Tyler, great topic! As an early adapter of computer technology and the internet in the 1980’s, i remember the hope that these tools would help bring together all communities of people so to speak. Clearly that did not happen. Through a number of separate assessments, we know about one third to a half of Americans report being lonely today. Trends over the past several decades show an increase in computer and smart phone time use while less for community participation and more people living alone. Religious service attendance has fallen dramatically, and marriage/birth rates are down. The declines in social engagement and community participation started decades ago, and many of those trends have continued, and have further declined since Covid pandemic. Since 2014, we saw the average lifespan for Americans decline, tumbling in 2021 after COVID. Notwithstanding the impact on quality of life and life satisfaction, loneliness has an equivalent risk factor to health as smoking does, potentially shortening one's lifespan by up to eight years. Per a 2017 Harvard University 75-year longitudinal study of men, loneliness is toxic. The more isolated people are, the less happy they are, and brain function declines as well as physical health. What to do about loneliness? Every study I have read tells us to get away from the screens, get out of the house and engage is some sort of community building g group, whether thru church, civic, hobby, sport, or volunteer organization. Even with your own physical and financial limitations, it is important to try to personally connect. I am a full time caregiver of my spouse. I also volunteer to support other caregivers and counsel people on aging support programs via our area agency in aging. I am also a forever parent and friend (meaning that I hang in there even when it gets messy). I do try to stay away from online rants and chats because they rarely result in good feelings. Yet, I still feel the need to write and create as an outlet for those raw feelings that best go unexpressed to the ones you love. Writing every day helps to calm the curious and malevolent beast within because it forces me to think, research, and choose me words more carefully, more artfully. The writing helps me to become less opinionated and more human. Thank you for giving us a forum to do that with support and encouragement. You are a modern Juan Ponce de León, an explorer of the creative source of life!
These are depressing statistics, to be sure. Kudos to you for finding the energy to volunteer to support other caregivers and counsel others. I suspect that being a full-time caregiver could otherwise be an isolating role.
Ooof, these stats. What an eyeopener. Thank you for such a personal peek into your life, as well. What a gift to us. I know I speak for all of us when I say we're all lucky to have you here.
I know I need community and I'm trying to bravely reach out to it. It is, however, incredibly difficult as a capitalism-exhausted introvert! Thank you for the encouragement to keep going, it will be worth the effort. We are medicine.
This is so true 🫂. Last year the restaurant I worked at for 12 years closed. When the boss told us it was going to happen, the loss of community was my biggest fear. There was the general sadness for a business of 40+ years closing but I knew we would all drift apart. The last few weeks we were open, customers were constantly telling us how much they would miss our food. (Voted best pizza in the area for many years in a row) I know they meant well, but after so many times hearing it I just wanted to scream. I knew I would miss my friends. We slowly and then quickly drifted apart. I barely hear from them. Sometimes I feel like the title character from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (great read) and I am cursed to be forgotten. The first two months were awful. I was working nights at a grocery store so I saw almost no one on a daily basis. When I was at home, I couldn’t focus on anything and spent a lot of time just staring at the walls. I got a different job so I have more human interaction now, but I still miss those close ties. Sometimes I swear I can physically feel the loneliness.
Ahh this is so heartbreaking. I get overly emotional when things like this happen, losses of such touchstones of community and culture. I think the saddest thing is, we're all feeling like Addie LaRue lately, we're all just single serving humans for others. How sad.
There is something very cultural about the self imposed isolation and loneliness that has become the norm in North American society and perhaps Europe as well but I have less personal experience there. I was at a parent teacher meeting for the high school students that we sponsor to continue their schooling after they finish their education at our school. Right now there are three of them at a new school in the nearby town. The director was lamenting that as she greets the students each day upon their arrival there are some kids who don't say hello. This is almost unheard of here in Guatemala. When I tell our kids that back in Canada, people will live in the same building and take the same elevator every day with the same people and not even say hello, they cannot fathom it. Here we earnestly say hello to pretty much everyone we pass on the street. We greet the entire restaurant upon entering and wish everyone a good meal on our way out, to which everyone says thank you. When someone asks how you are doing, they stop, look you in the eye and put their hand on your arm and wait for an honest reply. It is perhaps, what caused me to fall in love with this place 24 years ago and why I still love it here so much. Now I live in a small rural town, but when I go to the big city, the rules are the same. We always acknowledge each other and greet each other whether strangers or not. The director said that she told her old children that regardless of whether people answer you or not, you should always greet those you cross path with no matter what.
