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We spend so much of our lives trying to fulfill our distant ambitions: wanting to create the circumstances in which, finally, we'll be happy.
我们一生中很长时间都在努力实现自己的远大抱负：想要创造一个让我们最终获得幸福的环境。
We'll have worked everything out, organized our way of life and finally, we'll reach the place of contentment.
我们会把一切问题解决，理顺我们的生活，并且最终感到幸福。
It's an enchanting idea but, ironically, it means that most of the time we're restless because we're not there yet.
这是一个迷人的想法，但讽刺的是，这意味着在收获幸福之前，我们大部分时间都会处于焦躁不安之中。
The present is just the tedious, dreary period we have to get through until, in the future, we can finally relax and enjoy ourselves.
当下只是我们必须度过的乏味期和沉闷期，我们要坚持到未来能够放松和享受的那一刻。
The unexpected companion we perhaps need to ease our frustration is a bespectacled, Greek-speaking, middle-ranking civil servant: Constantine Cavafy - who was born in Alexandria in 1863.
能够缓解我们沮丧情绪的这个人或许会让你感到吃惊：他是一位戴着眼镜、讲希腊语的中级公务员，于1863年出生于亚历山大港，他就是康斯坦丁·卡瓦菲。
Cavafy often felt displaced; he lived almost all his life in Egypt but thought of himself as a citizen of Byzantium - once the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
卡瓦菲经常感觉自己流离失所；他一生中大部分时间都生活在埃及，但认为自己是拜占庭的公民——拜占庭曾是东罗马帝国的首都。
Cavafy only hit his creative stride in his forties and published little during his lifetime - held back by anxiety that the overtly homoerotic themes he often wanted to explore would be met only with condemnation.
40多岁时，卡瓦菲的创作才开始步入正轨，他一生中几乎没有发表过什么作品——因为担心他想要在作品中公开探索的同性恋主题只会让他受到谴责。
His poem that has most to help us, is usually contained in a book of his Collected Poems, and is titled Ithaka.
他对我们最有帮助的诗《伊萨卡》收录在他的一本诗集中。
Technically, the island of Ithaka was the home of the legendary Greek hero Ulysses - to which he spent ten adventurous years trying to return after the fall of Troy.
从事实上讲，伊萨卡岛是希腊传奇英雄尤利西斯的故乡——特洛伊沦陷后，他经历了十年的冒险，想要回到伊萨卡岛。
But in this poem, it signals whatever we imagine our destination in life to be.
但在这首诗中，它代表了我们想象的人生目的地。
It's the image we have in our heads of the distant time when we'll finally be able to live properly - maybe once we've found a partner or bought a house or have secured a divorce or made a fortune or retired.
我们脑海中想象，在遥远的将来，我们终于能够正常生活——那时候，我们可能找到了伴侣，买了房子，离婚了，赚了一大笔钱，或者退休了。
Cavafy doesn't want to help us to get to Ithaka more quickly; instead he wants to delay arrival as long as possible.
卡瓦菲不想让我们太快抵达伊萨卡；相反，他想尽可能让我们晚点到。
As you set out for Ithaka, he writes, hope your road is a long one.
当你出发前往伊塔卡时，他写道，希望你路途漫长。
Then Cavafy invokes what he calls 'harbors'.
然后，卡瓦菲提到了他所说的“港口”。
May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time; These, emphatically, are not our destination: they are the places, things, people and experiences we encounter precisely because we're not home yet and which won't any longer be available to us when we finally get there.
希望有很多夏日的早晨，你带着愉快的心情，走进你第一次见过的港口；这些肯定不是我们的目的地：它们是我们在旅途中才能到达的地点、见到的人和事，以及获得的经历；我们最终抵达目的地后，就不能再获得这些东西。
Cavafy’s ideal is that when we arrive at our home we may find that it is, in many ways, 'poor': that it has very little to offer us.
卡瓦菲的想法是，当我们到家时，我们可能会发现，我们的家在许多方面是‘贫瘠’的：它能给予我们的东西很少。
He writes, Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
他写道，伊塔卡给了你一段奇妙的旅程。
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
没有她，你就不会出发。
She has nothing left to give you now.
现在她没有什么能够给予你了。
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
如果你发现伊萨卡并不富庶，可不是她愚弄了你。
Wise as you will have become.
因为你将会变得聪慧。
If we live this way - with a warm sense of appreciation, with a sense of adventure, with a willingness to explore byways - our destination, when we get there, won't be the big fulfillment we once expected it to be.
如果我们以这种方式生活——带着温暖的眼光，带着冒险精神，带着探索旁路的意愿——当我们到达目的地时，就不会想让目的地来满足我们曾期待的成就感。
We'll have found our fulfillment along the way.
我们会在旅途中收获这种成就感。
It won't be what we find at the end that pleases us, so much as what we bring with us.
能让我们幸福的不是我们最后得到的东西，而是我们带来的东西。
It won't be marriage, making money or retiring that in itself is so great; what will matter is what we have discovered in ourselves before we have reached these destinations.
婚姻、赚钱或退休本身并没有那么伟大；重要的是我们在到达目的地之前，收获了怎样的自我。
