幸福生活不等于有意义?

Happiness is about satisfying our needs and desires. The pursuit of happiness is often associated with selfish behavior. Animals have needs and desires and they can feel happy too. What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, the researchers said, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans.
幸福便是满足私欲。追求幸福往往伴随着一些自私行径。动物存在欲望，亦能感到幸福。研究人员表示，真正将人类与动物区分开来的，并非对于幸福的追求，而是对于人生意义的追求，这是人类的专属。

We can often find meaning in helping others or making a sacrifice for a “greater good”. Meaning often comes at the expense of happiness. That’s because people who have invested themselves in something bigger than themselves worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their lives than happy people. Volunteering in rural schools, for example, is meaningful but also entails hardship.
我往往在帮助他人，或者“牺牲小我完成大我”的过程中找到人生意义。获得人生意义总是要以幸福为代价。这是因为当人们投身比自身更重要的事业中时，总是要比幸福的人承受更多的压力和焦虑。比如去山区支教是件有意义的事，但同时也得历经苦难。

The study also found that meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment.
这项研究还发现，人生的意义不仅仅是超越自我，更是超越现在。

Happiness, like any emotion, is felt in the here and now - it ultimately fades away. Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. “Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life,” according to the researchers. “Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future.”
正如其他情感一样，幸福是一种即时的感受，也终将消散。而人生意义却是恒久的。它连接过去、现在和未来。“那种超脱于当下，放眼过去或未来的思维方式，标志着你的生活比较有意义却并不幸福。”研究人员说，“注视着历史或未来，一般是看不到幸福的。”

Experiencing negative events, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the feelings of meaningfulness in your life. No one knows this better than Viktor Frankl, writer of the best-selling book Man’s Search for Meaning. “If there is meaning in life at all,” he wrote, “then there must be meaning in suffering.”
研究发现，一些负面的经历会降低你的幸福感，但同时会提升生活的充实感。想必没人能比畅销书《活出生命的意义》的作者维克多•弗兰克尔更理解这一点了。他在书中写道：“若人生确有意义，那它必隐于苦难磨砺之中。”

Frankl wrote the book after having lived through the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. In the book, he claims that one key thing separated those who perished and those who found a way to survive: a sense of meaning.
该书作者弗兰克尔曾在纳粹集中营中经历了炼狱般的生活。在书中，他表示区分一个是灭亡，还是涅槃的关键就在于对生命意义的感知。