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  3. Middle-aged, unemployed, single and my money spent, I’m an utter failure in comparison to many of my college peers. I graduat

Middle-aged, unemployed, single and my money spent, I’m an utter failure in comparison to many of my college peers. I graduat

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问题    Middle-aged, unemployed, single and my money spent, I’m an utter failure in comparison to many of my college peers.
   I graduated from an elite university in the 1980s. My class of approximately 1 550 has generated a Nobel Prize winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a World Bank chief, a few ambassadors, at least one current governor and several mayors. I know former classmates who are university presidents, college professors, CEOs and so on.
   What a load of over-achievers!
   Meanwhile, the rest of us remain uncelebrated, absent from the public eye, not courted by private bankers, nosy paparazzi, respected charities, luxury real estate agents or art auction houses.
   Post-graduate achievement is usually measured in degrees earned and awarded, class rankings, corporate titles, magazine covers and social media popularity, and money made. At elite institutions’ alumni gatherings, the bar for storytelling is set high, with summary biographies of our most luminous graduates shared in hushed murmurs. How can we compare ourselves to our peers’ stupendously visible achievements and not think ourselves failures?
   In the 1800s, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (克尔凯郭尔) addressed the same question with his own story: "The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air. " In it, Kierkegaard describes a little bird that loves to gossip to its friend the lily. The bird, he writes, has a bad habit of saying "all sorts of things, true and untrue, about other places where lilies far more splendid were found in great abundance. " The listening lily, in turn, becomes troubled. Seeing its own unsplendid existence in comparison to the bird’s fantastic tales of other and better lilies, the lily begins to doubt whether it deserves to call itself a lily at all.
   In the distress of comparison, the troubled person may go at last so far that in view of the difference he forgets that he is a man. In despair, he conceives himself so different from other men, that he even conceives he is different from what is meant by being a man, just as the lily was so inconspicuous that it was questionable if it was really a lily.
   In other words, it’s not just painful to doubt. To measure success in any way but from the inside is to rock the foundations of your identity.
   Most of us are already busy enough trying to get by. We are busy with the practical tasks of everyday living, doing and redoing, learning and changing, and sometimes staying the course. We might compare our performance on an examination, or a recent grant proposal; but to compare ourselves against others in the totality of being a successful adult is odious and futile.
   Many of us are not the kind of successful that’s easy to see. Many of us who have enjoyed financial success were extremely fortune, but perhaps not so lucky in love. Many of us understand now that no matter how hard you work or how brilliant you might be, luck has far more to do with " success" than one might imagine.
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答案 人到中年、待业单身，又了无积蓄，与许多大学同学相比，我是个彻头彻尾的失败者。 20世纪80年代，我从一所顶尖大学毕业。与我同届毕业的约有1 550人，其中出了一位诺贝尔奖得主、一位普利策奖得主、一位世界银行高层、几位大使，至少一位在任州长以及多位市长。我还知道一些同学如今担任着高校校长、大学教授、公司首席执行官等职务。 佼佼者何其多! 与此同时，我们这些余下的人则默默无闻，远离公众视野，不会受到私人银行家的青睐，不会遭到好事的狗仔队的跟踪，也不会受到那些备受推崇的慈善机构、豪宅经纪人以及艺术品拍卖行的热捧。 一个人毕业后的成就通常由其所获学位、社会阶层、公司头衔、登上杂志封面的次数、社交媒体上的受欢迎程度以及创造财富的多少衡量。顶尖大学的校友聚会上，只有达到极高标准者才有资格讲述自己的故事。大家压低了嗓门，在窃窃私语中交流着最鲜亮耀眼的校友的辉煌事迹。在同学们惊人的显著成就面前，我们怎么可能不感到自己是失败者? 19世纪丹麦哲学家索伦-克尔凯郭尔在自己的故事《田野里的百合和空中的飞鸟》中提出过同样的问题。故事中，克尔凯郭尔刻画了一只喜欢和百合闲话家常的小鸟。他写道，这只小鸟有个坏习惯，总爱“或真或假地讲述在其他地方有大片更加绚丽多彩的百合花”。听了小鸟的故事，百合感到很困扰。和小鸟奇妙故事中那些更为绚烂的百合相比，自己太过平淡无奇，它甚至开始怀疑自己究竟配不配自称百合。 在比较所带来的痛苦下，困扰中的人最终可能迷失自我，甚至可能在看到自己与他人的差距时忘记自己也是个人。绝望中，他自认为与众不同，甚至认为自己有别于真正意义上的“人”，就像百合觉得自己太不起眼，以至于怀疑自己是否真的是朵百合花一样。 换句话说，怀疑不仅带来痛苦，任何不是从内部价值衡量成功的方式都会动摇你的身份根基。 我们中的大多数人都在忙着勉强度日。我们忙着应付日常生活的各种现实问题，日复一日，学着变通，偶尔坚持到底。我们可能会拿自己在一次考试中的成绩，或者最近的一项提案来比较自己的表现，但拿自己和别人相比以检验自己是否是成功人士，不仅毫无意义，也很令人厌烦。 我们很多人获得的都不是显而易见的成功。获得财富成就的人大多是极其幸运的，但在感情上他们不一定也有如此好的运气。现在，很多人终于明白，不管你工作多努力，也不管你脑袋多聪明，运气在“成功”中的作用远比想象中大。
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