读者文摘:顿悟时刻(3)（在线收听）

MOST OF THE TIME, ideas develop from the steady percolation and evaluation of thoughts and feelings.

大多数时候，创意从思维和感觉的稳定渗流和评价发展而来。

But every so often, if you're lucky, a blockbuster notion breaks through in a flash of insight that's as unexpected as it is blazingly clear.

但如果你够幸运的话，一个突然而来的灵感往往会在一瞬间迸发出来，这既出乎你的意料，又极其清晰。

These revelations can be deeply personal, even existential, prompting the realization that you should quit your job,

这些启示可以是非常个人化的，甚至是判断性的，使你意识到应该辞职，

move to another city, mend a broken relationship, or, as Lovell did, redirect your moral compass.

搬到另一个城市，修补一段破碎的感情，或者，像洛弗尔那样，修正你的道德方向。

They can also be creative, generating a brilliant start-up idea, the perfect plot point of a novel, or the answer to an engineering quandary.

他们也可以很有创意，想出一个绝妙的创业点子，构思小说的完美情节，或者解决一道工程难题的答案。

In all cases, you apprehend something that you were blind to before.

在所有的情况下，你理解了一些你以前看不见的东西。

The early-20th-century psychologist William James described such moments of clarity, in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience,

20世纪初，心理学家威廉·詹姆斯在《宗教体验的多样性》一书中，将这一清晰时刻描述成

as snap resolutions of the "divided self."

“分裂自我”的突然决议。

It's as if a whole lifetime's worth of growth is compressed into a single instant as dense as a collapsed star.

就好像一生的成长都被压缩在一瞬间，像坍缩星一样密集。

That's how it felt to Leroy Schulz.

这就是勒罗伊·舒尔茨的感受。

Driving home from a wedding in Canada late one night, Schulz glimpsed a ghostly form surging from the highway median toward his headlights.

一天深夜，舒尔茨从加拿大的一场婚礼上开车回家，他瞥见一个幽灵般的身影从高速公路上撞到车灯前。

He didn't have time to brake.

他没有时间刹车。

He barely had time to turn his face away from the flying glass as the moose's head hit the windshield.

当麋鹿的头部撞到挡风玻璃上时，他几乎来不及把脸从飞溅的玻璃上移开。