I have a friend named Gerry. I didn’t have much choice about being Gerry’s friend. If Gerry decides you’re going to be his friend, you don’t have much choice about it. He calls. He invites. He emails. If you don’t answer, if you can’t make it, if you make plans and then cancel, he doesn’t care. He keeps calling. He keeps inviting. He keeps emailing. The man is relentless in his mission to connect.
我有一个名叫 Gerry 的朋友。成为 Gerry 的朋友我并没有太多选择。如果 Gerry 决定要你成为他的朋友，你在这方面几乎没有选择。他会打电话，他会邀请，他会发邮件。如果你不回电话，如果你不能赴约，如果你计划了然后取消，他不在乎。他会继续打电话，他会继续邀请，他会继续发邮件。这个人在连接他人的使命上是无情的。
And guess what? Gerry has a lot of friends.
猜猜看？Gerry 有很多朋友。
In a world where men suffer from unprecedented loneliness, Gerry is an extreme rarity: a man who works on his friendships. I can’t help wondering why he is so unique.
在一个男性遭受前所未有的孤独的世界里，Gerry 是一个极端罕见的例子：一个致力于维护友谊的男人。我不禁想知道他为什么如此独特。
Gerry is 85, which is 36 years older than me. One weekend, he invited me to his cottage with several other friends, most of whom were around his age.
Gerry 今年 85 岁，比我大 36 岁。一个周末，他邀请我和几位其他朋友去他的小屋，其中大多数人和他年龄相仿。
At one point after dinner, as a bit of a parlor game, they went around the room giving me advice as the younger, if not exactly young, man at the table. Much of their counsel boiled down to the fact that I will need to have more money in the future than I currently have, which I already knew.
在晚餐后某个时刻，作为桌上相对较年轻的（虽然不算年轻）人，他们像玩一个客厅游戏一样，围坐一圈给我提建议。他们的许多忠告归结为一个事实：我将来需要的钱将比现在多，这个我已经知道了。
Gerry’s contribution at first seemed less hard-headed but was far more practical and has remained with me ever since: “Never lose a friend.”
起初，Gerry 的贡献看起来不那么固执己见，但更加实用，并且一直留在了我的心中：“永远不要失去一个朋友。”
When I later asked Gerry what he meant, he told me a story about a man we knew, a man who, when all is said and done, was an asshole. They were having some random fight about politics, and as it grew more and more heated, the asshole said: “I don’t think we can talk any more, we’re too far apart.”
后来我问 Gerry 他是什么意思，他给我讲了一个关于我们认识的一个男人的故事，这个男人，在所有事情都说完后，是个混蛋。他们因为政治问题发生了一场随意的争吵，随着争吵越来越激烈，那个混蛋说：“我觉得我们不能再谈下去了，我们太远了。”
Gerry refused to allow him to end the friendship.
Gerry 拒绝让他结束这段友谊。
“I’m going to call this week, and I’m going to call next week, and I’m going to call the week after,” he said. “You can answer or not but I’m going to call.”
“我打算这周打电话，下周打电话，再下一周也打电话，”他说，“你可以接也可以不接，但我肯定会打。”
That’s what I mean when I say you don’t have much of a choice about being Gerry’s friend. And his wisdom was truly life-changing to me. What if you took total responsibility for your own social life? What if, instead of treating social life as something you inhabit, you treated it like something you made?
这就是我说你几乎无法选择成为 Gerry 朋友的意思。他的智慧对我来说真的是改变生活的。如果你对自己的社交生活承担全部责任会怎样？如果你不把社交生活当作你所在的地方，而是当作你创造的东西呢？
At this point, writing about the dangers of loneliness feels like writing about the dangers of smoking. Everyone already knows. The evidence is overwhelming; the debate is long over.
