She first hit a seven, I remember, and then a nine, and then two tens, and then the next arrow didn’t even hit the target.

她第一次射中了7环， 我记得接下来是个9环，然后是2个十环，接下来的那支箭甚至没有射到靶上。

And I saw that gave her more tenacity, and she went after it again and again.

我看出这些使她更有韧性了，她一次又一次地射箭。

For three hours this went on.

三小时就这样过去了。

At the end of the practice, one of the archers was so taxed that she lied out on the ground just star-fished, her head looking up at the sky, trying to find what T.S. Eliot might call that still point of the turning world.

在练习的最后，其中一个弓箭手精疲力竭地躺在地上，像只海星，她仰头望天，试图寻找艾略特所说的(T.S.Eliot：诗人，1948 年诺贝尔文学奖得主)转动不息的世界里的静止点。

It’s so rare in American culture, there’s so little that’s vocational about it anymore, to look at what doggedness looks like with this level of exactitude, what it means to align your body posture for three hours in order to hit a target, pursuing a kind of excellence in obscurity.

在美国文化里，这种现象很少见。已经很少有如此专业的事情，看上去这么傻，还要如此精确。这意味着你要摆好姿势，坚持 3 个小时去射击一个目标，在一片模糊中追寻卓越。

But I stayed because I realized I was witnessing what’s so rare to glimpse, that difference between success and mastery.

我留下来，是因为自己亲眼目睹了这难得的瞬间：成功和卓越的区别。

So success is hitting that ten ring, but mastery is knowing that it means nothing if you can’t do it again and again.

所以说，成功是打中十环，然而卓越是你懂得：如果不去一次次地尝试，就会一无所得。

Mastery is not just the same as excellence, though.

但是，卓越和优异不尽相同，

It’s not the same as success, which I see as an event, a moment in time, and a label that the world confers upon you.

也和成功不一样，成功在我看来是一次事件，一个时刻，一个世界赋予你的标签。

Mastery is not a commitment to a goal but to a constant pursuit.

卓越不是对某个目标的承诺，而是一个持续的追求。

What gets us to do this, what get us to forward thrust more is to value the near win.

而让我们不断追求，能把我们推得更远的方法，就是重视 “差一点的胜利”

How many times have we designated something a classic, a masterpiece even, while its creator considers it hopelessly unfinished, riddled with difficulties and flaws, in other words, a near win?

有多少次我们将一些作品定义为经典之作，甚至是大师级作品，即使作者认为它根本无望完成，充满了困难和瑕疵，换言之，是一个 “差一点的成功” ？

Elizabeth Murray surprised me with her admission about her earlier paintings.

伊丽莎白·默里让我感到惊讶，她接受了自己早期的画作。

Painter Paul Cézanne so often thought his works were incomplete that he would deliberately leave them aside with the intention of picking them back up again, but at the end of his life, the result was that he had only signed 10 percent of his paintings.

画家保罗·塞尚经常认为 他的作品不够完善，他会故意把它们丢在一边，心里想着一会再捡回来。然而到了他生命的终点，结果就是他只在 10% 的画作上签了名。