编者按：那些你所想到的人，不管他们在你的家里或是其他什么地方，都是这条在几代人间延续的爱的链条上的一环。你对他们生命的影响，不管你是否看到结果，都是无法估量的。你所奉献的爱心与关怀将会在未来的岁月中转变那些处于迷失和绝望之中的生命。Chain of Love"How do you account for your remarkable accomplishment in life?" Queen Victoria of England asked Helen Keller. "How do you explain the fact that even though you were both

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all

Among the more curious questions that can be asked about love is this,when one feels romantic love, does he feel it in breaks with interruptions or changes, or does he feel it continuously without interruption orchange? Poetry and song seduce one into thinking love continues without interruption. “L

Over the last few days we have seen and been reminded of two massacres. Last weekend Norway remembered the first anniversary of the 77 victims of a bomb and gun shooting. During a brief television clip a young Norwegian man said that this tragedy hadn&#39t changed Norway&#39s commitment to an open a

The spirit of the late Sir Jimmy Savile was alive and well in the Savile Hall in Leeds two days ago when personal items were sold to benefit his favourite charities. In a 12-hour sale over 350 items raised &#163330,000 for charity. Rolex and Rolls-Royce, shades and shirts all went under the hammer t

Technology is also not going to change who you choose to love.同样科技也改变不了你的择偶对象。I study the biology of personality, and I&#39ve come to believe that we&#39ve evolved four very broad styles of thinking and behaving,我研究生物心理学，我开始相信人类已经进化出了四个广义的思考及行为方式，linked with the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and

Now, it&#39s not just an English problem.实际上，不仅英国存在这样的的问题。OECD this year released some figures looking at numeracy in young people,OECD今年发布了一些关于青少年计算能力的数据，and leading the way, the USA -- nearly 40 percent of young people in the US have low numeracy.名单里领先的是美国，大约40%的美国青少年算术能力低下。Now, England is there t

Along with this, we see a rise of a host of beliefs:不仅如此，各种信仰开始传播：the belief of virginity at marriage, arranged marriages -- strictly arranged marriages坚信婚前必须保持处女身，包办婚姻（严格安排的婚姻），the belief that the man is the head of the household, that the wife&#39s place is in the home and most important,坚信男性是一家之主

Well, I&#39ve got three points here, right?好的，我分为三点来说。First of all, to your first one: there&#39s no question that we&#39ve changed,首先，回答你第一个问题：人类变了，这一点毋庸置疑，that we now want a person to love, and for thousands of years,现在人们依然渴望爱情，而几千年来，we had to marry the right person from the right background and r

Thank you so much for that, Helen. As you know, there&#39s another speaker here with us that works in your same field.感谢您的演讲，海伦。今天还有另一位演讲者，她和您在相同的领域里做研究。She comes at it from a different perspective. Esther Perel is a psychotherapist who works with couples.不过是从不同的视角来分析问题。诶斯特·佩雷斯从事情侣心理治疗师的工作。You study

We did it in the larger culture, and we&#39re doing it in marriage.在其他文化中我们已经这么做了，现在我们把它带到婚姻中。Right, no question about it. But it&#39s interesting, the millennials actually want to be very good parents是的，这一点毫无疑问。但有趣的是，如今千禧一代非常渴望成为合格的家长，whereas the generation above them wants to have a very fine marr

How is technology changing love? I&#39m going to say almost not at all.科技改变了爱吗？我认为没有。I study the brain. I and my colleagues have put over 100 people into a brain scanner我从事大脑研究。我和我的同事们对100多人进行了大脑扫描，people who had just fallen happily in love, people who had just been rejected in love and people who a

So we&#39ve created what I call this thing of &quotstable ambiguity.&quot这种现象我称为“稳定的模棱两可”。Stable ambiguity is when you are too afraid to be alone but also not really willing to engage in intimacy-building.它指的是你害怕被剩下来，孤独终老，但又不愿打开心扉，与人建立亲密关系。It&#39s a set of tactics that kind of prolong the uncertaint

So I devised a quiz: How well do you know your area?对此我设计了一个测试：你对你居住的地区了解多少？It&#39s a simple Web app.这是一个简单的网络应用。You put in a post code and then it will ask you questions based on census data for your local area.输入邮编，它会根据你所在地区的普查数据给你提出问题。And I was very conscious in designing this.我在设计时有特别注意。I wanted

So it began to occur to me: during this long extension of the precommitment stage,于是我突然想到：在这个长期婚前准备期，if you can get rid of bad relationships before you marry, maybe we&#39re going to see more happy marriages.如果你在婚前摆脱了一段糟糕的情感关系，或许就会有更多美满的婚姻。So I did a study of 1,100 married people in America -- not o

But technology is producing one modern trend that I find particularly important.但科技正在制造一种当代潮流，我认为它尤为重要。It&#39s associated with the concept of paradox of choice.它和选择悖论这一概念相关。For millions of years, we lived in little hunting and gathering groups.千万年来，人类都生活在小型狩猎及采集社会。You didn&#39t have the opportunity

