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

如果希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)能够跑完全程，她可能得感谢莎士比亚。

Shakespeare and beer.

莎士比亚和啤酒。

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

她竞选活动的主设计师之一乔尔·班纳森(Joel Benenson)，就是由这两者造就的。两者都是指引他的好帮手。

And I mention that not for what it portends¹ 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 immediate² relevance³ and payoff of each and every step you take.

我提到它们，并非是说这预示了克林顿要传达的讯息。不是。令我着迷的是班纳森不循常规的人生和事业轨迹体现了怎样一种思路：高等教育和文科的意义何在？还有，你可以燃烧激情，可以偏离大道，无须对走的每一步的重要性和回报感到紧张。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.

班纳森如今62岁，当年在纽约城市大学(City University of New York)的皇后学院(Queens College)主修戏剧专业。他觉得自己会成为一名演员，但20多岁的大部分时候，他都和人一起在布鲁克林的皇冠高地做啤酒分销生意。

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.

现在呢？他是全美著名的民意调查专家和政治策略师，曾在贝拉克·奥巴马2008年和2012年的两次总统竞选中发挥了关键作用，目前正在为克林顿2016年的竞选出谋划策。

But if his present and past seem disconnected to you, they don’t to him. After I wrote a column earlier this year extolling⁴ the study of literature and its grand masters, he emailed me: “I can personally attest⁵ to the value of Shakespeare in my current profession.”

可能大家会觉得他的现在和过去跨度太大，但他自己却不这么看。今年早些时候，我写了一篇专栏文章，颂扬了文学研究以及该领域的大师。之后他发电子邮件给我，表示：“我可以用亲身经历来证明，莎士比亚在我目前职业中的价值。”

Parsing⁶ “Hamlet” and “Macbeth” gave him an “understanding of the rhythm and nuance⁷ of language,” he explained, that’s as useful as any fluency⁸ in statistics or political science per se.

他解释说，解析《哈姆雷特》和《麦克白》让他“了解到语言中的节奏和细微差别”，而这与熟练掌握统计学或政治学本身一样有用。

And the legacy⁹ of the beer business?

那么，啤酒生意给他带来的影响又是什么呢？

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

他说，身边的几乎“每个人”——客户、员工和同事——都“指望薪水过活”。

“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 accurately¹⁰. “I know their voices.”

“我身边总是存在这类对话，”他在近日的一次午餐中解释，而他“作为一个民意调查专家的价值”，就在于能够运用这些人的语言来编写问题，并准确解读他们的回答。“我了解他们话里的含义。”

Benenson shared his story and thoughts in part because he’s concerned, as I am, that too many anxious parents and their addled¹¹ children believe in, and insist on, an exacting¹², unforgiving script for success and (supposedly) happiness. Go to this venerable college. Pursue that sensible course of study. Tailor your exertions¹⁴ to the looming¹⁵ job market.

班纳森之所以分享自己的故事和想法，部分原因在于，他和我一样，担心太多焦虑的父母和懵懂的孩子相信并严格遵循通往成功（据说还有）幸福的一套严格死板的秘方。上名校、读好专业、努力为将要进入的就业市场做有针对性的准备。

They put too much faith in plotting, too little in serendipity¹⁶. And it can leach¹⁷ joy and imagination from their pursuits.

他们对这个计划太有信心，对机缘巧合又太缺乏信心。而这，可能会在谋求职业的道路上，抹杀掉他们的快乐和想象力。

His experience illuminates¹⁸ a different possibility. And so, as it happens, do the experiences of many of the other main characters in Obama’s ascent¹⁹. They either didn’t travel a perfectly²⁰ straight line to their political destinies or weren’t conventional overachievers at the start.

班纳森的经历展示了不同的可能性。实际上，在奥巴马崛起过程中发挥重要作用的另外一些人也是如此，而且为数不少。他们要么在抵达政治高峰的过程中没有遵循完美的直线道路，要么在一开始也不是那种通常意义上的优等生。

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.

戴维·阿克塞尔罗德(David Axelrod)当了很长一段时间的记者，后来才开始在政界工作（是的，两者之间有区别）。戴维·普洛夫(David Plouffe)离开特拉华大学(University of Delaware)时没有文凭，毕业所需的最后几个学分直到20年后才拿到，那时他已经年逾不惑。

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, initially²¹ for Harold Washington, who was then was the mayor of Chicago.

