簡·方達(Jane Fonda)奧斯卡獲獎演員、作家、健身專家和傑出的社會活動家。曾兩次獲奧斯卡影后，獨創的健身操曾風靡全球，簡的一生都在不斷探索自我的價值，在與自己較勁的過程中認清了自我，明晰了人生的方向。
There have been many revolutions over the last century, but perhaps none as significant as the longevity revolution. We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did --think about that. That's an entire second adult lifetime that's been added to our lifespan.
上個世紀發生了很多種變革，但沒有一個如同壽命的變革一樣具有深遠意義。今天我們比曾祖父輩的平均壽命要長34年。試想一下。這是在原先壽命上加上了整整第二個成年期的時間。
And yet, for the most part, our culture has not come to terms with what this means. We're still living with the old paradigm of age as anarch. That's the metaphor, the old metaphor. You're born, you peak at midlife and decline into decrepitude.
但是，從很大程度上說，我們的文化還沒有與之相應地發展起來。我們對年齡的理解還是限於舊時的年齡拱形圖。這是老比喻了。人從出生，到中年達到黃金期再到衰老。
But many people today -- philosophers, artists, doctors, scientists -- are taking a new look at what I call "the third act" -- the last three decades of life. They realize that this is actually a developmental stage of life with its own significance, as different from midlife as adolescence is from childhood. And they are asking -- we should all be asking: How do we use this time? How do we live it successfully? What is the appropriate new metaphor for aging?
但是今天很多人－哲人、藝術家、醫生還有科學家－都再重新審視我稱之為的第三幕，生命中的最後三十年。他們意識到這實際是生命的一個發展階段有其自身意義－它與中年不一樣就如同青春期和童年不一樣。他們在探尋－我們都應該探尋－該怎樣利用這些時間？怎麼才能成功地度過這段時間？什麼才是對年老的恰當比喻？
I've spent the last year researching and writing about this subject. And I have come to find that a more appropriate metaphor for aging is a staircase -- the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness, and authenticity.
過去的一年裡我一直在研究這個主題並展開相關的寫作。我發現了一個更加適合年老的比喻就是樓梯－人類精神的升華，引領我們走向智慧、完整和真實。
Age not at all as pathology. Age as potential. And guess what? This potential is not for the lucky few. It turns out, most people over 50 feel better, are less stressed, less hostile, less anxious. We tend to see commonalities more than differences. Some of the studies even say we're happier.
年齡根本不是病理學；年齡是潛力。並且怎麼樣呢？這種潛力並不專屬於幸運的少數人。相反，很多超過五十歲的人感覺更好，壓力更小，感受到的敵意和焦慮更少。我們逐漸發現共同處多於差異處。有些研究甚至表明我們更快樂
This is not what I expected, trust me. I come from a long line of depressives. As I was approaching my late 40s, when I would wake up in the morning, my first six thoughts would all be negative. And I got scared. I thought, "Oh my gosh. I'm going to become a crotchety old lady." But now that I am actually smack-dab in the middle of my own third act, I realize I've never been happier.
這不是我所預料的，真的。我的生活里有太多壓抑。當我快到五十歲的時候，我每天早上醒過來我腦子裡的頭六個想法都是負面的。我給嚇壞了。我想，天哪。我將變成一個古怪無常的老太太。而我現在正處於我的人生第三幕，我意識到我從未有現在這麼開心。
I have such a powerful feeling of well-being. And I've discovered that when you're inside oldness, as opposed to looking at it from the outside, fear subsides. You realize you're still yourself -- maybe even more so. Picasso once said, "It takes a long time to become young."
我感覺過得十分安康得樂。我發現了相對於外表的衰老，內心的老去，恐懼會平息。我們自己還是那個自己－也許更多。畢卡索曾經說過：「要變年輕那可有得等。」
I don't want to romanticize aging. Obviously, there's no guarantee that it can be a time of fruition and growth. Some of it is a matter of luck. Some of it, obviously, is genetic. One third of it, in fact, is genetic. And there isn't much we can do about that. But that means that two-thirds of how well we do in the third act, we can do something about. We're going to discuss what we can do to make these added years really successful, and use them to make a difference.
我不想美化衰老。很顯然沒人能保證會是個開花結果的過程。有時候就是運氣的事兒。有時候是基因的事兒。有三分之一，實際上，都是基因的關係。而我們對此無能為力。但這意味著在生命的第三幕對三分之二的人來說，我們可以有所作為。以下我將就如何成功地度過這些多出來的年頭並使其有意義來討論一下。
Now, let me say something about the staircase, which may seem like an odd metaphor for seniors, given the fact that many seniors are challenged by stairs.
