愛(ài)情不是商品 Love Is Not Like Merchandise

A reader in Florida, apparently bruised by somepersonal experience, writes in to complain, “If I steala nickel’s worth of merchandise, I am a thief andpunished; but if I steal the love of another’s wife, Iam free.”

佛羅里達(dá)州的一位讀者顯然是在個(gè)人經(jīng)歷上受過(guò)創(chuàng)傷, 他寫(xiě)信來(lái)抱怨道: “如果我偷走了五分錢(qián)的商品, 我就是個(gè)賊, 要受到懲罰, 但是如果我偷走了他人妻子的愛(ài)情, 我沒(méi)事兒。”

 

 

This is a prevalent misconception in many people’s minds—that love, like merchandise, canbe “stolen”. Numerous states, in fact, have enacted laws allowing damages for “alienation ofaffections”.

這是許多人心目中普遍存在的一種錯(cuò)誤觀念——愛(ài)情, 像商品一樣, 可以 “偷走”。實(shí)際上，許多州都頒布法令，允許索取“情感轉(zhuǎn)讓”賠償金。

But love is not a commodity; the real thing cannot be bought, sold, traded or stolen. It is anact of the will, a turning of the emotions, a change in the climate of the personality.

但是愛(ài)情并不是商品;真情實(shí)意不可能買(mǎi)到，賣(mài)掉，交換，或者偷走。愛(ài)情是志愿的行動(dòng)，是感情的轉(zhuǎn)向，是個(gè)性發(fā)揮上的變化。

When a husband or wife is “stolen” by another person, that husband or wife was already ripefor the stealing, was already predisposed toward a new partner. The “love bandit” was onlytaking what was waiting to be taken, what wanted to be taken.

當(dāng)丈夫或妻子被另一個(gè)人“偷走”時(shí)，那個(gè)丈夫或妻子就已經(jīng)具備了被偷走的條件，事先已經(jīng)準(zhǔn)備接受新的伴侶了。這位“愛(ài)匪”不過(guò)是取走等人取走、盼人取走的東西。

We tend to treat persons like goods. We even speak of the children “belonging” to theirparents. But nobody “belongs” to anyone else. Each person belongs to himself, and to God.Children are entrusted to their parents, and if their parents do not treat them properly, thestate has a right to remove them from their parents’ trusteeship.

我們往往待人如物。我們甚至說(shuō)孩子“屬于”父母。但是誰(shuí)也不“屬于”誰(shuí)。人都屬于自己和上帝。孩子是托付給父母的，如果父母不善待他們，州政府就有權(quán)取消父母對(duì)他們的托管身份。

Most of us, when young, had the experience of a sweetheart being taken from us by somebodymore attractive and more appealing. At the time, we may have resented this intruder—but aswe grew older, we recognized that the sweetheart had never been ours to begin with. It wasnot the intruder that “caused” the break, but the lack of a real relationship.

我們多數(shù)人年輕時(shí)都有過(guò)戀人被某個(gè)更有誘惑力、更有吸引力的人奪去的經(jīng)歷。在當(dāng)時(shí)，我們興許怨恨這位不速之客—但是后來(lái)長(zhǎng)大了，也就認(rèn)識(shí)到了心上人本來(lái)就不屬于我們。并不是不速之客“導(dǎo)致了”決裂，而是缺乏真實(shí)的關(guān)系。

On the surface, many marriages seem to break up because of a “third party”. This is, however,a psychological illusion. The other woman or the other man merely serves as a pretext fordissolving a marriage that had already lost its essential integrity.

從表面上看，許多婚姻似乎是因?yàn)橛辛?ldquo;第三者”才破裂的。然而這是一種心理上的幻覺(jué)。另外那個(gè)女人，或者另外那個(gè)男人，無(wú)非是作為借口，用來(lái)解除早就不是完好無(wú)損的婚姻罷了。

Nothing is more futile and more self-defeating than the bitterness of spurned love, thevengeful feeling that someone else has “come between” oneself and a beloved. This is always adistortion of reality, for people are not the captives or victims of others—they are free agents,working out their own destinies for good or for ill.

因失戀而痛苦，因別人“插足”于自己與心上人之間而圖報(bào)復(fù)，是最沒(méi)有出息、最自作自受的樂(lè)。這種事總是歪曲了事實(shí)真相，因?yàn)檎l(shuí)都不是給別人當(dāng)俘虜或犧牲品——人都是自由行事的，不論命運(yùn)是好是壞，都由自己來(lái)作主。

But the rejected lover or mate cannot afford to believe that his beloved has freely turned awayfrom him— and so he ascribes sinister or magical properties to the interloper. He calls him ahypnotist or a thief or a home-breaker. In the vast majority of cases, however, when a homeis broken, the breaking has begun long before any “third party” has appeared on the scene.

但是，遭離棄的情人或配偶無(wú)法相信她的心上人是自由地背離他的——因而他歸咎于插足者心術(shù)不正或迷人有招。他把他叫做催眠師、竊賊或破壞家庭的人。然而，從大多數(shù)事例看，一個(gè)家的破裂，是早在什么“第三者”出現(xiàn)之前就開(kāi)始了的。