Tony and Mohamad
Tony和Mohamad
Almost every year since I discovered it, I read this passage from Tony Jarvis, former Headmaster of Roxbury Latin, in Chapel. I use it not only because I admire Headmaster Jarvis, but because it captures the spirit of community and the focus on human dignity we strive for here, and it encourages the kind of relationship building with new friends, teachers, and classmates that makes for the successful start of a school year.
自从我知道Roxbury Latin学校前校长Tony Jarvis的这篇文章起，几乎每年我都会在礼堂诵读，这不光是因为我钦佩Jarvis校长，还因为它与社区精神相呼应，并且聚焦于我们追求的人格尊严，鼓励我们与新的朋友、老师、同学建立友谊，共同开启一个美好的学年。
Most of the time we see people in terms of their function. We don’t relate to the bus driver as a full, rich human being. He remains for us an It—a bus driver. Most of the time you don’t relate to your teachers as full, rich human beings. They conduct classes, correct errors, give grades; you perceive them in terms of their function…
大多数情况下，我们会根据人们的职责来判断他们的身份。我们对大巴司机了解的不多，所以我们给他们贴上标签—他就是大巴司机。而通常情况下，你们眼中的老师也不只是你们看到的那样，教学、纠错、评分这些都是你们给他们的标签。
Many people are fearful of risking their whole being. They hide behind their function: They remain a teacher or a student. They remain a doctor or a priest. They remain a husband or a father. They may be very good in these functions (and it is often appropriate that we remain in our functions), but some never dare go beyond them…
很多人害怕暴露自己的全部身份，他们用职责来伪装自己，让人们认为他的角色就是教师、学生、医生、牧师、丈夫、父亲其中一种。他们将这些角色的职责诠释地非常好，但是有些人永远都不敢从这些角色中走出去……
We package ourselves to be a salable product and we relate to others who are packaging themselves to be attractive products. We are packages relating to packages… As a result, we pigeonhole one another, classifying each other as types, putting those around us in categories…
我们将自己包装成一个畅销产品，跟我们关系密切的人也将自己包装成有吸引力的产品，我们就变成了有着某种联系的产品，最后，我们按照产品类型进行归类……
Only those who find the courage to risk themselves will come to those occasional moments in which we suddenly find ourselves in full relationship with another…. Such moment are beyond sensual feeling and physical expression.... In such moments we are surprised by joy. For a fleeting moment we relate fully with our whole being to another person. We are no longer categorizing, we are no longer standing aside and observing, we are no longer using others or seeing them in terms of their function. We actually meet, we actually enter one of the gates to what Martin Buber calls “true life” by entering into relationship with something beyond ourselves.
只有那些鼓起勇气去冒险的人才会突然意识到自己与他人已经完全相识相知……这样的时刻已经超出了感官及身体所能表达的东西，我们惊讶于由此产生的愉悦感，因为在这样短暂的时刻，我们与另一个人完全地融合在一起。我们不再归类，不再站在一边观察，不再根据他人的角色来认识他们。我们在现实中相遇，通过与自己以外的事物建立关系，从而真正地进入通往Martin Buber所谓“真实生活”的大门之一。
I was reminded of this again this week when I came across a recent TED Talk by Mohamad Hafez, a Syrian-born architect who, along with his wife Dania, has committed himself to helping Syrian refugees in the Hartford, Connecticut, area. I met Mohamad as I was trying to find a way personally and professionally to respond to the refugee crisis, and Mohamad was instrumental in helping us enroll Syrian refugees as students here.
我想起这篇文章是因为我偶然间看到一个关于Mohamad Hafez的TED演讲，他出生于叙利亚，他和妻子Dania致力于帮助康涅狄格州哈特福德地区的叙利亚难民。在我试着从个人和专业领域寻求应对难民危机的方法时，我遇到了Mohamad，他为我们招收叙利亚难民学生做出了很大努力。
I also discovered that Mohamad, in order to deal with the emotional trauma of the Syrian Civil War and the resulting refugee crisis, had created art installations—first of various buildings that showed daily life in Damascus dramatically shattered by war, the remnants of a cosmopolitan society laying broken by bombs and violence. Then he created a series of works of art in suitcases, showing the baggage that refugees carried inside—emotional baggage, spiritual weight, mental confusion. Mohamad spoke here in 2016 to many classes and a full house at the Stuart Black Box, and he will return for another talk about his work and his message on November 2 at 7:00 p.m., again at the Stuart Black Box Theater. I hope many of us will gather to hear him.
