I recently went through a breakup. It was the worst — they always are — but as I wrestled with sadness over the end of the relationship, another perplexing challenge arose: how to be alone.
最近，我分手了。这是最糟糕的事情——这类事情永远拔得头筹——但随着恋情结束后带来的哀伤逐渐平复，我发现要面对另一个令人困惑的调整：如何独处。
I’ve been through a million — OK, three — breakups before. I’ve spent plenty of time single in between. I thought I’d be good at this alone thing by now. I’m an only child, for crying out loud. Instead, on the heels of another split, I’m amazed at how difficult just being by myself can be. I have friends – they are wonderful — but I feel a suffocating solitude at the end of the night, in the morning or at any moment of the day that isn’t scheduled with distraction. It wasn’t this way when I was coupled. Just the knowledge that I had “a person” to call my own (even though I know in my bones that you can never truly call another person “your own”) was a comfort; that knowledge itself was a constant companion.
以前，我经历过无数次——好吧，三次——分手。每次独处的空窗期都很长。我以为现在自己可以善于独处了。额的神啊，我自幼独处惯了。但是，随着又一次分手，独处会变得如此艰难，真出乎我的意料。我朋友不少——他们都很好——但是只要一空闲下来，无论午夜时分，还是早晨，或者是一天的任何时候，我都感受到了令人窒息的寂寞。当身边有人的时候，我就没有如此的感受。只要一想到我可以将“某人”称作是我的（即使内心深处，我知道人永远无法将另一个人称作“你的”），这就是安慰；这种想法本身就是永恒的伴侣。
How does one become good at being alone? This question might be uniquely poignant for those of us fresh out of a breakup, or still in our 20s, but it’s a question people confront at all stages of life and for all sorts of reasons, whether it’s a big move to a new city, an unexpected death, a divorce or any countless number of things that life can throw your way. And regardless of your romantic status or friend count, it’s nice to be capable of enjoying a movie or dinner alone. A friend told me a story about an acquaintance who is married with kids: She has a meltdown whenever her family goes out of town; she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
一个人该如何才能善于独处？对刚分手的人们，或者20多岁的人来说，这可能是一个让人非常酸楚的问题；但这是一个人一生中各个阶段，出于各种理由都需要面对的问题，无论是搬到一个新城市的大变迁，出乎意料的死别，离婚或者生活扔给你数不清的状况。而且，不管恋情如何，朋友几多，能够独享一场电影，或者一顿晚饭，也是很棒的事情。一个朋友曾经和我说过他认识的一个有孩子的已婚妇女：每当家人离开城镇，她就崩溃了；她不知道独处时该做什么。
So, I decided to seek out the world’s wisdom on how to be alone. (As I tweeted earlier this week, “One of my favorite things about being a journo? Being able to take my own burning questions to experts under the pretense of public service.”) In terms of romantic aloneness, Anna David seemed like a good first stop: She wrote the memoir “Falling for Me: How I Hung Curtains, Learned to Cook, Traveled to Seville, and Fell in Love, ” and understands the ache of singlehood all too well. “I spent so much time where everything was filtered through this lens of ‘but I’m alone.’ And I was haunted by the thought, ‘I’m going to be alone forever, ’” she says.
于是，我决心寻找世间关于如何独处的智慧。（如我这星期早些时候发的一条推特，“从事媒体工作，让我最喜欢的一点是什么？可以假装为大众服务，其实是向专家询问那些让自己百爪挠心的问题”）从爱的寂寞角度来说，看安娜·大卫的作品是好的开端：她写过自传《爱上自己：我如何拉开窗帘，学习烹饪，去塞维利亚旅行，还坠入爱河》。她说：“我以前戴着有色眼镜‘但我就一个人’看待每一件事情，以至于浪费了很多时间。而且，被‘我将孤独终老’的念头吓坏了。”
It took a long time to move past that fear. In fact, it took setting out to write a book about bettering herself in order to land a man. “The idea I pitched Harper Collins was very much ‘Let me get totally perfect so that I can find the perfect guy to fall in love with me and the last chapter will be about how in love we are, ’” she says, but none of that happened. While the book ultimately delivers a happier message of self-love, she privately felt like a failure for still being single. Shortly thereafter, though, she “bottomed out” in a relationship where she says, “I just got crazy and obsessive and I started to believe … it’s this guy or a lifetime of eating dinner with my cat.”
