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It sounds like a very mean and undemocratic thought,
这听起来像是一个刻薄的和专制的想法，
trading off the peculiar glamour that has in a Romantic culture – in order to gain an oblique sense of superiority
它利用了孤独在浪漫主义文化中所具有的特殊魅力——为了获得一种间接的优越感，
and perhaps pass off an absence of social skills as a virtue.
也许还会把社交技能的缺乏当作一种美德。
It is important, therefore, to be clear what is meant here by intelligence.
因此，弄清楚这里所指智慧的概念是很重要的。
It has nothing to do with degrees or any of the criteria by which we ordinarily measure cleverness.
它与学位或任何我们通常衡量智力的标准无关。
What is meant is emotional intelligence, which exists (or not) in every strata and nook of society.
这里的意思是情感商数，它存在(或不存在)于社会的各个阶层和角落。
Emotional intelligence means a capacity for self-honesty and self-observation;
情商意味着自我正视和自我观察的能力;
it means, a knack for opening oneself up to the stranger,
它意味着向陌生人敞开心扉的技巧，
more exciting, less easily admissible aspects of oneself
展露出自己更兴奋却也更不容易被陌生人接纳的一面，
and at the same time for noticing the many beautiful, peculiar and profound experiences and sensations passing through consciousness.
以及对许多美丽、奇特和深刻的经历和感觉的感知能力。
We’re not used to doing this.
对我们来说，这些并不是习以为常的。
We cleave tightly to reassuring notions of what normal people are like, which means we exclude a lot – often the richest bit – of what we truly feel, want and think.
我们反复确认自己维持着普通人的样子，这也意味着我们排除掉了——往往也最丰富的东西——我们真正的感觉、欲望和思考。
We edit out our more generous, wilder, more impatient, more terrifying sides;
我们屏蔽掉自己更慷慨、更狂野、更急躁、更可怕的一面;
leaving only the socially admissible husk that we artfully pretend is who we are.
只留下我们巧妙伪装的、被社会认可的面具。
And simultaneously, we ensure that we are never far from something that can take us powerfully away from ourselves,
与此同时，我们确保自己永远不会远离那些能让我们丧失自我的东西，
and so miss out on the troubling wonders that streak across the mental horizon at every instant.
以便忽略那些无时无刻不在脑中闪现的令人不安的疑惑。
Most of what is in our minds remains unfelt and unseen, troubling us only in the small hours.
我们脑中的绝大多数想法都被无视和忽略，它们只在凌晨才冒出来烦扰我们。
Insomnia is the revenge for all that we tried so hard not to notice in the daylight.
失眠是对我们白天极力掩藏不去感知的报复。
In this context, emotional intelligence emerges as a species of courage, directed at vanquishing not an external enemy but a fear of being weird or of going mad.
正因如此，情商作为一种勇气的象征出现了，它不是用来战胜外部敌人的，而是用来战胜对自己变得怪异或疯狂的畏惧。
A certain sort of intelligent person is, above all else, a superior and more committed reporter of their inner states.
拥有这种智慧的人像一个比其他人更加强大、更加忠诚于自己内心的报道员。
Or, as Emerson once put it, ‘In the minds of geniuses, we find – once more – our own neglected thoughts.’
或者，正如爱默生曾经说过的那样:“在天才的头脑中，我们再一次发现了我们自己被忽视的思想。”
It is almost certain that people who have devoted themselves to self-honesty and self-observation
几乎可以肯定的是，那些致力于自我正视和自我观察的人，
have an above average chance of meeting with incomprehension, irritation, censorship or boredom when they attempt to share the data from their own minds frankly in company.
当他们试图在同伴中坦率地分享自己的思想时，遭遇不理解、愤怒、审视或无聊反馈的几率要高于平均水平。
Their thoughts (it might be on politics or architecture, family life or sexuality) will sound more threatening, intense, oblique or tender than is allowed.
他们的想法(可能是关于政治、建筑、家庭生活或性的)听起来会比一般的言论更有威胁性、更强烈、或者更迂回、更委婉。
That feels lonely, if one is in the mood to frame things like this. There are simply fewer people at large committed to self-honesty and self-observation – and therefore up for exchanging notes on what it’s truly like to be alive.
如果一个人有心情去描述这种想法，那就会感到孤独。基本上，很少有人热衷于自我正视和自我观察——更不会去交流活着的真实感受。
Yet there is one resource that is exceptionally well suited to address the feelings of disconnection liable to be felt by the emotionally intelligent: art.
然而，有一种资源非常适合用来解决高情商人士可能感受到的脱节感——艺术。
Works of art are humanity’s secret diary: records of all that could not be said in regular social contexts, but which have found a home in the more intimate, honest communication that can take place between an art-work and its audience.
艺术作品是人类的秘密日记:记录了所有在常规的社会环境中不能说的事情，高情商人士得以在艺术作品与观众更亲密、更诚实的交流中找到了归宿。
The libraries, cinemas and galleries of the world are repositories for all the sensations that didn’t easily make it into standard interactions and that contain what we need to state, and crave to hear as audiences, in our lonely states.
世界上的图书馆、电影院和画廊是存放一切无法轻易在常规的活动中得以交流的感觉的宝库，它们包含了我们作为观众，在孤独状态下需要陈述和渴望被倾听的东西。
Therefore, while emotionally intelligent people may have an uncommonly hard time not being lonely with a person, they have an unusually easy time finding company with people who are not in the room, the fancy term for which we call art.
因此，尽管高情商的人或许跟其他人在一起时很难不感到孤独，但他们却很容易找到不在房间里的人做伴，这就是我们以“艺术”命名的东西。
We have perhaps over-privileged certain standard notions of friendship.
我们对友谊的某些标准概念要求过于严格。
We may just have to accept that our best friends could have died 250 years ago – and be chatting to us via dabs of paint or within rhyming pentameters.
或许我们不得不接受这样一个事实:我们最好的朋友可能在250年前就已经去世了——他们还在用颜料或五音步诗行和我们交流。
That said, the goal shouldn’t be a society where art is ever more prevalent and more available when loneliness strikes.
但我们的理想不是身处于这样一个社会——当孤独袭来时，艺术变得更普遍、更容易获得的社会。
It is perhaps a society where art is ever less necessary – because we have grown better at knowing how to share more of who we are in the ordinary moments of our lives;
而是在这个社会里，艺术越来越没有必要了——因为我们越来越懂得如何在日常生活中更多地分享自己;
where we have found a more direct and reliable path out from our loneliness.
在这里我们能够找到了一条更直接、更可靠的摆脱孤独的道路。
