理想職業生涯需要事先規劃嗎

IF Hillary Clinton goes the distance, she may have Shakespeare to thank.

如果希拉里·克林頓(Hillary Clinton)能夠跑完全程，她可能得感謝莎士比亞。

Shakespeare and beer.

莎士比亞和啤酒。

Both forged one of her campaign’s chief architects, Joel Benenson. Both are among his compasses.

她競選活動的主設計師之一喬爾·班納森(Joel Benenson)，就是由這兩者造就的。兩者都是指引他的好幫手。

And I mention that not for what it portends about her message. No, I’m fascinated by what the jagged arc of Benenson’s life and career says about higher education, the liberal arts, indulging your passions, allowing for digressions and not sweating the immediate relevance and payoff of each and every step you take.

我提到它們，並非是說這預示了克林頓要傳達的訊息。不是。令我着迷的是班納森不循常規的人生和事業軌跡體現了怎樣一種思路：高等教育和文科的意義何在？還有，你可以燃燒激情，可以偏離大道，無須對走的每一步的重要性和回報感到緊張。

Benenson, 62, majored in theater at Queens College, part of the City University of New York. He thought he’d be an actor, but for most of his 20s co-owned a beer distributorship in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

班納森如今62歲，當年在紐約城市大學(City University of New York)的皇后學院(Queens College)主修戲劇專業。他覺得自己會成爲一名演員，但20多歲的大部分時候，他都和人一起在布魯克林的皇冠高地做啤酒分銷生意。

And now? He’s one of the country’s leading pollsters and political strategists. He played a key role in Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential races and is doing likewise in Clinton’s 2016 one.

現在呢？他是全美著名的民意調查專家和政治策略師，曾在貝拉克·奧巴馬2008年和2012年的兩次總統競選中發揮了關鍵作用，目前正在爲克林頓2016年的競選出謀劃策。

But if his present and past seem disconnected to you, they don’t to him. After I wrote a column earlier this year extolling the study of literature and its grand masters, he emailed me: “I can personally attest to the value of Shakespeare in my current profession.”

可能大家會覺得他的現在和過去跨度太大，但他自己卻不這麼看。今年早些時候，我寫了一篇專欄文章，頌揚了文學研究以及該領域的大師。之後他發電子郵件給我，表示：“我可以用親身經歷來證明，莎士比亞在我目前職業中的價值。”

Parsing “Hamlet” and “Macbeth” gave him an “understanding of the rhythm and nuance of language,” he explained, that’s as useful as any fluency in statistics or political science per se.

他解釋說，解析《哈姆雷特》和《麥克白》讓他“瞭解到語言中的節奏和細微差別”，而這與熟練掌握統計學或政治學本身一樣有用。

And the legacy of the beer business?

那麼，啤酒生意給他帶來的影響又是什麼呢？

He said that almost “every single person” around him — his customers, his employees and his associates — was “living paycheck to paycheck.”

他說，身邊的幾乎“每個人”——客戶、員工和同事——都“指望薪水過活”。

“Those conversations never left me,” he explained over a recent lunch, adding that his “value as a pollster” is his ability to write questions in the language of these men and women and to hear the answers accurately. “I know their voices.”

“我身邊總是存在這類對話，”他在近日的一次午餐中解釋，而他“作爲一個民意調查專家的價值”，就在於能夠運用這些人的語言來編寫問題，並準確解讀他們的回答。“我瞭解他們話裏的含義。”

Benenson shared his story and thoughts in part because he’s concerned, as I am, that too many anxious parents and their addled children believe in, and insist on, an exacting, unforgiving script for success and (supposedly) happiness. Go to this venerable college. Pursue that sensible course of study. Tailor your exertions to the looming job market.

班納森之所以分享自己的故事和想法，部分原因在於，他和我一樣，擔心太多焦慮的父母和懵懂的孩子相信並嚴格遵循通往成功（據說還有）幸福的一套嚴格死板的祕方。上名校、讀好專業、努力爲將要進入的就業市場做有針對性的準備。

They put too much faith in plotting, too little in serendipity. And it can leach joy and imagination from their pursuits.