Can you imagine what an impact that small gesture would have in our societies? If we all just made that small effort to acknowledge each other's earthly presence? I mean, it is kind of a miracle that we even exist on this floating ball of rock and water in this vast universe, together at this exact moment in time. Should we kind of be celebrating this common bond if nothing else that ties us all together? The immense polarization of our society is troubling. I see the reversal of the evolution of empathy as we become more focused on the us vs them aspects of what makes us different when there are so many more things that actually make us similar. Our pain. Our love. Our fears. Our joy. Archetypal milestones of life and death that we all experience and yet we are so focused on pointing out our differences and isolating ourselves from anyone who is not just like us. Today I was reading the comments on a post from a seed company I follow and there were meat lovers trolling with comments on how a great big steak was better than the veggies they were promoting. I mean what the actual fuck. This loneliness and isolation is driving people to lash out instead of reach out for the human interaction they so desperately need and crave. And sadly, they still get the dopamine hit of connection from fighting on the internet.
When I was a teenager, I ran away from home and was briefly homeless on the streets of Toronto. A suburban kid, with nowhere to go, I found a sense of community with other kids who were also feeling lost, abandoned and ostracized. This deep need to belong to something was so great in all of us, and it was incredible to see the bonds and commitment that all these wayward kids had for each other. I have always made an effort to acknowledge people on the streets because of this. I truly think that many of them are there because of loneliness and the innate need for human contact even more than a lack of money at times. We are wired to be in a community and rely on each other. We are loosing this and it is causing huge rifts in our existence. So now more than ever we need to make a conscious effort to create community and acceptance wherever possible. Be nice to people. Make eye contact and be earnest when you ask someone how they are. In the wise words of Will Ferrell in the perhaps underrated movie Semi Pro: "EVERYBODY LOVE EVERYBODY!!"
I, too, believe that these small gestures and acknowledging all people makes all the difference. Your life experiences have certainly taught you this- wow! In a large city, as I’m sure you’ve also experienced, most people think you are weird if you acknowledge them with a nod or smile at them.
It’s always an adjustment to come home to Canada! But I just do it anyway! It’s something you don’t realize you were missing until it happens so maybe it makes a small difference to somebody out there!!
You hit on something so real here, the overwhelming isolation of our culture. It breaks my heart, and it's often way, way worse in European places. I notice when we travel, I look like an absolute lunatic for greeting everyone we pass as we pass them on hiking trails, etc. I will always be a crossed path greeter. Always. Ain't nothin stoppin it.
I have found I get my interaction fix by always offering to take group pictures for people! Ironically, using the cellphone for connection instead of a shield for social isolation!
I was so excited about today’s topic because I agree wholeheartedly with you! I am discovering the power of community more and more, especially since I recently retired. I am lucky to live in a small community in rural southwestern Ontario where people do know each other. I lived in Toronto for the first 32 years of my life. At almost 58, I have lived here for nearly as long. There is a sense of connection here that I had never experienced before. Of course, it helps to have taught at the local school for 23 years, been involved in my church and had two children grow up here. Since retiring, I play a lot of pickle ball with my neighbours and local club, and have started attending social events at our subdivision’s clubhouse- I used to decline them because I thought they were for “old” people. I am experiencing the joy of making new friends, discovering what connects us and learning more deeply what is going on in their lives and who they are. My husband, on the other hand, has become a social recluse, choosing not to socialize with neighbours we have known for nearly 18 years in this particular neighbourhood beyond greeting them when he walks the dog. That is a choice he has made and another story… I, on the other hand, feel enriched and energized by all of these connections, old and new. Let’s just say that my boys aren’t worried about me as I am getting older- they know I am well-held.
Aw, thanks. The pickle ball craze is a healthy way for people of all ages to come together regularly and have fun together. I say that my husband would be a lot happier if he’d play pickle ball!🤪
Laura it's so damn rad you're finding this! I am seriously thrilled for you. How close to Sudbury are you?! :) I'm a Shoresy fan hahaha. I love that you found something you can connect with so many on. What a gift.
Very far from Sudbury! Although, funny enough, that is where my husband was originally from. I am a 10 minute walk to the shores of Lake Huron, about 3.5 hours from downtown Toronto.
There was rarely a day my mama didn't visit my very beloved & dearly missed Goong Goong (Canto for grandfather) when we moved him to a nursing home.
To be his dragon at the gate when we lost my Namesake was the gift. To know that being his late wife's Mini would do everything she could to make sure he was okay?
Maybe that's the gift. When your kin is the community that beats brightest in your bloodstream.
