——选自The Guardian 网站（吉玛译）
Perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all – that’s why perfect contentment has probably been evolvedout of us.
永恒的幸福会渐渐的破坏我们完成任何事情的意志——这就是为什么我们不知足的原因。
In the 1990s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movement, which placed the study of human happiness squarely at the center of psychology research and theory. It continued a trend that began in the 1960s with humanistic and existential psychology, which emphasized the importance of reaching one’s innate potential and creating meaning in one’s life, respectively.
20世纪90年代，心理学家马丁·塞利格曼领导了积极心理学运动，将研究人类幸福作为心理学研究和理论的中心思想。自20世纪60年代，它成为了人文主义和存在主义心理学的一种趋势，分别强调了实现人类内在潜能和创造生命意义的重要性。
Since then, thousands of studies and hundreds of books have been published with the goal of increasing wellbeing and helping people lead more satisfying lives.
从那以后，以提高福利，帮助人们过上令人满意生活为目的，成千上万的研究和数以百计的书籍出版了。
So why aren’t we happier? Why have self-reported measures of happiness stayed stagnant for over 40 years?
那么，为什么我们没有更快乐呢?为什么过去的40年里自我幸福指标一直停滞不前?
Perversely, such efforts to improve happiness could be a futile attempt to swim against the tide, as we may actually be programmed to be dissatisfied most of the time.
反常的是，改善幸福所做的努力可能是逆流而行的徒劳徒劳无功，因为我们在大多数情况下都是不满足。
Part of the problem is that happiness isn’t just one thing.
问题的关键在于，幸福不是一件事。
Jennifer Hecht is a philosopher who studies the history of happiness. In her book The Happiness Myth, Hecht proposes that we all experience different types of happiness, but these aren’t necessarily complementary. Some types of happiness may even conflict with one another. In other words, having too much of one type of happiness may undermine our ability to have enough of the others – so it’s impossible for us to simultaneously have all types of happiness in great quantities.
詹妮弗·赫克特是一位研究幸福的哲学家。她在《幸福神话》一书中提出，我们都经历过不同类型的幸福，但他们并不一定是互补的。有些类型的幸福甚至会彼此冲突。换句话说，拥有过多类型的幸福可能会削弱我们拥有其他幸福的能力——所以我们不可能同时拥有所有类型的幸福。
For example, a satisfying life built on a successful career and a good marriage is something that unfolds over a long period of time. It takes a lot of work, and it often requires avoiding hedonistic pleasures like partying or going on spur-of-the-moment trips. It also means you can’t while away too much of your time spending one pleasant lazy day after another in the company of good friends.
例如，令人满意的生活是建立在成功的事业和美满的婚姻的基础上，需要长时间才能展现出来。需要下功夫，通常需要避免沉溺在参加聚会或者是心血来潮的旅行的快感中。这也意味着你不能把太多的时间浪费在一个又一个愉快慵懒的日子里。
On the other hand, keeping your nose to the grindstone demands that you cut back on many of life’s pleasures. Relaxing days and friendships may fall by the wayside.
另一方面，埋头苦干需要减少许多生活乐趣。轻松的时光和友谊会稍纵即逝。
As happiness in one area of life increases, it’ll often decline in another.
随着生活中的某一领域幸福感的增强，其他领域的幸福感会下降。
This dilemma is further confounded by the way our brains process the experience of happiness.
大脑处理幸福经历的方式会进一步混淆面临的困境。
By way of illustration, consider the following examples.
举例说明。
We’ve all started a sentence with the phrase “Won’t it be great when…” (I go to college, fall in love, have kids, etc). Similarly, we often hear older people start sentences with this phrase “Wasn’t it great when…”.
我们都以“将来...就好了”开始一句话(上大学,恋爱,有了孩子,等)。同样的,我们经常听到老人都以“当初…就好了”开始一句话。
Think about how seldom you hear anyone say: “Isn’t this great, right now?”
想想，你应该很少听到有人说:“现在，这不是很棒吗?”
Surely, our past and future aren’t always better than the present. Yet we continue to think that this is the case.
当然，我们的过去和未来并不总是比现在好。然而，我们仍然认为现在不好。
These are the bricks that wall off harsh reality from the part of our mind that thinks about past and future happiness. Entire religions have been constructed from them. Whether we’re talking about our ancestral Garden of Eden (when things were great!) or the promise of unfathomable future happiness in Heaven, Valhalla, Jannah or Vaikuntha, eternal happiness is always the carrot dangling from the end of the divine stick.
就像是一堵墙，将残酷的现实从我们头脑中对过去和未来幸福回忆中隔离出来。他们创造了一种宗教信仰。无论我们谈及到的祖传的伊甸园(当一切都很美好的时候)，还是对未来在在天堂、瓦尔哈拉殿堂、天国或无忧世界的幸福承诺，永恒的幸福是总悬挂神圣的棍子的末端诱饵。
There’s evidence for why our brains operate this way: most of us possess something called the optimistic bias, which is the tendency to think that our future will be better than our present.
证据表明我们的大脑运作的方式:大多数人都会有一种叫做乐观偏见的东西，引领我们认为我们的未来会比现在更好。
To demonstrate this phenomenon to my classes, at the beginning of a new term I’ll tell my students the average grade received by all students in my class over the past three years. I then ask them to anonymously report the grade that they expect to receive. The demonstration works like a charm: without fail, the expected grades are far higher than one would reasonably expect, given the evidence at hand.
