Chapter 8 Enjoying Solitude and Other People

The Conflict between Being Alone and Being with Others

The Pain of Loneliness

Taming Solitude

Flow and the Family

Enjoying Friends

The Wider Community

本文要点：

生活质量取决于两个因素：我们如何体验工作，以及我们与他人的关系

与人的关系可以让生活变得非常有趣、充实或是完全悲惨

我们如何处理与人的关系对我们的幸福有着巨大的影响

01

STUDIES ON FLOW have demonstrated repeatedly that more than anything else, the quality of life depends on two factors: how we experience work, andour relations with other people.

Our self is largely defined by what happens in those two contexts, as Freud recognized in his prescription of “love and work” for happiness.

The last chapter reviewed some of the flow potentials of work; here we will explore relationships with family and friends, to determine how they can become the source of enjoyable experiences.

对心流的研究一再表明，生活质量取决于两个因素：我们如何体验工作，以及我们与他人的关系。

我们的自我在很大程度上是由这两种情况下所发生的事情来定义的，正如弗洛伊德在他的幸福“爱与工作”的药方中所承认的那样。

最后一章回顾了一些工作的心流潜力；在这里，我们将探讨与家人和朋友的关系，以确定他们如何成为愉快体验的来源。

02

Whether we are in the company of other people or not makes a great difference to the quality of experience. We are biologically programmed to find other human beings the most important objects in the world. Because they can make life either very interesting and fulfilling or utterly miserable, how we manage relationships with them makes an enormous difference to our happiness.

我们是否跟人在一起对体验的质量有很大的影响。我们人类就有着认为其他人是世界上最重要的物体的基因。因为他们可以让生活变得非常有趣、充实或是完全悲惨，我们如何处理与人的关系对我们的幸福有着巨大的影响。

03

On the other hand, we also value privacy and often wish to be left alone.

Yet it frequently turns out that as soon as we are, we begin to grow depressed. It is typical for people in this situation to feel lonely, to feel that there is no challenge, there is nothing to do. For some, solitude brings about in milder form the disorienting symptoms of sensory deprivation.

Yet unless one learns to tolerate and even enjoy being alone, it is very difficult to accomplish any task that requires undivided concentration. For this reason, it is essential to find ways to control consciousness even when we are left to our own devices.

另一方面，我们也很重视隐私，常常希望自己一个人呆着。

然而，事实往往证明，一旦我们开始变得沮丧，在这种情况下，人们通常会感到孤独，觉得没有挑战，没有事情可做。对一些人来说，孤独会带来更温和的感官剥夺的迷失症状。

然而，除非一个人学会忍受，甚至享受独处的乐趣，否则很难完成任何需要全神贯注的任务。因此，找到控制意识的方法是非常重要的，即使我们只能依靠自己。The Conflict between Being Alone and Being with Others

独处和社交的冲突

01

Of the things that frighten us, the fear of being left out of the flow of human interaction is certainly one of the worst. There is no question that we are social animals; only in the company of other people do we feel complete.

In many preliterate cultures solitude is thought to be so intolerable that a person makes a great effort never to be alone; only witches and shamans feel comfortable spending time by themselves.

In many different human societies—Australian Aborigines, Amish farmers, West Point cadets—the worst sanction the community can issue isshunning.

The person ignored grows gradually depressed, and soon begins to doubt his or her very existence. In some societies the final outcome of being ostracized is death: the person who is left alone comes to accept the fact that he must be already dead, since no one pays attention to him any longer; little by little he stops taking care of his body, and eventually passes away.

在让我们感到恐惧的事情中，害怕被人孤立无疑是最糟糕的事情之一。毫无疑问，我们是群居动物；只有和别人在一起，我们才会感到完整。

在许多早期文化中，独处被认为是无法忍受的，以至于一个人努力不独处；只有巫师和萨满才会感到自在地独处。

在许多不同的人类社会，澳大利亚土著居民，阿米什农民，西点军校学员，社区能发出的最坏的制裁是回避。

被忽视的人逐渐变得沮丧，很快就开始怀疑自己的存在。在一些社会中，被排斥的最终结果是死亡：一个人孤独地接受他一定已经死了的事实，因为没有人再关注他；一点一点地，他停止照顾他的身体，并最终去世。

03

Social science surveys have universally concluded that people claim to be most happy with friends and family, or just in the company of others.

When they are asked to list pleasant activities that improve their mood for the entire day, the kind of events most often mentioned are

“Being with happy people,”

“Having people show interest in what I say,”

“Being with friends,” and

“Being noticed as sexually attractive.”

One of the major symptoms that sets depressed and unhappy people apartis that they rarely report such events occurring to them. A supportive social network also mitigates stress: an illness or other misfortune is less likely to break a person down if he or she can rely on the emotional support of others.

社会科学调查得出的普遍结论是，人们声称与朋友和家人在一起或只是与他人在一起时最快乐。

当他们被要求列出能改善一整天心情的令人愉快的活动时，最常提到的活动是

“和快乐的人在一起”，

“让人们对我说的话表现出兴趣”，

“和朋友在一起，”

和“被注意到具有性吸引力”。

使抑郁和不快乐的人与众不同的一个主要症状是，他们很少倾诉发生在他们身上的事情。一个支持性的社交网络也能缓解压力：如果一个人可以依靠他人的情感支持，那么疾病或其他不幸就不太可能让他/她崩溃。

04

There is no question that we are programmed to seek out the company of peers. It is likely that sooner or later behavioral geneticists will find in our chromosomes the chemical instructions that make us feel so uncomfortable whenever we happen to be alone.