Back in 2003, the UK government carried out a survey.早在2003年，英国政府进行了一项调查。And it was a survey that measured levels of numeracy in the population.目的是了解国民的算术能力。And they were shocked to find out that for every 100 working age adults in the country, 47 of them lacked Level 1 numeracy skills.结果非常让人吃惊，在英国，

I was recently traveling in the Highlands of New Guinea, and I was talking with a man who had three wives.最近，我正在新几内亚高地旅行，我访谈了一位有三个老婆的人。I asked him, &quotHow many wives would you like to have?&quot我问他：“你想要多少个老婆？”And there was this long pause, and I thought to myself,他停顿了很长时间，我就想，&quotIs he going to s

It&#39s the part of mathematics that even mathematicians don&#39t particularly like,统计是数学的一部分，但是它是连数学家都不怎么喜欢的那一部分，because whereas the rest of maths is all about precision and certainty, statistics is almost the reverse of that.因为与其它讲究精确与确定性的数学领域不同，统计学几乎是反其道而行之。But actually, I was a late convert to t

So extraordinary variations, and surprising to some,如此巨大的差异震惊了一些人，but not surprising to people who have read the work of Daniel Kahneman, for example, the Nobel-winning economist.但是对一些人来说并不惊讶，比如阅读过诺贝尔经济学奖获得者丹尼尔·卡内曼的研究成果的人。He and his colleague, Amos Tversky, spent years researching this disjoint betw

And I was so thrilled with this study, I started to take questions out in presentations. I was referring to it.我对这个研究感到很兴奋，并开始在各种演讲中提出这个问题。Now, I did a presentation at St. Paul&#39s School for Girls in Hammersmith,我曾经在哈默史密斯的圣保罗女子中学做过一个演讲，and I had an audience rather like this, except it was comprise

There&#39s no question that technology is changing the way we court:可以肯定的一点是，科技正在改变人类的求爱方式：emailing, texting, emojis to express your emotions, sexting, &quotliking&quot a photograph, selfies.电子邮件、短信、表达情感的符号、色情短信、给照片或自拍点赞。We&#39re seeing new rules and taboos for how to court.关于如何求爱有了新的规则和禁忌。But, you

And I stumbled, then, on a statistic that really came home to me.结果我发现了一个震惊的数据。It was a very interesting academic article in which I found that 67 percent of singles in America today who are living long-term with somebody,一篇极其有趣的学术文章，发现67%的处于长期同居的美国未婚人士，have not yet married because they are terrifie

How about the next question? This is asking about what the average age is,那么下一个问题呢？这是问关于年龄的中位数，so the age at which half the population are younger and half the population are older.也就是该地区大于和小于这个年龄的人口数相等。And I thought 35 -- that sounds middle-aged to me.我以为是35--那对我来说是中年。Actually, in Exeter, it&#39s i

He said he just wanted someone to go out to dinner with and spend time with.伯父说，他只是想有个人一起出去吃饭，一起消磨时光。We were happy for them but had no idea how it would turn out.我们很为他们俩高兴，却不知道结果会如何。They were both almost eighty-seven years old.他们俩都将近87岁高龄。They were like love-birds and spent as much time together as

&quotWhat is a Caucus-race?&quot asked Alice during her adventure in Wonderland. The Dodo explained.“什么是会议式赛跑？”爱丽丝在梦游仙境中问到。渡渡鸟解释道。First you mark out a racecourse, though the shape of it doesn&#39t really matter.首先你拟定出一条跑道，形状是什么样的并不重要。Then you shout out, one, two three, go, and you run around in any

My aunt died back in about 2003. She was eighty-four and so was my uncle.我伯母大约在2003年去世。她已是84岁高龄，我伯父与她同龄。When she passed he was devastated.伯母的去世对伯父来说是个沉重的打击。They had been married for over 60 years.他们结婚超过60年了。We expected him to pass on quickly after she died.伯母去世后，我们以为伯父很快也会跟着离开。He attended his church

They prepared for their wedding. They moved the wedding date up because neither wanted to wait any longer to &quotbe together,&quotand it was not proper to &quotbe together&quot without being married.他们为婚礼做着准备。由于他们俩都迫不及待地想要“在一起”，而不结婚就不是严格意义上的“在一起”，所以他们把婚期提前了。They got married in her house, where they

英文文本：This is how I want to fall in love in 2016...I want to fall in love with the way the sun rises teeming with hope...I want to fall in love with the warm scent of coffee in a new, quiet morning...I want to fall in love with all of my grateful regrets that guided me to this place...I want to fall

There was once a guy who suffered from cancer, a cancer that can&#39t be cured. He was 18 years old and he could die anytime. All his life, he was stuck in his house being taken cared by his mother. He never went outside but he was sick of staying home and wanted to go out for once. So he asked his