他們對這個計劃太有信心，對機緣巧合又太缺乏信心。而這，可能會在謀求職業的道路上，抹殺掉他們的快樂和想象力。

His experience illuminates a different possibility. And so, as it happens, do the experiences of many of the other main characters in Obama’s ascent. They either didn’t travel a perfectly straight line to their political destinies or weren’t conventional overachievers at the start.

班納森的經歷展示了不同的可能性。實際上，在奧巴馬崛起過程中發揮重要作用的另外一些人也是如此，而且爲數不少。他們要麼在抵達政治高峯的過程中沒有遵循完美的直線道路，要麼在一開始也不是那種通常意義上的優等生。

David Axelrod was a journalist for a long time before he became a political operative. (Yes, there’s a difference.) David Plouffe left college, at the University of Delaware, without a diploma, and didn’t get the last credits he needed and actually graduate until two decades later, in his 40s.

戴維·阿克塞爾羅德(David Axelrod)當了很長一段時間的記者，後來纔開始在政界工作（是的，兩者之間有區別）。戴維·普洛夫(David Plouffe)離開特拉華大學(University of Delaware)時沒有文憑，畢業所需的最後幾個學分直到20年後纔拿到，那時他已經年逾不惑。

Valerie Jarrett was supposed to take the degrees that she got from Stanford (undergraduate) and the University of Michigan (law school) and be a high-powered, highly paid attorney. But she gave that track a try and it didn’t suit her. So she went to work for decidedly less money in government, initially for Harold Washington, who was then was the mayor of Chicago.

瓦萊麗·賈勒特(Valerie Jarrett)從斯坦福大學（本科）和密歇根大學（法學院）獲得了學位，本應該成爲有權有勢的高薪律師。但她試了試這條道路，發現並不適合自己。於是她去了薪水明顯較少的政府部門工作，最初是在時任芝加哥市長的哈羅德·華盛頓(Harold Washington)手下工作。

There’s only so much in life that you can foretell and plan, though you wouldn’t know that from my inbox. Last week was typical: one email about a study of which college majors led to the best-paying positions; another about a proposal to make every college student do an internship, take a class in business and get career counseling starting freshman year. Both emails reflected a widespread desire to find some surefire formula for a guaranteed livelihood.

人生中就只有這麼多的東西是你可以預見和規劃的。不過，你不會從我的收件箱裏看出這一點。上週的狀況就很典型：一封郵件的主題是研究大學哪個專業通向薪水最高的職位；另一封郵件則提出建議，想讓每個大學生都參加實習、上一門商科課程，並從大一開始就獲得職業方面的諮詢。這兩封郵件都反映了一種普遍願望：找到一個萬無一失的公式來保證生計。

But the biographies of many accomplished, contented people aren’t formulaic. They’re accidents of a sort, except for this: By taking approaches that weren’t too regimented, these people were able to color outside the lines and surprise themselves. And their learning transcended their formal studies.

然而，許多很有成就、很有滿足感的人，他們的經歷並不是程式化的。他們多少像是誤打誤撞，不過所有人都有個共同點：通過採取不那麼刻板的方式，他們在條框之外行事，並給自己帶來了驚喜。他們研習的東西，超越了正規學習的範疇。

Benenson grew up in Queens, the youngest of three kids. His father died when he was 18 months old and his mother, who worked as a bookkeeper and office manager, never remarried. He chose Queens College because it was free and he could live at home.

班納森在皇后區長大，是3個孩子中的幼子。父親去世時，他才18個月大，而母親做過簿記員和辦公室主管，後來一直沒有再婚。他之所以選擇皇后學院，是因爲它免學費，而且自己可以住在家裏。

He was attracted to acting by more than the bright lights. “To do it well, you have to get at what’s going on beneath the words and the emotional content of it,” he said, adding that such attention to the details of speech and gesture is crucial “for anybody who’s communicating.”

