My journey to thank all the people responsible for my morning coffee - A.J. Jacobs

You're listening to ted talks daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. It's a simple yet beautiful idea to go on a journey to personally thank every person who helped to make your morning cup of coffee. But for author A J Jacobs, this isn't just a sweet thought experiment, he actually did it. In this 2018 archive talk, A J reflects on his globe trotting journey of 1000 thank yous and the life altering wisdom he picked up along the way.

你每天都在听ted演讲，我们每天都会给你带来新的想法，激发你的好奇心。我是你的主持人，elise Hugh。这是一个简单而美好的想法，去旅行，亲自感谢每一个帮助你早上喝咖啡的人。但对于作家A J Jacobs来说，这不仅仅是一个甜蜜的思想实验，他确实做到了。在2018年的档案演讲中，A J回顾了他1000次感谢的全球之旅，以及他在这一过程中获得的改变人生的智慧。

So I don't like to boast, but I am very good at finding things to be annoyed about. It is a real specialty of mine. I can hear a hundred compliments and a single insult. And what do I remember? The insult. And according to the research, I'm not alone. Unfortunately, the human brain is wired to focus on the negative. Now, this might have been helpful when we were cave people trying to avoid predators, but now it's a terrible way to go through life. It is a real major component of anxiety and depression. So how can we fight the brain's negative bias? According to a lot of research, one of the best weapons is gratitude.

所以我不喜欢自夸，但我很善于发现让人恼火的事情。这是我真正的专长。我能听到一百个赞美和一个侮辱。我还记得什么？侮辱。根据研究，我并不孤单。不幸的是，人类的大脑总是专注于消极的事情。当我们还是穴居人试图躲避捕食者时，这可能会有所帮助，但现在这是一种可怕的生活方式。它是焦虑和抑郁的主要组成部分。那么，我们如何对抗大脑的负面偏见呢？根据大量研究，最好的武器之一就是感恩。

So knowing this, I started a new tradition in our house a couple of years ago, before a meal with my wife and kids, I would say a prayer of Thanksgiving.

所以知道这一点，几年前，我在家里开始了一个新的传统，在和妻子和孩子吃饭之前，我会做感恩节祷告。

Prayer is not quite the right word. I'm agnostic. So instead of thanking god I would thank some of the people who help make my food a reality. I'd say I'd like to thank the farmer who grew these tomatoes and the trucker who drove these tomatoes to the store and the cashier who rang these tomatoes up and I thought it was going pretty well, this tradition.

祷告不是一个恰当的词。我，我是不可知论者。所以，与其感谢上帝，我要感谢一些帮助我实现食物的人。我想说，我要感谢种植这些西红柿的农民、把这些西红柿送到商店的卡车司机和给汤姆打电话的收银员，我认为这个传统进展得很好。

Then one day my ten year old son said, you know dad, those people aren't in our apartment, they can't hear you. If you really cared, you would go and thank them in person. And I thought, hmm, that's an interesting idea. Now I'm a writer and for my books I’d like to go on adventures, go on quests. So I decided I'm going to take my son up on his challenge. It seemed simple enough. And to make it even simpler I decided to focus on just one item, an item I can't live without, my morning cup of coffee.

有一天，我十岁的儿子说：“爸爸，你知道吗，那些人不在我们公寓里，他们听不到你说话。如果你真的在乎他们，就应该亲自去感谢他们。” 我心想，嗯，这主意不错。我是一名作家，我的书里经常会出现冒险故事，需要完成各种任务。所以我决定接受儿子的挑战。这听起来很简单。为了让挑战更简单，我决定只关注一样东西，一样我生活中不可或缺的东西——我每天早晨的那杯咖啡。

Well, it turned out to be not so simple at all. This quest took me months. It took me around the world because I discovered that my coffee would not be possible without hundreds of people I take for granted. So I would thank the trucker who drove the coffee beans to the coffee shop. But he couldn't have done his job without the road. So I would thank the people who paved the road. And then I would thank the people who made the asphalt for the pavement. And I came to realize that my coffee, like so much else in the world, requires the combined work of a shocking number of people from all walks of life. Architects, biologists, designers, miners, go herds, you name it.

