After Graduating, Keep Community First

Community is the heart of university. Students mix with other similarly aged people in an environment ripe with social activity, friendship, ideation, and discussion. It's the most powerful element of college or graduate school — and also the most jarring to leave behind.

社交活动是大学生活的核心。众多同龄人朝夕相处，在丰富多样的社会活动中激扬青春，在平等讨论的氛围中产生了纯真友谊。这是各个学院或者研究生院里最吸引人的元素，也是最让人割舍不下的东西。

Social isolation often follows graduation. I know firsthand. After college, I moved to Washington, D.C., and ended up living in the suburbs near work for a year, struggling to connect with others in a new city where few friends lived nearby. And after graduate school, I moved to Atlanta, but had to commute for one year back and forth to Boston where my wife was finishing grad school — a schedule that made it nearly impossible to get involved with friends or organizations in the city I called home. During those times, I found myself unfulfilled, lonely, and restless — struggling to rediscover the community and connection I'd taken for granted the year before.

但是，跟随在毕业之后的，往往是社交上的孤立。我也这样一路走来，太清楚那种感觉了。本科毕业后，我搬到了华盛顿特区，告别了一年的郊区生活，那时我曾在那打工。而在华盛顿这个陌生的城市，我几乎没什么朋友，我开始努力建立新的社交圈子。后来研究生毕业后，我又搬到了亚特兰大，但一年之内不得不往返于亚特兰大和波士顿，因为我太太正在波士顿攻读研究生课程。由于这种日程安排，我在那个被称为“家”的城市里基本没机会交友或参加业余活动。那时的我，毫无成就感，只有孤独焦虑整日与我相伴。如今，我连做梦都想回到过去的校园生活。

My experience is reasonably typical. The New York Times recently lamented the difficulties in making new friends as a person enters their 30s (the age at which many are leaving graduate school), largely because the three essential ingredients to forging friendship are lacking or harder to find post-university — "proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other." And this is exacerbated when young professionals take jobs that find them on the road three to four days per week. I've heard this time and again from my friends who are working hard but finding it difficult to forge new friendships or romantic partnerships, connect with old friends or the families they have, and give back to the communities in which they live.

我的经历并非个案。《纽约时报》最近还感慨， 当大多数人从研究生院毕业、跨入三十岁大关后，结交新朋友简直比登天还难。主要是因为，毕业之后，巩固友谊的三大关键元素失灵了。这三个元素分别是：一、亲近感；二、反复多次、不需要任何安排的互动；三、让人放下戒心、彼此信赖的环境。 当职场新人们找了一份每周要出差三四天的工作时，这种情况就更明显了。我常听到朋友抱怨说：他们卖力工作，却无暇建立新友谊或者浪漫恋情，也难以维系家庭关系、联系老朋友，以及回馈社区。

This is tragic because community is so important — perhaps even more important than career. Numerous studies have shown the link between health and community or friendship — prolonging life, promoting brain health, and even influencing your weight. One study even found that only smoking is as deleterious to men's heart health as lack of social support. Research has also shown that friendship and community are key elements to happiness. And the importance of these friendships only increases with age. Family relationships are similarly important. Researchers have found a much stronger relationship between happiness and family relationships over time than between happiness and income; and 75 percent of adults consider their families to be the most important and satisfying element of their lives. Voluteering and community service also lead to happier individuals and communities alike. But all of these — family, friendship, community service — are connected to our ability to limit our working schedules and firmly plant ourselves in a place for a period of time.