在这个时候，写关于孤独的危害就像写关于吸烟的危害一样。每个人都知道。证据压倒性；争论已经持续很长时间了。
Still, there is a small industry devoted to describing masculine loneliness, and how damaging its effects are. By one estimate, being lonely has as much effect on your mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 29%. One 2024 survey found that only 27% of men had six or more close friends; in 1990, another survey put the number at 55%. Today, about 17% of men say they have no close friends at all.
仍然，有一个小行业致力于描述男性孤独感及其破坏性影响。据估计，孤独对死亡的影响与每天抽 15 支烟相当。社会孤立使过早死亡的风险增加 29%。一项 2024 年的调查发现，只有 27%的男性拥有六个或更多的亲密朋友；而 1990 年，另一项调查将这一数字定为 55%。如今，大约有 17%的男性表示他们一个亲密朋友都没有。
Researchers have been trying to figure out the source of the accelerating loneliness since Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone in 2000. The answers are mostly vague and culture-based: there is a stigma against male intimacy, supposedly, and men, in the exhausting world of late capitalism, do not have the time and energy for friendships.
研究人员自 2000 年罗伯特·普特南出版《独自打保龄球》以来，一直在试图找出孤独感加剧的原因。答案大多模糊且与文化相关：据说存在对男性亲密关系的污名，而在后资本主义的疲惫世界中，男性没有时间和精力去维护友谊。
That’s the idea, anyway. 这是想法，总之。
The directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, in place since 1938 and among the most methodologically sound sociological investigations ever undertaken, examined the lives of a huge array of men from a wide range of backgrounds, and came to a single overwhelming insight. “It’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done, and it’s brought us to a simple and profound conclusion,” they wrote in 2023. “Good relationships lead to health and happiness.”
哈佛成人发展研究项目的负责人，该项目自 1938 年启动，是迄今为止最严谨的社会学调查之一，他们研究了来自不同背景的大量男性的人生，得出一个压倒性的见解。“这是有史以来对人类生活进行的持续时间最长、最深入的纵向研究，它带给我们一个简单而深刻的结论，”他们在 2023 年写道。“良好的人际关系带来健康和幸福。”
It’s kind of as simple as that. If there’s a secret to life, it’s bonding with others.
生活其实很简单。如果有什么秘密，那就是与他人建立联系。
The reason loneliness produces such harmful effects is that human beings are social animals. The need for society, for a group of friends, is essential to human nature. Today, people are reaching out to chatbots for therapy and companionship. That is like drinking salt water to slake your thirst. Imitation society will not suffice. Face-to-face contact is not a negotiable aspect of your humanity. If you deny it, you will suffer.
孤独产生如此有害影响的原因是人类是社会性动物。对社会的需求，对一群朋友的渴望是人类本性的基本需求。如今，人们开始向聊天机器人寻求治疗和陪伴。这就像喝盐水解渴一样。模仿的社会是不够的。面对面的接触是人类本质不可协商的一部分。如果你否认这一点，你将遭受痛苦。
Of course, you already know this. Men know it. They feel it in their bones. So why are there not more Gerrys in the world? Why don’t men work at their friendships?
当然，你已经知道了这一点。男人都知道。他们骨子里就有这种感觉。那么，为什么世界上没有更多像 Gerry 这样的朋友呢？为什么男人不努力经营他们的友谊呢？
One reason male friendship falters is the lingering belief that it should just happen on its own. To work at it seems to betray the very idea of friendship. We are told connection should be effortless, so intentional socializing feels faintly embarrassing, even pathetic. Men go around pretending that they are not the kind of men who need other people, because expressing that need makes them vulnerable.
男性友谊之所以会失败，一个原因就是人们根深蒂固地认为友谊应该自然而然地发生。努力去维护它似乎是对友谊概念的背叛。我们被告知，联系应该是无力的，所以有意识地社交会让人感到微微尴尬，甚至有些可怜。男性四处假装自己不是那种需要别人的人，因为表达这种需求会使他们变得脆弱。
But everything human beings need makes them look ridiculous. In the 1960s and 1970s, exercise also seemed absurd and humiliating and artificial – why would you consciously work at tiring yourself out? In 1968, a Connecticut runner was stopped by the police for “illegal use of a highway by a pedestrian”. That same year, the New York Times gently mocked the emerging trend: “Today the majority of runners – or ‘joggers,’ thank you – seem to be securely middle-aged, that great awkward crowd of us too old for LSD and too young for Medicare.”