在我的课堂上证明这一现象，在新学期开始时，我告诉班上所有学生过去三年里平均成绩。然后我让他们匿名提交他们的期望成绩。这个验证就像个魔法:无疑，证据在握，期望成绩要远远高于合理的预期。
And yet, we believe.
然而,我们相信。
Cognitive psychologists have also identified something called the Pollyanna principle. It means that we process, rehearse and remember pleasant information from the past more than unpleasant information. (An exception to this occurs in depressed individuals who often fixate on past failures and disappointments.)
认知心理学家也发现了所谓的“乐观原则”。这意味着我们要处理、排练和回忆过去令人愉快的信息，而不是令人不快的信息。(那些经常纠结于过去的失败和失望的沮丧的人是个例外。)
For most of us, however, the reason that the good old days seem so good is that we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the day-to-day unpleasantness.
然而，对大多数人来说，过去美好的日子之所以如此美好，是因为我们专注于愉快的事情，往往忘记了日复一日的不愉快。
These delusions about the past and the future could be an adaptive part of the human psyche, with innocent self-deceptions actually enabling us to keep striving. If our past is great and our future can be even better, then we can work our way out of the unpleasant – or at least, mundane – present.这些关于过去和未来的错觉可能是人类心理的一种适应性机制，用无辜的自我欺骗使我们能够在现实中继续奋斗。如果我们的过去是美好的，我们的未来会更好，那么我们就可以走出不愉快的——或者至少摆脱平凡的现在。
All of this tells us something about the fleeting nature of happiness. Emotion researchers have long known about something called the hedonic treadmill. We work very hard to reach a goal, anticipating the happiness it will bring. Unfortunately, after a brief fix we quickly slide back to our baseline, ordinary way of being and start chasing the next thing we believe will almost certainly – and finally – make us happy.
所有这些都告诉我们幸福的短暂本质。情感研究人员早就知道所谓的享乐适应症。我们努力工作以达到一个目标，期待它带来的幸福。不幸的是，在短暂的准备后，我们很快回到了我们的底线，回到普通的生活方式，开始追逐下一件我们相信的最后肯定可以让我们快乐的事情。
My students absolutely hate hearing about this; they get bummed out when I imply that however happy they are right now, it’s probably about how happy they will be 20 years from now. (Next time, perhaps I will reassure them that in the future they’ll remember being very happy in college!)
我的学生非常讨厌听到这个;他们会很沮丧，当我暗示他们现在很幸福时，这可能是他们20年后的幸福程度。(下一次，也许我会让他们相信，在未来他们会记得在大学时里的欢乐!)
Nevertheless, studies of lottery winners and other individuals at the top of their game – those who seem to have it all – regularly throw cold water on the dream that getting what we really want will change our lives and make us happier. These studies found that positive events like winning a million bucks and unfortunate events such as being paralyzed in an accident do not significantly affect an individual’s long-term level of happiness.
尽管如此，对彩票中奖者和其他游戏的佼佼者进行研究——他们似乎拥有一切——经常泼冷水，我们真正想要的东西会改变我们的生活，让我们更快乐。这些研究发现，像赢得100万美元这样的积极事件，以及在意外事故中瘫痪等不幸事件，并不会显著影响个人的长期幸福水平。
Assistant professors who dream of attaining tenure and lawyers who dream of making partner often find themselves wondering why they were in such a hurry. After finally publishing a book, it was depressing for me to realize how quickly my attitude went from “I’m a guy who wrote a book!” to “I’m a guy who’s only written one book”.
希望获得终身教职的助理教授和那些梦想成为合伙人的律师经常会想自己为什么如此匆忙。在出版了一本书后，我很沮丧地意识到我的态度很快从“我是写书的人!”转变成“我是一个只写了一本书的人”。
But this is how it should be, at least from an evolutionary perspective. Dissatisfaction with the present and dreams of the future are what keep us motivated, while warm fuzzy memories of the past reassure us that the feelings we seek can be had. In fact, perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all; among our earliest ancestors, those who were perfectly content may have been left in the dust.
但至少从进化的角度来看，这就是事实。对现实的不满和对未来的憧憬让我们充满动力，而对过去温暖模糊的回忆让我们确信，我们可以实现我们所追求的。事实上，永恒的幸福会渐渐的破坏我们完成任何事情的意志; 最早的祖先中，那些满足的人可能已经消失在尘埃中。
This shouldn’t be depressing – quite the contrary. Recognizing that happiness exists, and that it’s a delightful visitor that never overstays its welcome, may help us appreciate it more when it arrives.
这并不令人沮丧——恰恰相反。认识到幸福是存在的，它是一个令人愉快的访客，没有逾期逗留的欢迎，当它到来的时候，我们会更加感激。
Furthermore, understanding that it’s impossible to have happiness in all aspects of life can help you enjoy the happiness that has touched you.
此外，要明白不可能在生活的各个方面都拥有幸福，这能帮助你享受你所拥有的幸福。
Recognizing that no one “has it all” can cut down on the one thing psychologists know impedes happiness: envy.
心理学家认为阻碍幸福的因素是:嫉妒。我们要知道到没有人可以“拥有一切”来减少嫉妒。