一杯咖啡？事实证明，事情根本没那么简单。这个任务花了我几个月的时间。它把我带到了世界各地，因为我发现，如果没有数百个我认为理所当然的人，我的咖啡是不可能的。所以我要感谢把咖啡豆送到咖啡店的卡车司机。但如果没有这条路，他不可能完成他的工作。所以我要感谢那些铺平道路的人。然后，我要感谢为路面铺设沥青的人。我开始意识到，我的咖啡，就像世界上其他很多东西一样，需要各行各业人数惊人的人的共同努力。建筑师、生物学家、设计师、矿工、牧群，应有尽有。

I decided to call my project thanks a thousand because I ended up thanking over a thousand people and it was overwhelming. But it was also wonderful because it allowed me to focus on the hundreds of things that go right every day, as opposed to the three or four that go wrong. And it reminded me of the astounding interconnectedness of our world. I learned dozens of lessons during this project.

我决定称我的项目为“万分感谢”，因为我最终感谢了一千多人，这让我感到不知所措。但这也很棒，因为它让我能够专注于每天数百件正确的事情，而不是三四件出错的事情。这让我想起了我们世界惊人的相互联系。在这个项目中，我学到了几十个教训。

But let me just focus on five today. The first is look up. I started my trail of gratitude by thanking the barista at my local coffee shop, Joe coffee in new York. Her name is Chung. And Chung is one of the most upbeat people you will ever meet. Big smiler, enthusiastic hugger. But even for Chung, being a barista is hard. And that's because you are encountering people in a very dangerous state. You know what it is, pre-caffeination.

但今天我只想重点说说五件事。第一件事是抬头看看。我的感恩之旅始于感谢我常去的纽约Joe Coffee咖啡店的咖啡师。她叫钟（Chung）。钟是我见过最乐观的人之一。她总是笑容满面，热情拥抱。但即使对钟来说，做咖啡师也很辛苦。因为你要面对的是处于一种非常危险状态的人们。你知道的，就是咖啡因作用之前的状态。

so Chung has had people yell at her until she cried, including a nine year old girl who didn't like the whipped cream design that Chung did on her hot chocolate. So I thanked Chung and she thanked me for thanking her. I cut it off there. I didn't want to go into an infinite thanking loop.

所以，钟小姐曾经被人吼到哭，其中一个九岁的小女孩就因为不喜欢钟小姐在她热巧克力上做的奶油装饰而对她大吼大叫。于是我感谢了钟小姐，她也感谢我感谢她。我就此打住，不想陷入无休止的感谢循环。

But Chung said that the hardest part is when people don't even treat her like a human being. They treat her like a vending machine. So they'll hand her their credit card without even looking up from their phone. And while she's saying this, I'm realizing I've done that. I've been that a hole.

但钟女士说，最难受的是人们根本不把她当人看，而是把她当自动售货机。他们甚至头都不抬，就把信用卡递给她，眼睛都离不开手机。她说这话的时候，我意识到自己也做过同样的事，也曾是个混蛋。

And at that moment I pledged when dealing with people, I'm going to take those two seconds and look at them, make eye contact because it reminds you you're dealing with a human being who has family and aspirations and embarrassing high school memories. And that little moment of connection is so important to both people's humanity and happiness.

那一刻我暗下决心，以后与人交往，我都会花那两秒钟看着对方，进行眼神交流，因为这能提醒你，你面对的是一个有血有肉的人，他有家庭、有抱负，也有高中时期那些尴尬的回忆。这短暂的交流对人性以及幸福都至关重要。

All right. Second lesson was smell the roses and the dirt and the fertilizer. After Chung, I thanked this man. This is Ed Kaufman. And Ed is the one who chooses which coffee they serve at my local coffee shop. He goes around the world to south America, to Africa, finding the best coffee beans.

