In other words, the most important priority for members of our species is to live and to keep going, not to pause, understand and take stock.

言い換えれば、私たちの種の構成員にとって最も重要なことは、生きること、進み続けることであり、立ち止まること、理解すること、棚卸しすることではない。

Notice any new human in a terrible circumstance, let's say in a home with a violent or alcoholic parent or an abusive or depressed one, and it won't, as one might imagine it could, be able to focus clearly on what's gone wrong or mourn its condition. It will simply, as we've ascertained it must, keep going. In order to do this, it will call upon a range of innate survival techniques. It may start to think surprisingly well of its parents, declaring them justified in their beatings, selfishness or humiliations. It might assiduously blame itself rather than sparing any pity for its own deprivations. Let's remember that a sense of self-compassion can be a very dangerous thing indeed when one is five years old and no one would listen even if one yelled. Or else it will ward off despair through activity, it will overachieve at school or break windows or become obsessed with drugs or sport or politics – anything not to have to listen to the buzz inside. The benighted child can't look back, it can't glance down, it must simply stare ahead at the main goal – survival.

例えば、暴力的な親やアルコール依存症の親、虐待や鬱病の親がいる家庭など、ひどい状況に置かれた新米人間は、想像できるかもしれないが、何が間違っているかに明確に集中したり、自分の状況を嘆いたりすることはできない。ただ、私たちが確認したように、前進し続けるだけなのだ。そのためには、生来備わっているさまざまなサバイバル技術を駆使する。両親のことを驚くほど良く思い始め、殴られたり、わがままを言ったり、屈辱を受けたりしても、それを正当化すると宣言するかもしれない。自分の困窮を憐れむよりも、むしろ自分自身をひたすら責め

This priority can last for a very long time indeed. After all, a sense of external security isn't remotely assured for most of us until we've settled in a career, built up some capital, bought a home, found a spouse, maybe had some children, by which time we might be in our forties or fifties. Yet our excellence at survival doesn't take away from the basic fact of our situation. We have been born into a mess. We have the ingredients of madness inside us. We have been unmoored by cruelty. We are, quietly, in the recesses of our soul, close to insanity at points, the ineluctable result of too much suffering encountered too soon. But as the external world gets ever safer for us, the internal world has a chance to feel as troubled as it has always been. We may feel far stranger inside at forty than at twenty, even though the causes of our disturbances lie in events far closer to the latter date than the former. Eventually, the pent-up fear and sadness are liable to find a way through. We'll start to do something odd, write long letters to strangers, or crash the car, or sob in public, or develop a certainty that the government is following us. The legacy of the unkindness of which we have been the recipients begins to emerge. With any luck, we may soon enough wind up in a clinic or the consulting room of an experienced therapist and here have a chance to find out more about the sadness and loss that have been inside us since the start. We may finally feel safe enough to let out a very long scream and meet with the love and understanding that were our due from the start.

この優先順位は実に長い間続く。結局のところ、キャリアを積み、資本を築き、家を買い、伴侶を見つけ、子供をもうけ、40代か50代になるまで、私たちのほとんどにとって、外的な安心感は少しも保証されたものではない。しかし、私たちが生き延びることに優れているからといって、私たちの置かれている状況の基本的な事実から目をそらすことはできない。私たちは混乱の中に生まれてきたのだ。私たちの中には狂気の成分がある。私たちは残酷さに縛られていない。私たちは魂の奥底で静かに、狂気に近い状態にある。しかし、外界がますます安全になっ