但人类所需的一切都让他们看起来很荒谬。在 20 世纪 60 年代和 70 年代，锻炼也似乎很荒谬、令人羞愧和做作——为什么你要有意识地让自己筋疲力尽呢？1968 年，康涅狄格州的一名跑步者因“行人非法使用公路”而被警察拦下。同年，《纽约时报》温和地嘲讽了这一新兴趋势：“今天的大多数跑步者——或者‘慢跑者’，谢谢——似乎都是那些中年人，我们这帮人既不适合 LSD，又不够年轻享受医疗保险。”
The reason jogging took off in the 60s is that society required it. During the 50s, farm labour declined by 37%, and during the 1960s by a further 38%. If you’re baling hay or herding cattle, you don’t need to go to the gym. But suddenly, far fewer men were baling hay and herding cattle. Physical activity was no longer something that just happened. People figured out that their bodies needed movement.
跑步在 60 年代兴起的原因是，社会需要它。在 50 年代，农业劳动力下降了 37%，在 60 年代又进一步下降了 38%。如果你在打捆干草或放牧牛群，你不需要去健身房。但突然之间，打捆干草和放牧牛群的男人越来越少。身体活动不再是自然而然发生的事情。人们意识到，他们的身体需要运动。
If you don’t move your body, you will be miserable. Physical activity is about 1.5 times more effective in treating mild-to-moderate depression, stress and anxiety than any treatment. Most people accept this reality.
如果你不活动身体，你会感到痛苦。身体活动在治疗轻度至中度抑郁、压力和焦虑方面比任何治疗方法都有效约 1.5 倍。大多数人接受这个现实。
Socialization, like physical activity, also used to be something that happened to you: big families, school, maybe camp, then college or a factory, then church or synagogue or the mosque, plus community leagues, neighbourhood associations, hobbies where you used to have to gather. Once upon a time, it was a struggle to find solitude, to find a way out of the crowd.
社交，就像体育锻炼一样，曾经也是发生在你身上的事情：大家庭、学校，也许还有夏令营，然后是大学或工厂，接着是教堂、犹太教堂或清真寺，再加上社区联盟、邻里协会、需要聚集在一起才能享受的爱好。曾经，找到独处的时间，找到摆脱人群的方法，是一种挑战。
The format of contemporary existence has changed those accidental interactions – the internet, social media, working from home, etc. It should be no surprise that loneliness is accelerating. Why would it not be?
当代生活形式的改变已经改变了那些偶然的互动——互联网、社交媒体、在家工作等。孤独感的加速发展并不令人惊讶。这难道不是理所当然的吗？
Just like exercise, the process of conscious socialization is not as complicated as finding the will to do it, at least in my experience. If I meet a guy I like, I go out for drinks with him. I organize get-togethers. I never take a cancellation personally. I have a friend – and I think everyone has a friend like this – who cancels plans at the last minute more times than not. I don’t care. I just keep rescheduling.
就像锻炼一样，有意识的社交过程并不像找到去做它的意愿那样复杂，至少在我的经历中是这样。如果遇到一个我喜欢的人，我会和他出去喝酒。我会组织聚会。我从不把取消计划当作个人问题。我有一个朋友——我认为每个人都有这样的朋友——他经常在最后一刻取消计划。我不在乎。我只是不断重新安排。
I’m trying to be like Gerry. If I like somebody, they will have very little choice about the matter.
我正试图成为像 Gerry 那样的人。如果我喜欢某人，他们在这方面几乎别无选择。
So how did Gerry get so good at his friendships? “I’m not going to tell you I think I’m so good,” he told me. “I’ve always been a bit of a keep-in-toucher but I was never the kind of guy who wanted to be the class secretary.”