首先我先針對樓梯說兩句，這聽上去象是個對老年人打的奇怪的比喻而對於很多老年人來說，樓梯確實個挑戰。
Myself included. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world -- everything -- is in a state of decline and decay -- the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolveup wards, the staircase, bringing us into wholeness, authenticity, and wisdom.
我自己也是。眾所周知，整個世界有一個通行法則：熵，熱力學的第二定律。熵意味著世界上的一切事物，都處於衰退中，也就是拱形。只有一個例外，這就是人文精神，它是持續增長的－象樓梯一樣－引領我們到達完整，真實和智慧。
And here's an example of what I mean. This upward ascension can happen even in the face of extreme physical challenges. About three years ago, I read an article in the New York Times. It was about a man named Neil Selinger -- 57 years old, a retired lawyer, who had joined the writers' group at Sarah Lawrence, where he found his writer's voice.
這有一個例子這種升華就算是在身體面臨極度挑戰下也能發生。大概三年前，我在《紐約時報》上讀到一篇文章。是關於一個名叫尼爾･西令戈爾的--57歲的退休律師--他加入了薩拉勞倫斯的寫作小組在那裡他找到了成為作家的感覺。
Two years later, he was diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It's a terrible disease. It's fatal. It wastes the body, but the mind remains intact. In this article, Mr. Selinger wrote the following to describe what was happening to him. And I quote: "As my muscles weakened, my writing became stronger.
兩年後，他被診斷患有ALS，肌萎縮性側索硬化症。這是個致命的可怕疾病。它摧毀身體，但精神世界卻保持完好。在這篇文章里，西令戈爾先生這樣描述他的故事。我引用，「我的肌肉變的衰弱，但寫作能力卻愈有力。
As I slowly lost my speech, I gained my voice. As I diminished, I grew. As I lost so much, I finally started to find myself." Neil Selinger, to me, is the embodiment of mounting the staircase in his third act.
我在慢慢地失去講話的能力，但卻獲得了聲音。我在消亡，但又成長。我失去了很多，但卻開始發現自我。」對我來說，尼爾･西令戈爾是攀登人生第三階梯的具體體現。
Now we're all born with spirit, all of us, but sometimes it gets tamped down beneath the challenges of life, violence, abuse, neglect. Perhaps our parents suffered from depression. Perhaps they weren't able to love us beyond how we performed in the world.
所有人的靈魂與生俱來，但常常會受到生活中各種困難的打擊，比如暴力，虐待，無視。也許我們的父母正在受到抑鬱症的困擾。或許他們不能在超出我們在這個世界的成就來愛我們。或許我們心靈中的創傷仍在隱隱作痛。
Perhaps we still suffer from a psychic pain, a wound. Perhaps we feel that many of our relationships have not had closure. And so we can feel unfinished. Perhaps the task of the third act is to finish up the task of finishing ourselves.
或許我們過往的感情很多是沒有完結的故事。因此我們覺得不完整。也許人生第三幕的任務就是完成這些未完成的事。
For me, it began as I was approaching my third act, my 60th birthday. How was I supposed to live it? What was I supposed to accomplish in this final act? And I realized that, in order to know where I was going, I had to know where I'd been.
我正在步入我的人生第三幕，我的60歲生日。我應該怎樣度過？怎樣完成這最後一幕？我意識到，要知道往哪裡去，必須先明白我從哪裡來。
And so I went back and I studied my first two acts, trying to see who I was then, who I really was, not who my parents or other people told me I was, or treated me like I was. But who was I? Who were my parents -- not as parents, but as people? Who were my grandparents? How did they treat my parents? These kinds of things.
於是我就回過頭去探尋我人生的前兩幕，去看看我曾是誰，正真的自己是什麼樣－這個自己不是我的父母或別人告訴我的，或他們對待我的樣子。我是什麼樣的人？我的父母是什麼樣的－單純從社會個體看他們的話？我的祖父母又是什麼樣？他們是怎樣對待我的父母的？此類的問題。
I discovered, a couple of years later, that this process that I had gone through is called by psychologists "doing a life review." And they say it can give new significance and clarity and meaning to a person's life. You may discover, as I did, that a lot of things that you used to think were your fault, a lot of things you used to think about yourself, really had nothing to do with you. It wasn't your fault; you're just fine.