克服这个恐惧感花了很长的时间。实际上，写本书的初衷是俘虏一个男人。“我给出版社提出的思路类似‘让我变得完美，那么我就可以找到完美的男人，并让他爱上我，书的最后一章将描写我们有多相爱，’”她说，但实际情况完全不是如此。当本书基本讲述自爱更快乐时，因为单身，她私底下还是觉得象一个失败者。但是不久，她的一段恋情“触底反弹”，对此她说：“我变得疯狂和迷恋，我开始相信……就是他了，或者我一辈子都要和猫吃晚饭了。”
Either through the writing of the book or that final relationship disaster, she says, “I basically realized that it was the old cliché: that no guy was ever going to make me happy, ” she says. “I was buying into this age-old fairy tale that at the end of the movie you end up with a guy.”
无论是写书的过程，还是缘尽的灾难，她说：“基本上，我意识到是那种陈词滥调的观点：没有男人，我就不幸福，”她说，“我以前接受了这个源远流长的童话，就是说影片结尾的时候，你会和一个男人在一起。”
In my search for wisdom on spending time alone, regardless of relationship status, I quickly found that very few experts want to talk about being alone; they’d rather talk about how to not be alone. Judy Ford, the author of “Single: The Art of Being Satisfied, Fulfilled and Independent, ” is a rare exception to that: “We are born alone and die alone, and deep within our souls we live alone, ” she tells me in an email, instantly invoking those universal truths that hurt the most. “No one else ever abides in our skin. If we haven’t yet come to terms with this ultimate truth, we are scared out of our minds to be alone.”
无论恋情如何，在探索独处智慧的时候，我很快就发现很少有专家想谈论独处；他们宁愿谈论如何不要独处。朱迪·福特是《单身：满足、充实和独立的艺术》的作者，她是这个问题的一个异数：“我们独自出生，独自死亡；灵魂深处，我们都是独自一人，”她在给我的一封电邮里如此写道，开头就引用了这些大多数人难堪面对的普世真理。“人隔皮肤。如果我们还不接受这个基本真理，那么就会被孤独的念头吓坏了。”
She adds, “The fear of public speaking is a mere tickle in comparison to the seismic ripples of horror that reverberate through the heart when faced with spending the weekend alone, ” says Ford. “People are more courageous about going to the dentist than they are about eating in a restaurant alone.” That’s true for young as well as old: Many seniors feel lonely “because they have not developed their inner life, ” she says.
她补充道：“周末独自一人，内心如翻江倒海般千千结；当众演讲的恐惧和这个比起来简直就是愉快了。”福特还说，“比起一人独自在餐厅用餐，人们去看牙医更勇敢一些。”这点老少通用——她说，很多老人觉得孤独，是“因为他们不再提升内心生活了。”
Her practical tips for conquering solitude are to get creative (“creativity is the cure of loneliness”), push yourself to “do something you have never done before” (like taking yourself out to dinner), admit your loneliness to others (“you might be surprised that they feel lonely too”), “get cozy with the gaps, ” those empty spaces in between plans, and remind yourself, “Loneliness is not going to kill me.” These aren’t easy fixes — and may induce eye-rolls from self-help haters — but they’re crucial to happiness, she argues: “To experience wholeness, first we experience the void.”
她为克服寂寞提出了一些实际方法：发挥创造性（“创新可治愈孤独”）；鼓励自己“做一些以前从未做过的事情”（象独自外出就餐）；对别人承认自己的孤独感（“当别人也有相同感觉时，你可能会惊讶”，“在空窗期，保持自得”，各个计划之间是有空隙，并且提醒自己：“孤独不会杀了我。”这些方法不容易——还可能招致反对自助者的白眼——但它们对幸福至关重要，她认为：“要完整，得先体会孤寂。”
Speaking of happiness, Gretchen Rubin wrote the book on it — she’s the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Happiness Project” — and has a slightly different take. “Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that probably the key to happiness is strong relationships with other people, ” she says. “You need to feel like you have intimate long-lasting relationships, you need to feel like you belong, you need to feel like you can get support and give support.”