他被表演吸引，不只是因爲會置身在聚光燈下。“要表演好，你就必須瞭解文字的弦外之音，還有它的情感內涵，”他說。“對於任何想要進行溝通的人”，這種對說話方式和動作細節的關注是至關重要的。

So are a firm grasp of language and context, which drama and literature hone.

對語言與語境的正確把握也是如此，而戲劇和文學可以磨練這種能力。

In that sense, he said, he prepared for a political world of slogans, focus groups and opinion surveys by doing plays by Harold Pinter and Terrence McNally and reading novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.

他說，在這個意義上，通過排演哈羅德·品特(Harold Pinter)和特倫斯·麥克納利(Terrence McNally)的戲劇，閱讀納撒尼爾·霍桑(Nathaniel Hawthorne)和赫爾曼·梅爾維爾(Herman Melville)的小說，他爲進入充斥着口號、焦點小組和民意調查的政界做好了準備。

All those glorious words really did pave the path to sound bites.

所有那些華麗的辭藻，確實爲言簡意賅的句式鋪平了道路。

“THAT term has become derogatory,” he said, divulging that he once pushed back at Obama’s skepticism of such tidy, pithy locutions by saying to him: “Mr. President, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ is a sound bite. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’ is a sound bite. We remember them because they reflect high principle and clarity of thought and universal truths. That’s the power of them.”

“言簡意賅已經帶有貶義了，”他說。奧巴馬曾對簡潔有力的風格持懷疑態度，當時他反駁：“總統先生，‘你們中間誰沒有罪，先向她投石罷’言簡意賅。‘分裂之家無可持存’也言簡意賅。我們之所以記得這些句子，是因爲它們反映了思想與普世真理的高尚原則和透徹明瞭。它們的力量就來源於此。”

Like Plouffe, Benenson didn’t finish college right away. He left to get a jump-start on acting, which didn’t really pay the bills. That’s where the beer business came in.

像普洛夫一樣，班納森也沒有馬上完成大學學業。爲了迅速進入表演行當，他離開了學校，但賺的錢無法維持生計，於是他開始做啤酒生意。

He didn’t get his last credits and his degree until his late 20s, and in his early 30s he took another sharp turn. He became a journalist.

直到他快30歲，他才獲得了最後的學分，拿到了學位。30出頭時，他又再次轉行，成爲了一名記者。

It wasn’t until his early 40s that he fully awoke to his enthusiasm for the kind of work that he does now and pivoted to it.

直到40出頭，他才徹底發現自己真正充滿激情的工作是什麼，於是開始轉向目前的領域。

The lesson for young people?

他的經歷可以給年輕人提供怎樣的經驗教訓？

“Don’t think about what you want to do for the rest of your life,” he said. “Think about what you want to do next.” Maybe, he said, you “have a big goal out there and pursue it, but along the way, that line from A to B is not a continuum. The key will be identifying what you are passionate about in each of those steps along the way.”

“不要考慮你這一輩子要做什麼事情，”他說。“而是考慮你接下來想做什麼。”也許你“有一個遠大目標要追求，但一路走來，從A到B的路程不是連續的。關鍵是要確定在沿途的每一步你對哪些東西充滿激情。”

He said that parents were too focused on mapping a straight-line journey from cradle to lucrative career.

他說，家長們太專注於幫子女謀劃從搖籃到高薪工作之間的直線道路了。

“Stop making the focus of your kids’ education a job,” he said. “College is about learning how to think critically, learning how to write and communicate your ideas.”

“不要把孩子的教育側重在某個職業上，”他說。“大學的關鍵是學會如何進行批判性地思考，學會如何寫作並交流想法。”

He keeps three copies of the collected works of Shakespeare — the plays and sonnets both — including the one from his college days. He marked it up extensively.

他保存着莎士比亞的三套作品集——有戲劇，也有十四行詩——其中一套來自他的大學時代。他在上面做了很多標記。

It’s important to scribble, he said. To wander, too. Otherwise, he said, “I think you don’t discover yourself.”

塗塗寫寫很重要，他說。四處遊蕩也很重要。否則，“我會覺得你沒有找到自我”。