好的。第二课是闻闻玫瑰、泥土和肥料的味道。在感谢了钟先生之后，我感谢了这位先生。他叫艾德·考夫曼。艾德负责挑选我常去的那家咖啡馆供应的咖啡豆。他周游世界，从南美洲到非洲，寻找最好的咖啡豆。

So I thank Ed. And in return, Ed showed me how to taste coffee like a Pro. And it is quite a ritual. You take your spoon and you dip it in the coffee and then you take a big loud slurp, almost cartoonishly loud. This is because you want to spray the coffee all over your mouth. You have taste buds in the side of your cheeks, in the roof of your mouth. You got to get them all. So ed would do this and he his face would light up and he would say this coffee tastes of honey, crisp apple and notes of soil and maple syrup. And I would take a sip and I'd say I'm picking up coffee. It tastes to me like coffee.

所以我感谢了埃德。作为回报，埃德教我如何像专业人士一样品尝咖啡。这简直是一套仪式。你拿起勺子，舀起咖啡，然后大声地啜饮，声音大得几乎像卡通人物一样。这是因为你想让咖啡喷洒到口腔的各个角落。你的味蕾分布在脸颊两侧和上颚。你必须让它们都感受到咖啡的味道。埃德会这样做，然后他的脸会变得容光焕发，他会说这咖啡尝起来有蜂蜜、脆苹果的味道，还有泥土和枫糖浆的香气。我会抿一口，然后说我尝到了咖啡的味道。对我来说，它尝起来就是咖啡的味道。

But inspired by Ed, I decided to really let the coffee sit on my tongue for five seconds. We're all busy, but I could spare five seconds and really think about the texture and the acidity and the sweetness. And I started to do it with other foods. And this idea of savoring is so important to gratitude.

但受艾德的启发，我决定让咖啡在舌尖停留五秒钟。我们都很忙，但我可以抽出五秒钟，好好感受一下咖啡的口感、酸度和甜度。之后，我开始用这种方法品尝其他食物。这种细细品味的理念对感恩之心至关重要。

Psychologists just talk about how gratitude is about taking a moment and holding onto it as long as possible and slowing down time so that life doesn't go by in one big blur as it often does.

心理学家们经常谈到，感恩就是抓住某个瞬间，尽可能长时间地保持这种状态，放慢时间的脚步，这样生活就不会像通常那样在一片模糊中流逝。

Number three is find the hidden masterpieces all around you. Now one of my favorite conversations during this year was with the guy who invented my coffee cup lid and until this point I had given approximately zero thought to coffee cup lids.

第三点是发现你身边隐藏的杰作。今年我最喜欢的一次谈话，是和发明我咖啡杯盖的那位先生进行的。在此之前，我对咖啡杯盖几乎一无所知。

But I loved talking to this inventor Doug Fleming, because he was so passionate and the blood and sweat and tears he put into this lid and that I had never even considered. He says a bad lid can ruin your coffee, that it can block the aroma which is so important to the experience. So he's very innovative. He's like the Elon Musk of coffee lids.

但我很喜欢和发明家道格·弗莱明聊天，因为他充满热情，而且他为这个咖啡盖倾注了无数心血，这我以前想都没想过。他说，劣质的咖啡盖会毁了你的咖啡，会阻碍香气的散发，而香气对咖啡体验至关重要。所以他非常有创新精神，简直就是咖啡盖界的埃隆·马斯克。

He designed this lid that's got an upside down hexagon so you can get your nose right in there and get maximum aroma. And so I was delighted talking to him and it made me realize there are hundreds of masterpieces all around us that we totally take for granted. Like the on off switch on my desk lamp has a little indentation for my thumb that perfectly fits my thumb and when something is done well, the process behind it is largely invisible. But paying attention to it can tap into that sense of wonder and enrich our lives.

他设计的这个盖子是倒六边形的，这样你就可以把鼻子凑上去，最大限度地闻到香味。所以我很高兴能和他聊天，这让我意识到，我们身边有无数的杰作，而我们却习以为常。比如我台灯上的开关，有个小小的凹槽正好适合我的拇指，而当一件东西做得好的时候，它背后的制作过程往往是看不见的。但关注它，就能激发那种好奇心，丰富我们的生活。

Number four is fake it till you feel it. By the end of the project I was just in a thanking frenzy, so I would get up and spend a couple hours. I'd write emails, send notes, make phone calls, visit people to thank them for their role in my coffee and some of them quite honest not that into it. They would be like what is this? A pyramid scheme? What do you want? What do you sell?

