(单词翻译:单击)
One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others.
作为婴儿最棒的事情之一就是他人可以读懂我们的思想。
Without us needing to say anything, people around us will have a guess at determining what we intend - and, typically, they’ll get it right.
不用我们说什么，我们周围的人就会猜测我们的意图——通常，他们会猜对。
They’ll correctly surmise that we are craving some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, that it’s time for a snooze or that we want to jiggle the keys again.
他们会准确地猜到我们想喝点牛奶，或者太阳正照着我们的眼睛，或者是该打个盹了，或者是我们想再摇一摇钥匙。
This may be highly gratifying and important to us in infancy, but it can set up dangerous expectations for the rest of our lives.
这对婴儿期的我们来说可能是令人满意与至关重要的，但这可以为我们的余生设置危险的期望。
It can breed in us the sense that anyone - especially anyone who claims to care about us - should be able to determine our deepest aspirations and wishes without us needing to say very much.
这能让我们产生这样一种感觉:任何人——尤其是那些声称关心我们的人——都应该能够确定我们内心深处的愿望，而不需要我们说太多。
We can stay silent; they will mindread.
我们可以保持沉默; 而他们要会读心术。
This explains a widespread tendency to assume that others must know what we mean and want without us having actually told them anything clearly.
这就解释了一种普遍的倾向，即认为他人一定知道我们的意思和想要什么，而我们实际上并没有清楚地告诉他们任何事情。
We assume that our lover must know what we’re upset about, that our friends should realise where our sensitivities lie and that our colleagues must intuitively grasp how we want things done in presentations.
我们假设我们的爱人一定知道我们在烦恼什么，我们的朋友应该意识到我们的敏感点在哪里，我们的同事必须凭直觉理解我们想要怎样在展示中完成事情。
Furthermore, we assume that if they don’t, then it must be a sign that they are being wicked, deliberately obtuse or stupid- and we are therefore justified in falling into a sulk,
此外，我们认为，如果他们不这样做，那么这一定表明他们太邪恶、故意表现得太迟钝或太愚蠢——因此，我们有理由生气，
that curious pattern of behaviour whereby we punish people for having committed offences whose precise nature we refuse to reveal to them.
这是一种奇怪的行为模式，我们惩罚那些犯下罪行的人，但我们拒绝向他们揭示其确切性质。
But in all this, we have, somewhere along the path of our development, forgotten the fundamental importance of teaching.
但在所有这些过程中，我们在发展道路上的某个地方忘记了讲授的重要性。
Teaching isn’t a distinctive profession focused on imparting knowledge about science and the humanities to the under 18s.
教师并不是一个专注于向18岁以下儿童传授科学和人文知识的独特职业。
It’s a skill that we must put into practice every day of our lives - and the subject we must laboriously and patiently become experts in and deliver ‘lessons’ on is called ‘Ourselves’:
这是一种我们必须在日常生活中付诸实践的技能——我们必须勤奋而耐心地专于传授“课程”--而这一课程叫做“我们自己”:
what we like, what we’re scared of, what we’re hopeful about, what we want from the world and how we look for things to be formatted…
我们喜欢什么，我们害怕什么，我们对什么抱有希望，我们想从世界上得到什么，以及我们如何看待事物的形式……
Babies, for all their intelligence and charm, only care about a handful of things;
婴儿，尽管他们很聪明，很有魅力，他们只关心少数的事情;
an average adult has thousands of very set ideas on all manner of topics, from the right way to govern a country to the right way to shut the fridge door.
一个普通的成年人对各种各样的话题都有成千上万的固定想法，从治理国家到关闭冰箱门。
We should strive to deliver a few ‘seminars’ on our views before allowing ourselves to grow resentful and sullen.
在让自己变得愤愤不平和闷闷不乐之前，我们应该努力举办一些关于我们观点的“研讨会”。
Yet how understandable - in a sense - if we should fail so badly in our teaching duties.
然而，从某种意义上说，我们是否在教学工作中非常失败，这很容易理解。
We’re not necessarily being lazy or unkind.
我们并不一定懒惰或不友善。
It’s merely unbelievable that strangers would actually require us to talk them through yet another chapter of the dense instruction manual of our deep selves.
令人难以置信的是，陌生人竟然需要我们再跟他们讲一遍关于我们内心深处的那本厚厚的说明书中的另一个章节。
We never had to bother with all that in the early years.
在最初的几年里，我们从来不用担心这些。
We may be more nostalgic for our infancy than we might have dared to imagine.
我们可能比我们要想的更怀念我们的婴儿期。
