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 It's no longer valid or real.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資訊。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，是他人自我的對映，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，對自我的解構是那麼頻繁，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。而想象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，棕色面板的寶寶誕生了。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面板無神論小孩。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。