And, if that doesn't serve where you're at? Maybe the gift is that you get to build & pick & choose your own.
Certainly I find that to also be true, that the bonds are tight in a small community where people are closely connected by blood or have know each other since childhood. It can be a gift; for some, one can be outsider although people are usually amenable to bringing you into the ‘fold’ once they figure out how you are connected to them in some way (work, neighbourhood, interests).
First off, Goong Goong is so rad. I love that term. ALso I love this line: "When your kin is the community that beats brightest in your bloodstream." THank you for it.
Zomg. Mushu would be mad with the shame this Mulan* brought on her family - it's specific, see. Goong Goong being maternal grandfather. Ing Ing being the paternal, I think.
* yes, it blew my mind when I saw Mulan again this Summer & realised we had the same surname (when I already have the stretching stick & Training Montage life. I KNOW.)
If only I could have community when I need it. It's so hard to rebuild when you loose it all, all at once. I'm doing all I can do, often more than I should be doing. It's exhausting and sometimes I don't think it will happen. I sometimes catch glimpses of it, but it never stays. People already have their little units and they don't let new people in easily. We've been conditioned to not trust strangers. I give 110% with the hope I get maybe 10% back. I don't know what else to do. 😔
My biggest thing is trying to make plans and you get the response of “yeah that sounds great”. I say cool let me know when you are available and then never hear back. If I have to keep asking I start to feel like I’m begging for attention. I’m way over doing that.
Tyler, great topic! As an early adapter of computer technology and the internet in the 1980’s, i remember the hope that these tools would help bring together all communities of people so to speak. Clearly that did not happen. Through a number of separate assessments, we know about one third to a half of Americans report being lonely today. Trends over the past several decades show an increase in computer and smart phone time use while less for community participation and more people living alone. Religious service attendance has fallen dramatically, and marriage/birth rates are down. The declines in social engagement and community participation started decades ago, and many of those trends have continued, and have further declined since Covid pandemic. Since 2014, we saw the average lifespan for Americans decline, tumbling in 2021 after COVID. Notwithstanding the impact on quality of life and life satisfaction, loneliness has an equivalent risk factor to health as smoking does, potentially shortening one's lifespan by up to eight years. Per a 2017 Harvard University 75-year longitudinal study of men, loneliness is toxic. The more isolated people are, the less happy they are, and brain function declines as well as physical health. What to do about loneliness? Every study I have read tells us to get away from the screens, get out of the house and engage is some sort of community building g group, whether thru church, civic, hobby, sport, or volunteer organization. Even with your own physical and financial limitations, it is important to try to personally connect. I am a full time caregiver of my spouse. I also volunteer to support other caregivers and counsel people on aging support programs via our area agency in aging. I am also a forever parent and friend (meaning that I hang in there even when it gets messy). I do try to stay away from online rants and chats because they rarely result in good feelings. Yet, I still feel the need to write and create as an outlet for those raw feelings that best go unexpressed to the ones you love. Writing every day helps to calm the curious and malevolent beast within because it forces me to think, research, and choose me words more carefully, more artfully. The writing helps me to become less opinionated and more human. Thank you for giving us a forum to do that with support and encouragement. You are a modern Juan Ponce de León, an explorer of the creative source of life!
These are depressing statistics, to be sure. Kudos to you for finding the energy to volunteer to support other caregivers and counsel others. I suspect that being a full-time caregiver could otherwise be an isolating role.
Ooof, these stats. What an eyeopener. Thank you for such a personal peek into your life, as well. What a gift to us. I know I speak for all of us when I say we're all lucky to have you here.
I know I need community and I'm trying to bravely reach out to it. It is, however, incredibly difficult as a capitalism-exhausted introvert! Thank you for the encouragement to keep going, it will be worth the effort. We are medicine.
It's so hard, but we can get there!
This is so true 🫂. Last year the restaurant I worked at for 12 years closed. When the boss told us it was going to happen, the loss of community was my biggest fear. There was the general sadness for a business of 40+ years closing but I knew we would all drift apart. The last few weeks we were open, customers were constantly telling us how much they would miss our food. (Voted best pizza in the area for many years in a row) I know they meant well, but after so many times hearing it I just wanted to scream. I knew I would miss my friends. We slowly and then quickly drifted apart. I barely hear from them. Sometimes I feel like the title character from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (great read) and I am cursed to be forgotten. The first two months were awful. I was working nights at a grocery store so I saw almost no one on a daily basis. When I was at home, I couldn’t focus on anything and spent a lot of time just staring at the walls. I got a different job so I have more human interaction now, but I still miss those close ties. Sometimes I swear I can physically feel the loneliness.
