Home is where You are Happy
家是讓你快樂的地方
Every immigrant leads a double life.
每個移民都過著一種雙重生活,
Every immigrant has a double identity and a double vision,being suspended between an old and a new home,an old and a new self.
每個移民也都擁有雙重身份和雙重視野,他們的心總是在故土和新家中徘徊,在過往的自己和嶄新的自己之間找尋平衡。
The very notion of a new home, of course,is in a sense as impossible as the notion of new parents:
當然,從某種意義上來說,新家和新父母一樣,這一說法本身就是不成立的。
parents are who they are; home is what it is.
父母就是父母,家鄉就是家鄉。
Yet home, like parentage, must be legitimized through love;otherwise, it is only a fact of geography or biology.
然而,有愛才能稱其為真正的家鄉,就像父母與子女之間一樣,都需要用愛來使之成為可能;否則,家鄉和父母就僅僅是一個地理或者生物上的概念了。
Most immigrants to America found their love of their old homes betrayed:
來到美國的大多數移民雖然曾熱愛家鄉,但家鄉卻背叛了他們的愛;
They did not really abandon their countries;
并不是他們拋棄了家鄉而是家鄉拋棄了他們;
their countries abandoned them,and in America, they found the possibility of a new love,the chance to nurture new selves.
而在美國,他們卻發現,對新家園也能產生熱愛,塑造一個全新的自我不是沒有可能。
Not uniformly, not without exceptions.
并不完全統一,也不無例外,
Every generation has its Know-Nothing movement.
每一代都有它不可知的運動。
Its understandable fear and hatred of alien invasion is as true today as it always was,but in spite of all this,the American attitude remains unique.
這種對外族入境的擔心和厭惡任何時候都存在,這是可以理解的,但盡管如此,美國人的態度卻是獨一無二的。
Throughout history, exile has been a calamity;
縱觀人類歷史,流放異鄉已經成為人類歷史上的災難之一,
America turned it into a triumph and placed its immigrants in the center of a national epic.
而只有美國將此災難轉變成了勝利,移民成了美國民族史詩的中心組成部分。
The epic is possible because America is an idea as much as it is a country.
美國之所以能譜寫這樣的一首史詩,是與美國本身分不開的。
America has nothing to do with loyalty to a dynasty and very little to do with loyalty to a particular place,but everything to do with loyalty to a set of principles.
美國是一個國家,也是一種理念。王朝擁戴,圣地朝拜和美國都沒有一丁點關系,美國人所尊崇的是一套原則。
To immigrants, those principles are especially real because so often they were absent or violated in their native lands.
對于移民來說,這些原則來得特別真切,因為在他們的故土上,這些原則不是被頻繁踐踏,就是已經不復存在。
It was no accident in the '60s and '70s,when alienation was in flower,that it often seemed to be "native" Americans who felt alienated,while aliens or the children of aliens upheld the native values.
因此,在六七十年代那個充斥著疏離感的時候,似乎感到疏離的往往是美國人,異鄉人和他們的子女反而能夠堅守其本土價值觀—這也是在情理之中的。
"Home is where you are happy."
家就是能讓你開心的地方。
Sentimental, perhaps, and certainly not conventionally patriotic,but is appropriate for a country that wrote the pursuit of happiness into its founding document.
聽起來也許有些傷感,但這句話里已不再含有纏頭的愛國情結了。不過,這句話對于這個將追求幸福寫入憲法的國家來說是再恰當不過了,
That pursuit continues for the immigrant in America,and it never stops, but it comes to rest at a certain moment.
美國的移民們繼續著他們對幸福的追求,從不止步。
The moment occurs perhaps when the immigrant's double life and double vision converge toward a single state of mind,when the old life, the old home fade into a certain unreality:
也許,這一刻就是移民的雙重身份和雙重視野開始趨于專一心智之時,此時,他們對家鄉以及家鄉生活的懷念逐漸淡化,
places one merely visits, practicing the tourism of memory.
家鄉已經成為某種幻影—僅僅是一個旅游目的地,借此追憶往事而已。
It occurs when the immigrant learns his ultimate lesson:above all countries, America, if loved, returns love.
這時,移民也學到了他們人生的終極一課:在所有國家中,美國—如果得到了愛,必定回報以愛。