如何让 Gerry 在友谊方面变得如此出色？“我不会告诉你我认为自己有多好，”他告诉我。“我一直是个喜欢保持联系的人，但从来不是那种想当班上秘书的人。”
For him, the process that seems so foreign to young men today came naturally, as an outgrowth of his curiosity. “There’s nothing more interesting than people, and even people who you think might not be superficially interesting. If you go out for lunch or dinner, you find out everybody’s got a story. The least obvious people have the greatest stories. It’s a really important form of intimacy when you share stories. And it’s not even confidential stories. It’s just they’re your stories. There’s a whole spectrum of confidences in life.”
对他来说，今天年轻人看起来如此陌生的过程，对他来说却很自然，这是他好奇心的产物。“没有什么比人更有趣了，甚至那些你认为表面上可能不有趣的人。如果你出去吃午餐或晚餐，你会发现每个人都有故事。最不明显的人有着最精彩的故事。当你分享故事时，这是一种真正重要的亲密形式。而且这些故事甚至不是保密的。这只是它们是你的故事。生活中有着整个信任度的光谱。”
To be clear, I am not talking about networking. The use-value of a social life is not to advance your career down various paths of connection. That is why LinkedIn exists. The use-value is contact in itself. Simply being in the presence of somebody whose presence you enjoy is enough, but there can be big gains from it.
为了明确，我并不是在谈论社交网络。社交生活的使用价值并不是为了在各个连接路径上推进你的职业生涯。这就是 LinkedIn 存在的原因。使用价值本身就是联系。仅仅与一个你喜欢的人在一起就足够了，但从中可以带来巨大的收益。
If Gerry needs to know something about Canadian literature or the gossip about some journalist, he just calls me up and I tell him. And he has a guy like me for everything. If there’s some controversy around a point of law, he calls up a former supreme court justice who’s a buddy. He probably has a guy who knows the Asian bond market. It’s not like Gerry and I share many political opinions, but he is invulnerable to disinformation. His effort at connection has plugged him into the facts.
如果 Gerry 需要了解加拿大文学或一些记者的八卦，他只需给我打电话，我就告诉他。他就像我这样的人一样，对任何事情都了如指掌。如果某个法律问题存在争议，他会打电话给一位曾经的最高法院大法官，他们还是朋友。他可能还有一位了解亚洲债券市场的人。我和 Gerry 在政治观点上并不太多相同，但他对虚假信息免疫。他努力建立联系，这让他接触到了事实。
Younger friends and older friends are particularly valuable, I think. You can learn things from men of other generations that you just cannot learn any other way. I learned from the older men that no one should be in power over the age of 75, and that, after you reach a certain age, there is no such thing as an unhappy widow. My younger friends keep trying to find me a therapist, which is kind of them.
年轻的朋友和年长的朋友尤其宝贵，我认为。你可以从其他年代的人那里学到一些其他方式无法学到的东西。我从年长的男性那里学到，没有人应该在 75 岁之后掌权，而且，在你达到一定年龄之后，就没有所谓的悲伤寡妇了。我的年轻朋友们一直在试图为我找一个治疗师，他们真是太好了。
I should also point out that I do not consider myself “good” at socialization. I am no Gerry. It’s a bit like when I started running. I ran for a bit, then walked for a bit, then ran for a bit. My lungs hurt and it felt unnatural. It’s the same with conscious socialization. At first it’s annoying and can be humiliating – you’re asking people for their time and you get rejected. Then it feels good and you notice that it feels good, then it becomes a cherished part of the day, and then it becomes a requirement for basic sanity.