这真是一场悲剧。因为社会交往至关重要，甚至可能比职业生涯的意义更重。数不清的研究都表明，社会交往或友谊与健康之间形成的联系，不仅能延年益寿，还能促进脑部健康，甚至能影响你的体重。一项研究还发现，在心脏健康方面，只有抽烟的巨大伤害才能匹敌社会孤立的负面影响。友谊和社交圈子是幸福的关键组成部分，而且随着年龄增长，友谊的重要性只会增加而绝不会降低。家庭也同样重要。研究者发现，随着时间推移，幸福与家庭之间的联系，要比幸福与收入的关系更加紧密。另外，75%的成年人把家庭看作是生活中最重要、最令人满意的部分。志愿者和社区服务也有助于增加人的幸福感、产生各式各样的生活圈和团体。但家庭、友谊、社区服务这所有一切，都限制了我们工作的日程安排，并在一段时间内牢牢地把我们留在了某个地方。

So why do so many of us so consistently deprioritize these things after graduation? We simply fail to focus on it. Career success is visible and easy to define. We can measure it in raises and promotions. And it has urgency because it's what allows us to pay our bills. Community, meanwhile, is something soft and seemingly without urgency — we tell ourselves there will always be time for friendship, family, and community service just after we've mounted the next hill of career success. But this skewed prioritization — done with the best of intentions — can lead us to sadly kick important relationships, civic service, and our own happiness and well-being further and further down the road.

为什么许多人毕业后不约而同地忽视了这些方面？因为人们转移了他们的注意力。职业生涯的成功显而易见且易于衡量，例如获得加薪和晋升。努力工作也是一种迫切的需求，否则就没钱付账单。与之相反，社交活动则较为软性，不需要着急去做，我们告诉自己：等事业再上新台阶之后，总有时间去看朋友、陪家人、参加社区服务。但这种紊乱的优先级排序，尽管出自好意，却会导致我们损坏重要的社交关系，甚至影响未来的健康和幸福。

Author Bronnie Ware spent many years as a nurse caring for others in the last few weeks of their lives. Based on that experience, she wrote a now famous essay (and book) on her dying patients' top five regrets. All are worth a read, but two relate directly to community. Bronnie's dying patients claimed, "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" — expressing a longing to have spent more time with their spouses and children. And they coupled that with the desire to have "stayed in touch with my friends." Their sentiments were summed up perhaps even more concisely in the conclusions of a study started in 1938 which followed 267 Harvard graduates, many of whom were ambitious and professionally successful (including future president John F. Kennedy), for seventy years after college. The primary conclusion of that study? "Happiness is love. Full stop." Career is important. But community conquers all.

作家布伦尼·韦尔（Bronnie Ware）曾做过了很多年的护理工作，照顾过不少病人度过了生命的最后时光。基于这一经历，她写下了《临终病人的五大憾事》一书，讲述了人们临终前最后悔的五件事。该书非常值得一读，其中两点直接涉及到了社交生活。病人们说：“我真希望自己没那么努力工作过。”——他们渴望能有更多时间陪伴爱人和孩子，同时，很多人还表达了想要“和朋友们保持联络”的愿望。始于1938年的一项研究或许能更准确地概括这种情绪。该项研究追踪了267位哈佛毕业生，从他们毕业开始一直持续了70年。不少人野心勃勃，而且在职业道路上非常成功，其中包括后来的美国总统约翰·肯尼迪（John F. Kennedy）。这项研究最重要的研究结论是什么？“幸福是爱，仅此而已。 ”工作很重要，但生活高于一切。

So, for all the new graduates out there, I won't spend time reciting the ways in which to make community — through romantic partnerships, involvement in religious or civic organizations, dedication to existing friends or carving out time to make new ones. At some level, we social human beings all know how to do those things. I'll simply offer this advice: Remember that the most powerful part of your educational experience was social. And use that knowledge to build a life after graduation that's happy, balanced, and fulfilled.

对所有的职场新人而言，我不打算花时间列举建立社交圈子的方法——通过浪漫的恋情、参加宗教或民间组织、和现在的朋友聚会或者抽空认识新朋友。因为从某种意义上讲，人类是社会性动物，我们都知道该如何做，所以，我在此仅仅提供建议：别忘了，社交活动是学生时代最重要的部分。毕业后应该做的，就是用你所学去创造一种幸福、均衡和富有成就感的生活。