瓦莱丽·贾勒特(Valerie Jarrett)从斯坦福大学（本科）和密歇根大学（法学院）获得了学位，本应该成为有权有势的高薪律师。但她试了试这条道路，发现并不适合自己。于是她去了薪水明显较少的政府部门工作，最初是在时任芝加哥市长的哈罗德·华盛顿(Harold Washington)手下工作。

There’s only so much in life that you can foretell²² 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 internship²³, take a class in business and get career counseling starting freshman²⁴ year. Both emails reflected a widespread desire to find some surefire formula for a guaranteed livelihood²⁵.

人生中就只有这么多的东西是你可以预见和规划的。不过，你不会从我的收件箱里看出这一点。上周的状况就很典型：一封邮件的主题是研究大学哪个专业通向薪水最高的职位；另一封邮件则提出建议，想让每个大学生都参加实习、上一门商科课程，并从大一开始就获得职业方面的咨询。这两封邮件都反映了一种普遍愿望：找到一个万无一失的公式来保证生计。

But the biographies of many accomplished²⁶, contented²⁷ 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 transcended²⁸ their formal studies.

然而，许多很有成就、很有满足感的人，他们的经历并不是程式化的。他们多少像是误打误撞，不过所有人都有个共同点：通过采取不那么刻板的方式，他们在条框之外行事，并给自己带来了惊喜。他们研习的东西，超越了正规学习的范畴。

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.

班纳森在皇后区长大，是3个孩子中的幼子。父亲去世时，他才18个月大，而母亲做过簿记员和办公室主管，后来一直没有再婚。他之所以选择皇后学院，是因为它免学费，而且自己可以住在家里。

He was attracted to acting¹³ 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，不只是因为会置身在聚光灯下。“要表演好，你就必须了解文字的弦外之音，还有它的情感内涵，”他说。“对于任何想要进行沟通的人”，这种对说话方式和动作细节的关注是至关重要的。

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

对语言与语境的正确把握也是如此，而戏剧和文学可以磨练这种能力。

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.

他说，在这个意义上，通过排演哈罗德·品特(Harold Pinter)和特伦斯·麦克纳利(Terrence McNally)的戏剧，阅读纳撒尼尔·霍桑(Nathaniel Hawthorne)和赫尔曼·梅尔维尔(Herman Melville)的小说，他为进入充斥着口号、焦点小组和民意调查的政界做好了准备。

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

所有那些华丽的辞藻，确实为言简意赅的句式铺平了道路。

“THAT term has become derogatory,” he said, divulging²⁹ that he once pushed back at Obama’s skepticism of such tidy, pithy³⁰ 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.”

“言简意赅已经带有贬义了，”他说。奥巴马曾对简洁有力的风格持怀疑态度，当时他反驳：“总统先生，‘你们中间谁没有罪，先向她投石罢’言简意赅。‘分裂之家无可持存’也言简意赅。我们之所以记得这些句子，是因为它们反映了思想与普世真理的高尚原则和透彻明了。它们的力量就来源于此。”

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.

像普洛夫一样，班纳森也没有马上完成大学学业。为了迅速进入表演行当，他离开了学校，但赚的钱无法维持生计，于是他开始做啤酒生意。

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岁，他才获得了最后的学分，拿到了学位。30出头时，他又再次转行，成为了一名记者。

It wasn’t until his early 40s that he fully awoke to his enthusiasm for the kind of work that he does now and pivoted³¹ to it.

直到40出头，他才彻底发现自己真正充满激情的工作是什么，于是开始转向目前的领域。

The lesson for young people?

他的经历可以给年轻人提供怎样的经验教训？

“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 passionate³² about in each of those steps along the way.”

“不要考虑你这一辈子要做什么事情，”他说。“而是考虑你接下来想做什么。”也许你“有一个远大目标要追求，但一路走来，从A到B的路程不是连续的。关键是要确定在沿途的每一步你对哪些东西充满激情。”

He said that parents were too focused on mapping a straight-line journey from cradle to lucrative³³ career.

他说，家长们太专注于帮子女谋划从摇篮到高薪工作之间的直线道路了。

“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.”

“不要把孩子的教育侧重在某个职业上，”他说。“大学的关键是学会如何进行批判性地思考，学会如何写作并交流想法。”

He keeps three copies of the collected works of Shakespeare — the plays and sonnets³⁴ both — including the one from his college days. He marked it up extensively.

他保存着莎士比亚的三套作品集——有戏剧，也有十四行诗——其中一套来自他的大学时代。他在上面做了很多标记。

It’s important to scribble³⁵, he said. To wander, too. Otherwise, he said, “I think you don’t discover yourself.”

涂涂写写很重要，他说。四处游荡也很重要。否则，“我会觉得你没有找到自我”。