幾年後我才知道我所做的這個過程在心理學上叫做「生平回顧」。據說這能賦予一個人的生命新的意義並是其變得明晰。像我一樣，也許你會發現，很多你曾引以自咎的事，很多無法放下的事，都不是你的問題。錯不在你。
And you're able to go back and forgive them. And forgive yourself. You're able to free yourself from your past. You can work to change your relationship to your past.
這樣你就能原諒他們也原諒自己。把自己從過去的陰影中釋放出來。並嘗試改變對待自身過去的態度。
Now while I was writing about this, I came up on a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl was a German psychiatrist who'd spent five years in a Nazi concentration camp. And he wrote that, while he was in the camp, he could tell, should they ever be released, which of the people would be OK, and which would not.
當我寫下這些的時候，我想到了一本書《活出意義來》維克多･弗蘭克爾所著。他是名精神醫師在納粹集中營里被關過5年。在集中營里他寫道，他知道，如果他們被釋放的話，誰能平安度過誰則不能。
And he wrote this: "Everything you have in life can be taken from you except one thing: your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. This is what determines the quality of the life we've lived -- not whether we've been rich or poor, famous or unknown, healthy or suffering.
他寫道：「生命中的一切都可能被剝奪只有一個例外，那就是你可以決定怎樣去應對面臨的處境。這一點決定了我們生命的質量－不在於貧富，不在於名聲，也不在於健康與否。
What determines our quality of life is how we relate to these realities, what kind of meaning we assign them, what kind of attitude we cling to about them, what state of mind we allow them to trigger.
決定生命質量的是我們怎樣面對現實，我們對現實的認知，面對現實的態度，和我們由此生發的心境。
Perhaps the central purpose of the third act is to go back and to try, if appropriate, to change our relationship to the past. It turns out that cognitive research shows when we are able to do this, it manifests neurologically -- neural pathways are created in the brain.
也許生命第三幕的核心意義就是回朔並嘗試，修正自身對過去的認識。有認知研究顯示當我們能做到這些時，這能在神經上反應出來－它能在大腦里創建神經通路。
You see, if you have, over time, reacted negatively to past events and people, neural pathways are laid down by chemical and electrical signals that are sent through the brain. And over time, these neural pathways become hardwired. They become the norm -- even if it's bad for us, because it causes us stress and anxiety.
如果你長時間，對過去或者別人持負面情緒，大腦中的化學信號和電信號就會阻礙神經通路。隨著時間推移，這些神經通路就會固化，最後就變成了模式－這會給我們帶來壓力和焦慮對我們有害。
If, how ever, we can go back and alter our relationship, re-vision our relationship to past people and events, neural pathways can change. And if we can maintain the more positive feelings about the past, that becomes the new norm. It's like resetting a thermostat. It's not having experiences that makes us wise. It's reflecting on the experiences that we've had that makes us wise and that helps us become whole, brings wisdom and authenticity. It helps us become what we might have been.
但是如果我們能回頭修正對過去的看法重建和自己過去的關係，神經通路可以被改變。如果我們能保持對過去持積極的態度，這就會成為新的模式。這就像重新設置恆溫器一樣。這並不是去獲得使人智慧的體驗，但是這反映出我們已經有了使自己變得智慧的體驗－從而使我們達到完整，得到智慧和真實。這能幫我們實現曾經的理想。
Women start off whole, don't we? I mean, as girls, we're feisty -- "Yeah? Who says?"
女性都是完整地開始的，對吧？因為小女孩的時候我們都很強大--「是呀，誰說的？」
We have agency. We are the subjects of our own lives. But very often, many, if not most of us, when we hit puberty, we start worrying about fitting in and being popular. And we become the subjects and objects of other people's lives. But now, in our third acts, it may be possible for us to circle back to where we started, and know it for the first time.
我們精力旺盛。我們是自己的主人。但常常，很多人，不是大多數人，達到青春期後，開始為形象和人氣操心。為別人而生活。但現在，在生命的第三幕，我們也許有可能回望過去重新開始。
And if we can do that, it will not just be for ourselves. Older women are the largest demographic in the world. If we can go back and redefine ourselves and become whole, this will create a cultural shift in the world, and it will give an example to younger generations so that they can reconceive their own lifespan.
如果我們能做到這一點，這不僅是對我們自己有益。老年女性是世界人口最大的一個組成。如果我們能回到過去重新定義自己變得完整，這將在全球創造新的文化變革，並給年輕一代樹立榜樣這樣他們可以重新認知他們的生命。