thandie newton embracing otherness, embracing myself

　　拥抱他人，拥抱自己

　　embracing otherness. when i first heard this theme, i thought, well, embracing otherness is embracing myself. and the journey to that place of understanding and acceptance has been an interesting one for me, and it's given me an insight into the whole notion of self, which i think is worth sharing with you today.

　　拥抱他类。当我第一次听说这个主题时，我心想，拥抱他类不就是拥抱自己吗。我个人懂得理解和接受他类的经历很有趣，让我对于“自己”这个词也有了新的认识，我想今天在这里和你们分享下我的心得体会。

　　we each have a self, but i don't think that we're born with one. you know how newborn babies believe they're part of everything; they're not separate? well that fundamental sense of oneness is lost on us very quickly. it's like that initial stage is over -- oneness: infancy, unformed, primitive. it's no longer valid or real. what is real is separateness, and at some point in early babyhood, the idea of self starts to form. our little portion of oneness is given a name, is told all kinds of things about itself, and these details, opinions and ideas become facts, which go towards building ourselves, our identity. and that self becomes the vehicle for navigating our social world. but the self is a projection based on other people's projections. is it who we really are? or who we really want to be, or should be?

　　我们每个人都有个自我，但并不是生来就如此的。你知道新生的宝宝们觉得他们是任何东西的一部分，而不是分裂的个体。这种本源上的“天人合一”感在我们出生后很快就不见了，就好像我们人生的第一个篇章--和谐统一：婴儿，未成形，原始--结束了。它们似幻似影，而现实的世界是孤独彼此分离的。而在孩童期的某段时间，我们开始形成自我这个观点。宇宙中的小小个体有了自己的名字，有了自己的过去等等各种信息。这些关于自己的细节，看法和观点慢慢变成事实，成为我们身份的一部分。而那个自我，也变成我们人生路上前行的导航仪。然后，这个所谓的自我，是他人自我的映射，还是我们真实的自己呢?我们究竟想成为什么样，应该成为什么样的呢?

　　so this whole interaction with self and identity was a very difficult one for me growing up. the self that i attempted to take out into the world was rejected over and over again. and my panic at not having a self that fit, and the confusion that came from my self being rejected, created anxiety, shame and hopelessness, which kind of defined me for a long time. but in retrospect, the destruction of my self was so repetitive that i started to see a pattern. the self changed, got affected, broken, destroyed, but another one would evolve -- sometimes stronger, sometimes hateful, sometimes not wanting to be there at all. the self was not constant. and how many times would my self have to die before i realized that it was never alive in the first place?

　　这个和自我打交道，寻找自己身份的过程在我的成长记忆中一点都不容易。我想成为的那些“自我”不断被否定再否定，而我害怕自己无法融入周遭的环境，因被否定而引起的困惑让我变得更加忧虑，感到羞耻和无望，在很长一段时间就是我存在状态。然而回头看，对自我的解构是那么频繁，以至于我发现了这样一种规律。自我是变化的，受他人影响，分裂或被打败，而另一个自我会产生，这个自我可能更坚强，可能更可憎，有时你也不想变成那样。所谓自我不是固定不变的。而我需要经历多少次自我的破碎重生才会明白其实自我从来没有存在过?

　　i grew up on the coast of england in the '70s. my dad is white from cornwall, and my mom is black from zimbabwe. even the idea of us as a family was challenging to most people. but nature had its wicked way, and brown babies were born. but from about the age of five, i was aware that i didn't fit. i was the black atheist kid in the all-white catholic school run by nuns. i was an anomaly, and my self was rooting around for definition and trying to plug in. because the self likes to fit, to see itself replicated, to belong. that confirms its existence and its importance. and it is important. it has an extremely important function. without it, we literally can't interface with others. we can't hatch plans and climb that stairway of popularity, of success. but my skin color wasn't right. my hair wasn't right. my history wasn't right. my self became defined by otherness, which meant that, in that social world, i didn't really exist. and i was "other" before being anything else -- even before being a girl. i was a noticeable nobody.

　　我在70年代英格兰海边长大，我的父亲是康沃尔的白人，母亲是津巴布韦的黑人。而想象我和父母是一家人对于其他人来说总是不太自然。自然有它自己的魔术，棕色皮肤的宝宝诞生了。但 从我五岁开始，我就有种感觉我不是这个群体的。我是一个全白人天主教会学校里面黑皮肤无神论小孩。我与他人是不同的，而那个热衷于归属的自我却到处寻找方式寻找归属感。这种认同感让自我感受到存在感和重要性，因此十分重要。这点是如此重要，如果没有自我，我们根本无法与他人沟通。没有它，我们无所适从，无法获取成功或变得受人欢迎。但我的肤色不对，我的头发不对，我的过去不对，我的一切都是另类定义的，在这个社会里，我其实并不真实存在。我首先是个异类，其次才是个女孩。我是可见却毫无意义的人。

　　another world was opening up around this time: performance and dancing. that nagging dread of self-hood didn't exist when i was dancing. i'd literally lose myself. and i was a really good dancer. i would put all my emotional expression into my dancing. i could be in the movement in a way that i wasn't able to be in my real life, in myself.

