thandie newton embracing otherness, embracing myself
擁抱他人，擁抱自己
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.
擁抱他類。當我第一次聽說這個主題時，我心想，擁抱他類不就是擁抱自己嗎。我個人懂得理解和接受他類的經歷很有趣，讓我對於“自己”這個詞也有了新的認識，我想今天在這裡和你們分享下我的心得體會。
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 it's no longer valid or real.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?
我們每個人都有個自我，但並不是生來就如此的。你知道新生的寶寶們覺得他們是任何東西的一部分，而不是分裂的個體。這種本源上的“天人合一”感在我們出生後很快就不見了，就好像我們人生的第一個篇章--和諧統一：嬰兒，未成形，原始--結束了。它們似幻似影，而現實的世界是孤獨彼此分離的。而在孩童期的某段時間，我們開始形成自我這個觀點。宇宙中的小小個體有了自己的名字，有了自己的過去等等各種信息。這些關於自己的細節，看法和觀點慢慢變成事實，成為我們身份的一部分。而那個自我，也變成我們人生路上前行的導航儀。然後，這個所謂的自我，是他人自我的映射，還是我們真實的自己呢?我們究竟想成為什麼樣，應該成為什麼樣的呢?
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?
這個和自我打交道，尋找自己身份的過程在我的成長記憶中一點都不容易。我想成為的那些“自我”不斷被否定再否定，而我害怕自己無法融入周遭的環境，因被否定而引起的困惑讓我變得更加憂慮，感到羞恥和無望，在很長一段時間就是我存在狀態。然而回頭看，對自我的解構是那么頻繁，以至於我發現了這樣一種規律。自我是變化的，受他人影響，分裂或被打敗，而另一個自我會產生，這個自我可能更堅強，可能更可憎，有時你也不想變成那樣。所謂自我不是固定不變的。而我需要經歷多少次自我的破碎重生才會明白其實自我從來沒有存在過?
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年代英格蘭海邊長大，我的父親是康沃爾的白人，母親是辛巴威的黑人。而想像我和父母是一家人對於其他人來說總是不太自然。自然有它自己的魔術，棕色皮膚的寶寶誕生了。但 從我五歲開始，我就有種感覺我不是這個群體的。我是一個全白人天主教會學校裡面黑皮膚無神論小孩。我與他人是不同的，而那個熱衷於歸屬的自我卻到處尋找方式尋找歸屬感。這種認同感讓自我感受到存在感和重要性，因此十分重要。這點是如此重要，如果沒有自我，我們根本無法與他人溝通。沒有它，我們無所適從，無法獲取成功或變得受人歡迎。但我的膚色不對，我的頭髮不對，我的過去不對，我的一切都是另類定義的，在這個社會裡，我其實並不真實存在。我首先是個異類，其次才是個女孩。我是可見卻毫無意義的人。
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.
這時候，另一個世界向我敞開了大門：舞蹈表演。那種關於自我的嘮叨恐懼在舞蹈時消失了，我放開四肢，也成為了一位不錯的舞者。我將所有的情緒都融入到舞蹈的動作中去，我可以在舞蹈中與自己相溶，儘管在現實生活中卻無法做到。
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歲的時候，我遇到了另一個機會，第一部參演的電影。我無法用語言來表達在演戲的時候我所感受到的平和，我無處著落的自我可以與那個角色融為一體，而不是我自己。那感覺真棒。這是第一次我感覺到我擁有一個自我，我可以駕馭，令其富有盛名的自我。然而當拍攝結束，我又會回到自己粗糙不明，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歲的時候，我已經是富有經驗的專業電影演員，而我還是在尋找自我的定義。我申請了大學的人類學專業。phyllis lee博士面試了我，她問我：“你怎么定義種族?”我覺得我很了解這個話題，我說：“膚色。”“那么生物上來說呢，例如遺傳基因?”她說，“thandie 膚色並不全面，其實一個肯亞黑人和烏干達黑人之間基因差異比一個肯亞黑人和挪威白人之間差異要更多。因為我們都是從非洲來的，所以在非洲，基因變異演化的時間是最久的。”換句話說，種族在生物學或任何科學上都沒有事實根據。另一方面，我對於自我的定義瞬時失去了一大片基礎。 但那就是生物學事實，我們都是非洲後裔，一位在160 0xx年前的偉大女性mitochondrial eve的後人。而種族這個無效的概念是我們基於恐懼和無知自己捏造出來的。
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，這個發現並沒有治好我的自卑，那種被排擠的感覺。我還是那么強烈地想要離開消失。我從劍橋拿到了學位，我有份充滿發展的工作，然而我的自我還是一團糟，我得了催吐病不得不接受治療師的幫助。我還是相信自我是我的全部。我還是堅信“自我”的價值甚過一切。而且我們身處的世界就是如此，我們的整個價值系統和現實環境都是在服務“自我”的價值。看看不同行業裡面對於自我的塑造，看看它們創造的那些工作，產出的那些利潤。我們甚至必須相信自我是真實存在的。但它們不是，自我不過是我們聰明的腦袋假想出來騙自己不去思考死亡這個話題的幌子。
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.