提及幸福，Gretchen Rubin写了一本关于此话题的书——她是《时代》杂志畅销书《幸福规划》的作者，并且采取了略微不同的视角。“先贤们和当代科学家都认同；幸福的关键可能在于和他人紧密联系，”她说，“你需要拥有——诸如各种长期亲密关系的——感觉，你需要归属感，你需要感受到支持和帮助他人。”
Her emphasis isn’t on learning to be happy alone, but rather recognizing what level of social interaction makes you happiest — and it’s different for everyone: “Maybe you don’t have a sweetheart, but being around a lot of other people might make you feel happier even if you wish you had that, ” she tells me. “I think people sometimes aren’t very aware of how much they need to be around other people.”
她的着重点并非学习如何快乐独处，而是要明白哪种层面上的社交让你最快乐——这个问题千人千面：“可能没有恋人，但身边围绕着很多人，会让你更快乐，即使你期盼能有一个恋人，”她告诉我，“我觉得：有时候，人们并不是很清楚自己有多需要别人在身边。”
As for making the most of whatever degree of aloneness that you have — whether it’s being a bachelor or living in a new town with no friends — she says, “You don’t wait for circumstances to change in order to have the life that you want. If you want to go toFrance, don’t think, ‘Oh, as soon as I have a boyfriend I’ll go toFrance’ or ‘As soon as I get married I’ll fix up my apartment.’ Have the life that you want as much as you can now.” That’s instead of putting your life on hold, or living in ignorance of what you do have: “It’s things like electricity, the minute your electricity goes out you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, if only I had electricity I’d be so happy!’ But it’s not like we walk around in an ecstasy every day over electricity.”
对于大多数人来说，好好利用各自的孤独感——无论单身，还是在一个没有朋友的新城市——她说：“不要等着环境发生变化后，才追寻自己想要的生活。如果你想去法国，就不要想着：‘哦，等我有了男朋友，我就去法国’，或者‘只要结婚，我就修整公寓。’尽享眼下的生活。”这不是让人搁置生活，也不是让人忽略现在拥有的事物。“就象电力，一停电，你就想，‘哦，老天，要是来电，我可太高兴了！’但这并不意味着为了有电，每天狂喜得手舞足蹈。”
As for simple, radical acts of public solitude — like taking yourself out to dinner — Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist and author of “Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, ” says a large part of people’s discomfort is the result of social expectation. “There are some [activities] that are socially approved to do alone, like you wouldn’t think twice about going to a coffee shop by yourself, but going to a fancy restaurant or a play feels strange.” That strangeness is typically the result of our knee-jerk assumption that doing things alone equals desperation.
简而言之，在大庭广众之下表现寂寞的夸张行为——如独自去吃晚餐——Eric Klinenberg是一位社会学家，也是《独自行走：独身群体快速扩大，以及独身的魅力》的作者。他说，人们的不自在很大程度来自社会期许。“社会观念认可一个人可以做有些事情，如一个人去咖啡厅，就不会想来想去；但是一个人去高级餐厅就餐或者看演出，就觉得怪怪的。”我们下意识地认为独自做这些事情，等同绝望；由此，自然而然地会产生怪异感。
Two years ago, the video “How to Be Alone” starring writer Tanya Davis and her poem about the “freedom” of being by yourself — eating, dancing, reading, hiking — went viral. The video got more than 4.5 million hits: Clearly, her sweet and simple advice (for example, “We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library”) resonated with people. As she says in the four-minute clip, “Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.”
两年前，塔尼亚·大维斯是视频《如何单身》的主笔，她还写了关于独自“自由”的诗歌——就餐、跳舞、阅读、远足，这些内容开始流传。视频的点击率超过450万：显而易见，她那些贴心和简单的建议在人群中产生了共鸣（如，“我们可以从那些为大众可接受的地方开始，厕所、咖啡厅、图书馆”）。如她在4分钟视频中说的：“社会害怕孤独：好象孤独的心要在地下室里浪费一般；好象人们有一段时间没有约会，就是有毛病一样。但孤独意味着一种自由，轻松呼吸，没有负担；而且，如果会把握，孤独具有疗愈作用。”
It’s odd that being alone requires any instruction. As Ford so exquisitely and painfully put it: We’re born alone, we die alone and “deep within our souls we live alone” — but it’s one of life’s many poetic ironies that we couldn’t be more together in our aloneness.
独处还要寻找建议，将是一件非常奇怪的事情。如同福特笔下优雅和忧伤的文字：我们独自出生，独自死去，而且“灵魂深处，独自生活”——但这也是生活中诸多诗意反讽之一：只有独处时，我们才是最完整的。
|
