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Life continually requires that we write down a few words of thanks: for holidays, meals, presents or people’s place in our hearts.
生活总是要求我们写下一些感谢的话:为了节日，为了吃饭，为了礼物，或者为了我们心中的人。
However, too often, our messages end up flat or somewhat unconvincing;
然而，太多时候，我们的信息以平淡或有点不令人信服而告终；
we say that the dinner was ‘wonderful’, the present ‘brilliant’ and the holiday ‘the best ever’, all of which may be true while failing to get at what truly touched or moved us.
或者我们说晚餐“棒极了”，说礼物的“太棒了”，说假期是“有史以来最好的”，所有这些都可能是真的，但却没有抓住真正打动我们或令我们感动的东西。
To render our messages more effective, we might take a lesson from an unexpected quarter: the history of art.
为了使我们的信息更有效，我们可以从一个意想不到的领域学习:艺术史。
Many paintings and poems are in effect a series of thank you notes to parts of the world.
许多绘画和诗歌实际上是给世界各地的一系列感谢信。
They are thank yous for the sunset in springtime, a river valley at dawn, the last days of autumn or the face of a loved one.
他们感谢春天的日落，黎明的河谷，秋天的最后几天，或者亲人的脸。
What distinguishes great from mediocre art is in large measure the level of detail with which the world has been studied.
伟大与平庸的艺术作品的区别在很大程度上是对世界进行研究的细节水平。
A talented artist is, first and foremost, someone who takes us into the specifics of the reasons why an experience or place felt valuable.
一个有才华的艺术家，首先也是最重要的，他会带我们去了解一个地方或一个地方让我们感到有价值的经历的具体原因。
They don’t merely tell us that spring is ‘nice’, they zero in on the particular contributing factors to this niceness:
他们不仅告诉我们春天很好，他们还聚焦于造成这种美好的最特殊的贡献因素：
leaves that have the softness of a newborn’s hands, the contrast between a warm sun and a sharp breeze, the plaintive cry of baby blackbirds.
像新生儿般柔软的树叶，温暖的阳光和凛冽的微风形成鲜明的对比，小画眉的哀鸣。
The more the poet moves from generalities to specifics, the more the scene comes alive in our minds. The same holds true in painting.
但诗人越是从概括性走向细节化，我们脑海中的场景就越鲜活。绘画也是如此。
A great painter goes beneath a general impression of pleasure in order to select and emphasise the truly attractive features of the landscape:
一位伟大的画家走在总体印象和愉悦之下，以选择和强调风景中真正吸引人的特征：
they show the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees and reflecting off of a pool of water in the road;
照片上的阳光透过树叶，反射在路上的一池水上;
they draw attention to the craggy upper slopes of a mountain or the way a sequence of ridges and valleys open up in the distance.
他们将人们的注意力吸引到山坡崎岖的上坡上，或者远处一系列山脊和山谷打开的方式上。
They’ve asked themselves with unusual rigour what is it that they particularly appreciated about a scene and faithfully transcribed their salient impressions.
他们以不同寻常的严谨问自己，他们特别欣赏的场景是什么，并忠实地记录下他们突出的印象。
Some of the reason why great artists are rare is that our minds are not well set up to understand why we feel as we do.
伟大的艺术家之所以罕见，部分原因是我们的大脑没有很好地理解为什么我们会有这样的感觉。
We register our emotions in broad strokes and derive an overall sense of our moods long before we grasp the basis upon which they rest.
早在我们掌握情绪的基础之前，我们就已经粗略地记录了我们的情绪，并对我们的情绪有了一个全面的认识。
We are bad at travelling upstream from our impressions to their source, it feels frustrating to have to ask too directly what was really pleasing about a present or why exactly a person seemed charming to have dinner with.
我们不擅长从我们的印象溯源而上，如果不得不过于直接地询问一件礼物真正令人满意的是什么，或者一个人究竟为什么看起来很迷人，会让人感到沮丧。
But we can be confident that if our minds have been affected, the reasons why they have been so will be lodged somewhere in consciousness as well, waiting to be uncovered with deftness and patience.
但我们不能相信，如果我们的大脑受到了影响，那么它们为什么会这样的原因也会寄托在意识中的某个地方，等待着用灵巧和耐心来揭开它的面纱。
We stand to realise that it wasn’t so much that the food was ‘delicious’ but that the potatoes in particular had an intriguing rosemary and garlic flavour to them.
我们很快就会意识到，与其说食物是“美味”的，不如说是土豆尤其是迷迭香和大蒜的味道让他们着迷。
A friend wasn’t just ‘nice’; they brought a hugely sensitive and generous tone to bear in asking us what it had been like for us in adolescence after our dad died.
一位朋友不仅仅是“友好”，他们还带来了一种非常敏感和慷慨的语气，让他们忍不住问我们，在我们父亲去世后的青春期，我们是什么样子的。
And the camera wasn’t just a ‘great present’; it has an immensely satisfying rubbery grip and a reassuringly clunky shutter sound that evokes a sturdier, better older world.
这款相机不仅是一件“伟大的礼物”；它有一个非常令人满意的橡胶手柄和令人放心的笨重的快门声音，让人联想到一个更坚固，更美好的旧世界。
The details will be there, waiting for us to catch them through our mental sieve.
细节将在那里，并等待我们通过我们的心理筛子抓住他们。
Praise works best the more specific it can be.
表扬越具体效果越好。
We know this in love; the more a partner can say what it is they appreciate about us, the more real their affection can feel.
我们在爱情中知道这一点；伴侣越能说出他们欣赏我们的地方，他们的感情就越能感受到真实。
It is when they’ve studied the shape of our fingers, when they’ve recognised and appreciated the quirks of our character, when they’ve clocked the words we like or the way, we end a phone call that the praise starts to count.
只有当他们研究了我们手指的形状，当他们认识并欣赏了我们性格中的怪癖，当他们记下了我们喜欢的话语或我们挂断电话的方式时，赞美才开始起作用。
The person who has given a dinner party or sent us a present is no different.
给我们举办宴会或送我们礼物的人也不例外。
They too hunger for praise in its specific rather than general forms.
他们也渴望得到具体形式的赞扬，而不是笼统的赞扬。
We don’t have to be great artists to send effective thank you notes: we just need to locate and hold on tightly to two or three highly detailed reasons for our gratitude.
我们不一定非得是伟大的艺术家才能发出有效的感谢信：我们只需要找到并紧紧抓住两三个高度详细的理由来表达我们的感激之情。
