Around the time I turned 40, I went to see a therapist, a man who knew me well. I tended call him once or twice a year on an as-needed basis. I had reached the point of being able to sort through most problems on my own. But life had -- as it occasionally does -- grown suddenly complicated。

我40岁生日前后，我去看理疗师，那个医生很了解我。我试图一年按需电话他两三次。我都快可以自己解决所有问题的时候，生活突然变得复杂起来----有时候，生活就是这样。

I had been trying with no success to have a second child. My husband and I werecontemplating egg donation and surrogacy. We had made an abrupt move from New York City to rural Connecticut in the wake of 9/11. My mother had recently died. My little boy had been seriously ill, and I was still reeling from a difficult and frightening year. I found myself questioning everything。

我一直想要生第二个小孩，但一筹莫展。我丈夫和我开始考虑捐献卵子和代孕。911事件后，我们匆匆从纽约搬到康涅狄格州的乡村。那时，我母亲刚过世不久，我儿子还小，却病入膏肓，那年我过得痛苦不堪、心惊胆战，一直缓不过来。我觉得我质疑周遭的一切。

I went through a box of tissues during that hour with my occasional therapist, and as he walked me to the door at the end of the session, I turned to him and asked urgently: does any of this make sense?

和理疗师面对面的那一小时，我抽完了一整盒纸巾，问诊结束，医师陪我走到门口，我转向他焦急地问道：这一切都有意义吗？

Everything about you makes sense, he said。

你所有的一切都有意义，他说道。

I found these words enormously comforting. I so badly wanted the narrative of my life to make sense. Two brief failed marriages -- one at 18 the other at 28? Makes sense. My uneasy relationship to faith and doubt, having been raised in a strict, religious home? Makes sense. The emptiness I continued to feel at the early loss of my father? Makes sense. My impossibly fraught relationship with my mother? Sense. My fear and guilt at the increasing odds that my son would be an only child just like I had been? Sense。

他的话极度安慰我心。我多渴望我生活的一切都有意义。两段婚姻转瞬即逝，一次18岁的时候，还有一次是28岁，都有意义？有。我成长于一个严苛又虔诚的家庭，信仰与疑惑，让我惴惴不安，这也有意义？有。早年父亲过世，我的空虚无助，有意义吗？有。我与我母亲关系紧张得不可想象、令人心焦，有意义吗？有。我儿子越来越有可能和我一样是独生子女，我担惊受怕、愧疚难捱，这有意义吗？有。

Our lives grow so complex, so unwieldy, so difficult to explain as we get older. Haven't we all had the experience of making a new friend in our 30s, 40s or 50s and wondering how in the world we can possibly explain ourselves? Our heartaches and our joys, our failures, losses, accomplishments, regrets? Who we've loved? Who we've wounded? What we'd do over -- if we possibly could -- if given the chance? As the trajectory of our lives stretches out from childhood well into adulthood, the arc is rarely smooth or clear。

我们的生命如此复杂、难以驾驭、越年长越无以解释。我们都有这样的经历，三十几、四十几和五十多岁的时候结交新朋友；也曾困惑在这世上，我们何以向自己解释我们的心病和我们的喜悦，我们的失败、沮丧、成功和懊悔？我们爱过谁，又伤害了谁？若可能、如有机会，我们会选择什么重新来过？我们的人生轨迹，从童年一路延伸到成年，轨迹鲜有平滑和清晰的时候。

My husband, a screenwriter, is often asked to adapt biographies for film, and the struggle, he often says, is that lives have first acts, but they don't have third acts (until they're over) and second acts are just one damned thing after another. So how to understand the narratives of our lives? How to trust that everything about us makes sense?

我丈夫是电影剧本作家，常常应要求把传记改编成电影。此中困苦，如其所言，生命有第一幕，但没有第三幕(除非剧目结束)，而第二幕总是恼人的事情接二连三地发生。所以，又怎能真正理解我们生命的历程？又何以相信我们生命的一切都有意义？

Lately I've been wondering if perhaps the answer to this is not to even attempt to smooth things out. Sure, there are the fortunate few from whom the journey has thus far been smooth sailing, but for the vast majority of us, there are fits and starts, hiccups, confusion, mistakes, wrong turns, U-turns, graceless moments. Life's road is nothing if not strewn with pebbles, potholes, unexpected surprises, both happy and not-so-happy ones。

最近，我一直在想，也许这一问题的答案就是，不要试图去解决一切事情。诚然，少数幸运儿的人生迄今一帆风顺，但我们对大多数人而言，生命里会有断断续续、会有中断的时候、会有困惑、错误、会拐错弯、掉错头，还有颜面尽失的时候。若非有小石子儿、坑坑洼洼在，若非有意外与你不期而遇，或惊喜或惊愕，生命之路会一文不值。

As one of my dearest friends, the Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein says, "We are always accommodating to a new situation." That ever-changing new situation is, in fact, what makes up the shape of our lives. And that shape assumes its own kind of integrity, over time. This is how it is, how it has been. The truth of who we are is all we have to offer each other. And so often we want to edit it, to hide it, to cut and paste the story so that it will read like something intentional, something that we all meant to do all along。

正如我最亲密的一位朋友、禅学教师西薇雅布尔斯坦所言，“我们总是在适应新环境。”不断变化的新环境，事实上成就了我们生命的形态。而那一形态，经久历时，呈现出其特有的完整性。这就是生命的样貌、生命缘何如此。我们真真正正是谁，也就是我们要相互展现的。太多次，我们想要修改、想要隐藏、想剪切复制事实情况，好像听起来有意，是我们一直刻意追求的那样。

And so it seems that the answer may well be to embrace the complexity of our lives. A beautiful piece of Buddhist wisdom known as "The Eight Vicissitudes" goes like this: pain and pleasure, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, gain and loss. All lives contain all of these. Not at once, not in order, not in equal amounts -- but nonetheless, all lives contain all of these. I find great solace in this. We are all here, trying our best, muddling through. We make choices, we re-group, we deepen. We learn from each other. We all make sense。

所以，似乎答案很有可能就是，去迎接生命的复杂性。禅学智慧有一条很出彩，即“八大人生起伏”，是这么说的：痛苦有享乐、赞誉与责备、美誉与恶名，及得与失。所有生命都包含这几条。不是说来就来，也并非按序经历、平均分配----但不管怎样，所有生命都会经历这一切。这让我大为安慰。我们都在此，以己之能，揣摩前行。我们作选择、我们重整旗鼓、我们深化生命的意义。我们相互学习，我们都活出有意义。