第四点是假装直到你真正感受到为止。项目结束时，我简直陷入了感谢的狂热之中，所以我会起床花上几个小时，写邮件、发便条、打电话、拜访那些为我的咖啡事业做出贡献的人，其中一些人很坦诚，其实并不怎么感兴趣。他们会问：这是什么？传销吗？你想要什么？你卖什么？

But most people were surprisingly moved. I remember I called the woman who does the pest control for the warehouse where my coffee is served. I'm sorry where my coffee is stored. And I said this may sound strange but I want to thank you for keeping the bugs out of my coffee and she said well that does sound strange but you just made my day and it was like an anti crank phone call.

但大多数人都被感动得不知所措。我记得我给负责我常去的咖啡仓库除虫的女士打了电话。我很抱歉我的咖啡存放在那里。我说，这听起来可能有点奇怪，但我真的要感谢你让我的咖啡免受虫害侵扰。她说，嗯，这听起来确实有点奇怪，但你让我今天心情大好，感觉就像接到了一通反骚扰电话。

And it didn't just affect her. It affected me because I would wake up every morning in my default mood, which is grumpiness. But I would force myself to write a thank you note and then another and then another. And what I found was that if you act as if you're grateful. You eventually become grateful for real. The power of our actions to change our mind are astounding. So often we think that thought changes behavior. But behavior very often changes our thoughts.

这不仅仅影响了她，也影响了我，因为我每天早上醒来都会心情很差，总是闷闷不乐。但我会强迫自己写一张感谢卡，然后又写一张，再写一张。我发现，如果你表现得好像很感激，最终你真的会心存感激。我们的行动改变想法的力量令人惊叹。我们常常认为想法会改变行为，但实际上，行为往往会反过来影响我们的想法。

And finally, the last lesson I want to tell you about is practice six degrees of gratitude And every place, every stop on this gratitude trail would give birth to 100 other people that I could thank. So I went down to Colombia to thank the farmers who grow my coffee beans and it was in a small mountain town and I was driven there along these curvy cliffside roads.

最后，我想和大家分享的最后一个经验是：练习“六度感恩”。在这条感恩之路上，每一站、每一处都可能让我想到一百个值得感谢的人。于是，我去了哥伦比亚，感谢种植我咖啡豆的农民们。那是在一个山中小镇，我沿着蜿蜒曲折的山路驱车前往。

And every time we went around a hairpin turn, the driver would do the sign of the cross. And I was like, thank you for that, but can you do that while keeping your hands on the wheel? Because I am terrified. But we made it and I met the farmers, the Guariso brothers. It's a small farm. They make great coffee. They're paid above fair trade prices for it and they showed me how the coffee is grown. The bean is actually inside this fruit, called the coffee cherry.

每次我们转过急弯，司机都会划十字。我就说，谢谢你，但是你能一边划十字一边把手放在方向盘上吗？因为我太害怕了。不过我们最终还是到了，我见到了咖啡农瓜里索兄弟。那是个小农场，他们种的咖啡很棒，价格也高于公平贸易价格。他们还给我展示了咖啡的种植过程。咖啡豆其实就长在这种叫做咖啡樱桃的果实里。

And I thanked them and they said, well, we couldn't do our job without a hundred other people.

我感谢他们，他们说，好吧，没有一百个人，我们无法完成我们的工作。

The machine that de-pulps the fruit is made in Brazil and the pickup truck they drive around the farm and that is made from parts from all over the world. In fact, the US export steel to Colombia. So I went to Indiana and I thanked the steel makers and it just drove home that it doesn't take a village to make a cup of coffee. It takes the world to make a cup of coffee.

给水果去果肉的机器产自巴西，农场里用的皮卡车也是用来自世界各地的零件组装的。事实上，美国还向哥伦比亚出口钢铁。所以我去了印第安纳州，感谢了那里的钢铁制造商，这让我更加深刻地体会到，制作一杯咖啡不需要整个村庄的力量，而是需要全世界的力量。

And this global economy, this globalization, it does have downsides, but I believe the long term upsides are far greater, that progress is real. We have made improvements in the last fifty years, that poverty worldwide has gone down and that we should resist the temptation to retreat into our silos and we should resist this upsurge in isolationism and jingoism.

