中英字幕 One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others. 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. 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. 在婴儿时期，最美好的事情之一就是我们的想法可以被别人读懂，我们不需要说什么，周围的人就会主动猜测我们的意图，并且通常，他们都能猜对，他们会准确地猜测到我们是想喝牛奶，或是太阳照到我们的眼睛了是时候该睡觉了，或者我们只是想再次晃动钥匙。 This may be highly gratifying and important to us in infancy, but it can set up dangerous expectations for the rest of our lives. 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. We can stay silent; they will mindread. 这一特征在婴儿时期可能会令我们非常满足，并且非常重要，但它也可能为我们日后的生活设下危险的期望，它会使我们产生这样一种感觉：任何人，尤其是声称在意我们的人应该能够读懂我们最深的愿望和希望，而不需要我们过多的解释，我们可以保持沉默，他们会读懂我们的心。 This explains a widespread tendency to assume that others must know what we mean and want without us having actually told them anything clearly. 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. 这解释了一种普遍的倾向，即认为哪怕我们实际上没有明确说明，别人也一定知道我们的意思和要求。我们认为，我们的爱人一定知道我们在为什么而烦恼，我们的朋友应该意识到我们的敏感之处，我们的同事一定凭直觉就能掌握我们希望在展示中做的事情。 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, that curious pattern of behaviour whereby we punish people for having committed offences whose precise nature we refuse to reveal to them. 此外，我们还认为如果他们做不到，那么这一定说明他们不够好，装傻或是愚蠢，因此我们有理由生闷气，在这种奇怪的行为模式中，我们因对方的错误而惩罚他们，却拒绝向其透露真实的原因。 But in all this, we have, somewhere along the path of our development, forgotten the fundamental importance of teaching. Teaching isn’t a distinctive profession focused on imparting knowledge about science and the humanities to the under-18s. 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’: 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… 但这一切归根结底是我们在成长中忘记了教学的根本重要性，教学并不只是一个专注于向18岁以下人传授科学和人文知识的独特职业，它是一项我们必须每天都付诸实践的技能，是一门我们必须通过努力和耐心精通的课程，而课程要传授的主题就叫做“我们自己”：我们喜欢什么，我们害怕什么，我们期待什么，我们想从这个世界上得到什么，以及我们对事物有什么样的期望。 Babies, for all their intelligence and charm, only care about a handful of things; 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. We should strive to deliver a few 'seminars’ on our views before allowing ourselves to grow resentful and sullen. 婴儿，尽管他们很聪明也很可爱，但他们所关心的就只有少数几件事情，而一个普通的成年人对于各种话题都有着自己固有的想法，从正确的治理国家到正确关闭冰箱门的方法，我们应该学着先多表达自己的观点和看法，不要直接就放任自己陷入愤恨和郁闷之中。 Yet how understandable – in a sense – if we should fail so badly in our teaching duties. We’re not necessarily being lazy or unkind. 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. We never had to bother with all that in the early years. We may be more nostalgic for our infancy than we might have dared to imagine. 然而从某些方面这也说明，如果我们在教学这件事情上做得很失败，也是可以理解的，这并不一定是因为我们懒惰或不友善，只是我们很难相信，真的会有人需要我们向他们进一步详细地介绍和讲述我们的内心。在小时候，我们从来不需要为这些事情烦恼，我们可能比自己所想的还要依赖从前婴儿的时期。
