(yǔ)聽(tīng)力課堂(vqdolsx.cn)是公益性質(zhì)的學(xué)英語(yǔ)網(wǎng)站,您可以在線學(xué)習(xí)英語(yǔ)聽(tīng)力和英語(yǔ)口語(yǔ)等,請(qǐng)幫助我們多多宣傳,若是有其他的咨詢請(qǐng)聯(lián)系gmail:[email protected],謝謝!