全球经济和全球化固然存在弊端，但我相信其长期益处远大于弊端，进步是实实在在的。过去五十年里，我们取得了进步，全球贫困人口有所减少，我们应该抵制各自为政的诱惑，抵制孤立主义和沙文主义的抬头。

Which brings me to my final point, which is my hope that we use gratitude as a spark to action. Some people worry that gratitude has a downside. That will be so grateful that we be complacent, will be so, oh everything's wonderful. I'm so grateful.

这引出了我的最后一点，我希望我们能将感恩作为行动的火花。有些人担心感恩会有负面影响。他们担心我们会因为过于感恩而变得自满，变得只会想“哦，一切都太美好了，我真是太感恩了”。

Well. It turns out the opposite is true. The research shows that the more grateful you are, the more likely you are to help others. When you're in a bad state, you're often more focused on your own needs. But gratitude makes you want to pay it forward. And I experience this personally. I mean, I'm not mother teresa. I'm still a selfish bastard a huge amount of the time.

嗯，事实证明恰恰相反。研究表明，你越感恩，就越有可能帮助他人。当你情绪低落时，你往往会更关注自己的需求。但感恩会让你想要将这份善意传递下去。我对此深有体会。当然，我不是特蕾莎修女，很多时候我仍然是个自私的混蛋。

But I'm better than I was before this project, and that's because it made me aware of the exploitation on the supply chain. It reminded me that what I take for granted is not available to millions of people around the world. Like water. Coffee is 98.8% water. So I figured I should go and thank the people at the new York reservoir, hundreds of them who provide me water and this miracle that I can turn a lever and get safe water and that millions of people around the world don't have this luxury and have to walk hours to get safe water.

但我现在比参加这个项目之前进步了很多，因为它让我意识到供应链中存在的剥削现象。它提醒我，我习以为常的东西，对世界上数百万人来说却是遥不可及的。比如水。咖啡98.8%都是水。所以我决定去感谢纽约水库的数百名工作人员，感谢他们为我提供水源，感谢他们创造了我只需轻轻一拉就能获得安全饮用水的奇迹，而世界上数百万人却无法享受这种便利，他们不得不步行数小时才能取到安全饮用水。

It inspired me to see what I could do to help people get more access and I did research and found a wonderful group called dispensers for safe water and I got involved. And I'm not expecting the Nobel prize committee to knock down my door. But it's a baby step. It's a little something and it's all because of gratitude.

这激励我思考如何帮助人们获得更多用水，于是我做了调查，找到了一个名为“安全饮用水分配器”的优秀组织，并加入了他们。我并不指望诺贝尔奖委员会会因此而亲自上门，但这毕竟是迈出的一小步，微不足道，而这一切都源于我的感恩之心。

And it's why I encourage people, friends, family to follow gratitude trails of their own because it's a life transforming experience and it doesn't have to be coffee. It could be anything. It could be a pair of socks, it could be a light bulb and you don't have to go around the world. You can just do a little gesture like make eye contact or send a note to the designer of a logo you love.

这就是为什么我鼓励大家，包括朋友和家人，去追寻属于自己的感恩之路，因为这是一种改变人生的体验，而且感恩的对象不一定是咖啡。它可以是任何东西，比如一双袜子，一个灯泡，你也不必环游世界。你可以做一些小小的举动，比如和对方进行眼神交流，或者给心仪的logo设计师写张便条。

It's more about a mindset, being aware of the thousands of people involved in every little thing we do, remembering that there's someone in a factory who made the fabric for the chairs you're sitting in right now, that someone went into a mine and got the copper for this microphone so that I could say my final thank you, which is to thank you, thank you a thousand for listening to my story.

这更多的是一种心态，要意识到我们所做的每件小事背后都有成千上万的人参与其中，要记住你现在坐的椅子的布料是在工厂里制作的，有人下矿开采铜材来制作这个麦克风，这样我才能说出我最后的感谢，那就是：谢谢你，非常感谢你聆听我的故事。

That was A J Jacobs at a TED salon in 2018. This talk was originally published in November 2018.

这是 A J Jacobs 在 2018 年 TED 沙龙上的演讲。该演讲最初发表于 2018 年 11 月。