我也知道，Mohamad为了缓解由于叙利亚内战和难民危机而产生的情感创伤，创造出了艺术品--各种各样的建筑，无一不揭露了大马士革人民的日常生活受到战争的严重摧毁，留下了被炸弹和暴力残食的景象。之后，他创作了一系列手提箱式艺术品，展示了难民们所背负的东西——情感包袱、精神包袱、精神困惑。2016年，Mohamad在Stuart黑盒剧院向所有学生发表了演讲。11月2日下午7点，他将再次回到Stuart黑盒剧院，讲述他的作品和想法。我希望我们都能聚在一起听他的演讲。
In the meantime, I want to share the last few minutes of his Ted Talk. Mohamad first talked about labels and preconceptions and how those are built up by media stories and images. He talked about his own difficulty in immigrating 15 years ago and how much harder it has become during the time of the travel ban—how labels have become even more powerful and pernicious. He then highlighted how many refugees have risen out of their difficulties, refusing to be defined by labels or past trauma. He concluded his speech with this:
与此同时，我想给大家分享他TED演讲的最后几分钟。Mohamad首先谈到了标签和先入为主的观点，以及这些是如何通过故事和图像建立起来的。他谈到了自己15年前在移民方面的困难，以及旅行禁令期间更加艰难的时刻--标签现象竟变得更加严峻。之后他强调很多难民都摆脱了困境，拒绝被标签或过去的创伤所定义。他用这个结论结束了他的演讲：
We all go through hardships. Who doesn’t have baggage? We all can relate to living out of our suitcases, to burying our emotions, to having rough times in our past. It doesn’t define us. That’s just part of the story. The rest of the story is who we are today.
我们都经历了艰难困苦。谁没有包袱？我们都可以摆脱手提箱式生活，埋葬我们的情感，度过以前的艰难岁月。它没有定义我们，这只是故事的一部分，剩余部分是我们用新身份生活的过程。
We all fear the unknown. That’s a human thing, really. We always have our comfortable circles and bubbles. If I can invite you to leave your circle for one split second and invest in true conversation with somebody you thought you’d never meet, or talk to, or even have coffee with, I assure you, you will be up for a pleasant surprise. And perhaps when our world learns to think about these labels and the humans that are behind these labels, that we would not see a day and age where we have a travel ban that paints millions of people with one wide brush stroke, that we would come to a day that a Muslim woman does not fear walking the streets in her hijab just because of how she looks, that we come to a day that we realize that the common denominator that connects us all is broader and vastly bigger than the nitty gritty differences that they tell us we should care about. All it takes is just a cup of coffee and a suitcase.
我们都害怕未知，这很正常。我们总有自己的舒适圈，如果我邀请你暂时离开你的圈子，与你认为不可能见面的人、不可能交谈的人、甚至不可能一起喝咖啡的人进行真正的谈话，我向你保证，你将会惊喜万分。也许，当我们所处的世界学会思考这些标签以及这些标签背后的人类时，我们就不会看到有旅行禁令存在的时代，深深地伤害了数百万人。相反，戴着头巾的穆斯林女性不会因为其外貌而害怕走在街上，那个时候我们会意识到，只需要一杯咖啡和一个手提箱，所有人都是一样的。
Mohamad, like Tony Jarvis, invites us into relationships, into conversations, into dialogue. They both ask us to encounter each other, to encounter diversity, to experience the wonderful array of human beings with whom we happen to occupy this certain place at this certain time. One of the best things of being at a school that enrolls students from over 50 towns, over a dozen states, and over 25 countries is that I have so many chances to step outside of my circle, to move beyond my function, to resist labels and being labeled. We all do. Let’s start.
Mohamad和Tony Jarvis一样，他们让我们遇见彼此，发现多样性，体验奇妙的人类旅程，在特定的时间、特定的地方相遇。在一个招收来自50多个城镇、十多个州、25多个国家学生的学校里，最好的事情之一就是我有很多机会走出我的圈子，超越我的职责，抵制标签和贴标签现象。我们都要这么做，让我们一起开始吧！