There are good reasons why, during the course of evolution, such instructions should have been added to our genes. Animals that develop a competitive edge against other species through cooperation survive much better if they are constantly within sight of one another.

Of course, as human adaptation began to rely increasingly on culture, additional reasons for sticking together became important. For instance, the more people grew to depend for survival on knowledge instead of instinct, the more they benefited from sharing their learning mutually; a solitary individual under such conditions became an idiot, which in Greek originally meant a “private person”—someone who is unable to learn from others.

毫无疑问，我们的基因程序就是志同道合的人。很可能，行为遗传学家迟早会在我们的染色体上发现化学指令，每当我们碰巧独自一人时，这些指令会让我们感到非常不舒服。

在进化的过程中，我们有充分的理由将这种指令添加到我们的基因中。通过合作发展出与其他物种竞争优势的动物，如果它们经常在彼此的视线范围内，生存得更好。

当然，随着人类适应开始越来越依赖于文化，坚持在一起的其他原因变得重要。例如，人们越来越依赖知识而不是本能来生存，他们就越能从相互分享学习中获益；在这种情况下，孤独的个人变成了白痴，在希腊语中，白痴的原意是“private person”——一个无法向他人学习的人。

05

When we examine the most negative experiences in the life of average people, we find the other side of the glittering coin of gregariousness:

the most painful events are also those that involve relationships.

How is it possible to reconcile the fact that people cause both the best and the worst times?

当我们审视普通人生活中最消极的经历时，我们会发现社交活动的另一面：

最痛苦的事情也是那些涉及人际关系的事情

如何才能调和这样一个事实，即是人造成了最好和最坏的时刻？

06

This apparent contradiction is actually not that difficult to resolve. Like anything else that really matters, relationships make us extremely happy when they go well, and very depressed when they don’t work out.

People are the most flexible, the most changeable aspect of the environment we have to deal with. The same person can make the morning wonderful and the evening miserable. Because we depend so much on the affection and approval of others, we are extremely vulnerable to how we are treated by them.

这种明显的矛盾其实并不难解决。和其他任何真正重要的事情一样，恋爱关系让我们在进展顺利的时候非常开心，而在不成功的时候却非常沮丧。

人是我们必须面对的环境中最灵活、最多变的方面。同一个人可以使早晨美好，使夜晚痛苦。因为我们如此依赖他人的爱和认可，我们极易受到他人对待。

07

Therefore a person who learns to get along with others is going to make a tremendous change for the better in the quality of life as a whole.

But people are not important only because they can help make our goals come true; when they are treated as valuable in their own right, people are the most fulfilling source of happiness.

因此，一个学会与他人相处的人将为整体生活质量的提高做出巨大的改变。

但人之所以重要，不仅仅是因为他们能帮助我们实现目标；当他们被视为有价值的人时，他们才是幸福最充实的源泉。

08

It is the very flexibility of relationships that makes it possible to transform unpleasant interactions into tolerable, or even exciting ones. How we define and interpret a social situation makes a great difference to how people will treat one another, and to how they will feel while doing it.

正是这种关系的灵活性，使我们能够将不愉快的互动转化为可容忍的，甚至是令人兴奋的互动。我们如何定义和解释一个社会环境，对人们如何对待彼此，以及他们在做这件事时的感受都有很大的影响。

For instance, when our son Mark was twelve years old, he took a shortcut across a rather deserted park one afternoon as he walked home from school. In the middle of the park he was suddenly confronted by three large young men from the neighboring ghetto. “Don’t make a move or he’ll shoot you,” one of them said, nodding toward the third man, who had his hand in his pocket. The three took away everything Mark had—some change and a worn Timex. “Now keep on going. Don’t run, don’t even turn around.

So Mark started walking again toward home, and the three went in the other direction. After a few steps, however, Mark turned around and tried to catch up with them. “Listen,” he called, “I want to talk to you.”“Keep going,” they shouted back. But he caught up with the trio, and asked if they would reconsider giving him back the watch they reconsider giving him back the watch they had taken. He explained that it was very cheap, and of no possible value to anyone except him: “You see, it was given to me on my birthday by my parents.” The three were furious, but finally decided to take a vote on whether to give back the watch. The vote went two to one in favor of returning it, so Mark walked proudly home without change but with the old watch in his pocket. Of course it took his parents a lot longer to recover from the experience.

09

From an adult perspective, Mark was foolish to possibly risk his life for an old watch, no matter how sentimentally valued it was. But this episode illustrates an important general point: that a social situation has the potential to be transformed by redefining its rules.

从成年人的角度来看，马克为了一块旧表冒着生命危险是愚蠢的，不管它的价值有多高。但这一事件说明了一个重要的普遍观点：一个社会状况有可能通过重新定义其规则来改变。

10

But before considering in more depth how relationships can be reshaped to provide optimal experiences, it is necessary to take a detour through the realms of solitude. Only after understanding a bit better how being alone affects the mind can we see more clearly why companionship is so indispensable to well-being.

The average adult spends about one-third of his or her waking time alone, yet we know very little about this huge slice of our lives, except that we heartily dislike it.

但在更深入地考虑如何重塑关系以提供最佳体验之前，有必要绕道谈谈独处的领域。只有更好地理解孤独对心灵的影响，我们才能更清楚地明白为什么友谊对幸福是如此不可或缺。

一般成年人醒着的时候大约有三分之一的时间是独自度过的，但我们对这段巨大的生活所知甚少，只知道我们由衷地不喜欢它。