　　这时候，另一个世界向我敞开了大门：舞蹈表演。那种关于自我的唠叨恐惧在舞蹈时消失了，我放开四肢，也成为了一位不错的舞者。我将所有的情绪都融入到舞蹈的动作中去，我可以在舞蹈中与自己相溶，尽管在现实生活中却无法做到。

　　and at 16, i stumbled across another opportunity, and i earned my first acting role in a film. i can hardly find the words to describe the peace i felt when i was acting. my dysfunctional self could actually plug in to another self, not my own, and it felt so good. it was the first time that i existed inside a fully-functioning self -- one that i controlled, that i steered, that i gave life to. but the shooting day would end, and i'd return to my gnarly, awkward self.

　　16岁的时候，我遇到了另一个机会，第一部参演的电影。我无法用语言来表达在演戏的时候我所感受到的平和，我无处着落的自我可以与那个角色融为一体，而不是我自己。那感觉真棒。这是第一次我感觉到我拥有一个自我，我可以驾驭，令其富有盛名的自我。然而当拍摄结束，我又会回到自己粗糙不明，笨拙的自我。

　　by 19, i was a fully-fledged movie actor, but still searching for definition. i applied to read anthropology at university. dr. phyllis lee gave me my interview, and she asked me, "how would you define race?" well, i thought i had the answer to that one, and i said, "skin color." "so biology, genetics?" she said. "because, thandie, that's not accurate. because there's actually more genetic difference between a black kenyan and a black ugandan than there is between a black kenyan and, say, a white norwegian. because we all stem from africa. so in africa, there's been more time to create genetic diversity." in other words, race has no basis in biological or scientific fact. on the one hand, result. right? on the other hand, my definition of self just lost a huge chunk of its credibility. but what was credible, what is biological and scientific fact, is that we all stem from africa -- in fact, from a woman called mitochondrial eve who lived 160,000 years ago. and race is an illegitimate concept which our selves have created based on fear and ignorance.

　　19岁的时候，我已经是富有经验的专业电影演员，而我还是在寻找自我的定义。我申请了大学的人类学专业。phyllis lee博士面试了我，她问我：“你怎么定义种族?”我觉得我很了解这个话题，我说：“肤色。”“那么生物上来说呢，例如遗传基因?”她说，“thandie 肤色并不全面，其实一个肯尼亚黑人和乌干达黑人之间基因差异比一个肯尼亚黑人和挪威白人之间差异要更多。因为我们都是从非洲来的，所以在非洲，基因变异演化的时间是最久的。”换句话说，种族在生物学或任何科学上都没有事实根据。另一方面，我对于自我的定义瞬时失去了一大片基础。 但那就是生物学事实，我们都是非洲后裔，一位在160 0xx年前的伟大女性mitochondrial eve的后人。而种族这个无效的概念是我们基于恐惧和无知自己捏造出来的。

　　strangely, these revelations didn't cure my low self-esteem, that feeling of otherness. my desire to disappear was still very powerful. i had a degree from cambridge; i had a thriving career, but my self was a car crash, and i wound up with bulimia and on a therapist's couch. and of course i did. i still believed my self was all i was. i still valued self-worth above all other worth, and what was there to suggest otherwise? we've created entire value systems and a physical reality to support the worth of self. look at the industry for self-image and the jobs it creates, the revenue it turns over. we'd be right in assuming that the self is an actual living thing. but it's not. it's a projection which our clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves from the reality of death.

　　奇怪的是，这个发现并没有治好我的自卑，那种被排挤的感觉。我还是那么强烈地想要离开消失。我从剑桥拿到了学位，我有份充满发展的工作，然而我的自我还是一团糟，我得了催吐病不得不接受治疗师的帮助。我还是相信自我是我的全部。我还是坚信“自我”的价值甚过一切。而且我们身处的世界就是如此，我们的整个价值系统和现实环境都是在服务“自我”的价值。看看不同行业里面对于自我的塑造，看看它们创造的那些工作，产出的那些利润。我们甚至必须相信自我是真实存在的。但它们不是，自我不过是我们聪明的脑袋假想出来骗自己不去思考死亡这个话题的幌子。

　　but there is something that can give the self ultimate and infinite connection -- and that thing is oneness, our essence. the self's struggle for authenticity and definition will never end unless it's connected to its creator -- to you and to me. and that can happen with awareness -- awareness of the reality of oneness and the projection of self-hood. for a start, we can think about all the times when we do lose ourselves. it happens when i dance, when i'm acting. i'm earthed in my essence, and my self is suspended. in those moments, i'm connected to everything -- the ground, the air, the sounds, the energy from the audience. all my senses are alert and alive in much the same way as an infant might feel -- that feeling of oneness.