我也应该指出，我不认为自己在社交方面“擅长”。我不是 Gerry。这有点像我刚开始跑步的时候。我跑了一会儿，然后走了一会儿，然后又跑了一会儿。我的肺疼，感觉很不自然。有意识的社交也是这样。一开始很烦人，甚至可能让人感到羞辱——你请求别人的时间，却被拒绝。然后感觉很好，你注意到这种感觉很好，然后它变成了你一天中珍视的部分，然后它变成了基本理智的要求。
There are regular embarrassments of course, just like with exercise. Sometimes, when I manage to pull my fat ass out for a run, I get passed by some elfin 20-year-old sprinting past me. I don’t judge myself and I don’t judge others. I’m operating at my level. Everybody has their own limits, their own preferences. Like almost everything that matters, 90% is just showing up.
当然，会有一些常规的尴尬，就像锻炼一样。有时候，当我设法把我的大屁股拉出去跑步时，我会被某个精灵般的 20 岁年轻人超过。我不评判自己，也不评判别人。我在自己的水平上运作。每个人都有自己的极限，自己的偏好。就像几乎所有重要的事情一样，90%只是出现。
Embarrassment goes away pretty fast, I have found. The advantages outweigh the stigma so overwhelmingly. “At first you think everyone is staring at you – and they are,” a jogger told the New York Times back in 1968. “After a while you enjoy jogging so much that you don’t give a damn.” The mockery of jogging eventually stopped of its own accord. The people who made fun of it all died.
尴尬很快就会消失，我发现。优点远远超过了耻辱。 “一开始你以为每个人都在盯着你看——他们确实在，”一位慢跑者在 1968 年对《纽约时报》说。“过了一段时间，你太喜欢慢跑了，以至于你不再在乎。” 慢跑的嘲笑最终自行停止。那些嘲笑它的人都已经去世了。
“N “N”ot everyone I want to have lunch with wants to have lunch. They don’t like me. They find me annoying. Whatever,” Gerry says. Rejection does not dissuade him: “I do make the effort. Get out there. Be open. Join a club. Go to a book launch. Say hello to somebody you don’t know, ask them who they are. People are always interested in people who are interested in them.”
每个人都有我想一起吃午饭的，但并不是每个人都想吃午饭。他们不喜欢我，觉得我烦人。“随便吧，”Gerry 说。拒绝并没有让他气馁：“我会努力。走出去。保持开放。加入一个俱乐部。参加一个书发布会。向一个不认识的人打招呼，问他们是谁。人们总是对那些对他们感兴趣的人感兴趣。”
That last remark, in particular, seems to me to be the key to Gerry’s success. It’s hard not to enjoy the company of people who enjoy your company.
特别是最后那句话，在我看来，是 Gerry 成功的关键。和那些喜欢和你在一起的人在一起，很难不感到愉快。
In 2016, the UK government ran a year-long Commission on Loneliness. Its final report was at least honest: government can’t do much. Loneliness seems like some kind of vague background force nobody can do much about, a nefarious social breakdown beyond anyone’s control.
2016 年，英国政府开展了一项为期一年的孤独感委员会调查。其最终报告至少是诚实的：政府能做的很少。孤独感似乎是一种模糊的背景力量，无人能做太多，是一种超出任何人控制的邪恶社会崩溃。
The only substantial plan is for men to take responsibility for their own socialization the way they take responsibility for their fitness. The gyms are full of men who work out because they know that, if they don’t, they will be less healthy and therefore less attractive and therefore less happy. The only solution to the crisis of loneliness is a similarly conscious effort in social life, what Gerry does. Loneliness is not insoluble. It just takes some solving.
唯一实质性的计划是男性像对待自己的健康一样，对自己的社会化承担责任。健身房里充满了锻炼的男性，因为他们知道，如果不这样做，他们会更不健康，因此更不吸引人，因此更不快乐。解决孤独危机的唯一方法是像 Gerry 那样在社交生活中做出类似的自觉努力。孤独并非无法解决，只需解决一下即可。
If you’re lonely, do you try? Do you work at it? Bro, do you even friend?
如果你感到孤独，你会尝试吗？你会努力去做吗？兄弟，你甚至尝试交朋友吗？