Ahh this is so heartbreaking. I get overly emotional when things like this happen, losses of such touchstones of community and culture. I think the saddest thing is, we're all feeling like Addie LaRue lately, we're all just single serving humans for others. How sad.
There is something very cultural about the self imposed isolation and loneliness that has become the norm in North American society and perhaps Europe as well but I have less personal experience there. I was at a parent teacher meeting for the high school students that we sponsor to continue their schooling after they finish their education at our school. Right now there are three of them at a new school in the nearby town. The director was lamenting that as she greets the students each day upon their arrival there are some kids who don't say hello. This is almost unheard of here in Guatemala. When I tell our kids that back in Canada, people will live in the same building and take the same elevator every day with the same people and not even say hello, they cannot fathom it. Here we earnestly say hello to pretty much everyone we pass on the street. We greet the entire restaurant upon entering and wish everyone a good meal on our way out, to which everyone says thank you. When someone asks how you are doing, they stop, look you in the eye and put their hand on your arm and wait for an honest reply. It is perhaps, what caused me to fall in love with this place 24 years ago and why I still love it here so much. Now I live in a small rural town, but when I go to the big city, the rules are the same. We always acknowledge each other and greet each other whether strangers or not. The director said that she told her old children that regardless of whether people answer you or not, you should always greet those you cross path with no matter what.
Can you imagine what an impact that small gesture would have in our societies? If we all just made that small effort to acknowledge each other's earthly presence? I mean, it is kind of a miracle that we even exist on this floating ball of rock and water in this vast universe, together at this exact moment in time. Should we kind of be celebrating this common bond if nothing else that ties us all together? The immense polarization of our society is troubling. I see the reversal of the evolution of empathy as we become more focused on the us vs them aspects of what makes us different when there are so many more things that actually make us similar. Our pain. Our love. Our fears. Our joy. Archetypal milestones of life and death that we all experience and yet we are so focused on pointing out our differences and isolating ourselves from anyone who is not just like us. Today I was reading the comments on a post from a seed company I follow and there were meat lovers trolling with comments on how a great big steak was better than the veggies they were promoting. I mean what the actual fuck. This loneliness and isolation is driving people to lash out instead of reach out for the human interaction they so desperately need and crave. And sadly, they still get the dopamine hit of connection from fighting on the internet.
When I was a teenager, I ran away from home and was briefly homeless on the streets of Toronto. A suburban kid, with nowhere to go, I found a sense of community with other kids who were also feeling lost, abandoned and ostracized. This deep need to belong to something was so great in all of us, and it was incredible to see the bonds and commitment that all these wayward kids had for each other. I have always made an effort to acknowledge people on the streets because of this. I truly think that many of them are there because of loneliness and the innate need for human contact even more than a lack of money at times. We are wired to be in a community and rely on each other. We are loosing this and it is causing huge rifts in our existence. So now more than ever we need to make a conscious effort to create community and acceptance wherever possible. Be nice to people. Make eye contact and be earnest when you ask someone how they are. In the wise words of Will Ferrell in the perhaps underrated movie Semi Pro: "EVERYBODY LOVE EVERYBODY!!"
I, too, believe that these small gestures and acknowledging all people makes all the difference. Your life experiences have certainly taught you this- wow! In a large city, as I’m sure you’ve also experienced, most people think you are weird if you acknowledge them with a nod or smile at them.
It’s always an adjustment to come home to Canada! But I just do it anyway! It’s something you don’t realize you were missing until it happens so maybe it makes a small difference to somebody out there!!
You hit on something so real here, the overwhelming isolation of our culture. It breaks my heart, and it's often way, way worse in European places. I notice when we travel, I look like an absolute lunatic for greeting everyone we pass as we pass them on hiking trails, etc. I will always be a crossed path greeter. Always. Ain't nothin stoppin it.
I have found I get my interaction fix by always offering to take group pictures for people! Ironically, using the cellphone for connection instead of a shield for social isolation!
100%
:)
I was so excited about today’s topic because I agree wholeheartedly with you! I am discovering the power of community more and more, especially since I recently retired. I am lucky to live in a small community in rural southwestern Ontario where people do know each other. I lived in Toronto for the first 32 years of my life. At almost 58, I have lived here for nearly as long. There is a sense of connection here that I had never experienced before. Of course, it helps to have taught at the local school for 23 years, been involved in my church and had two children grow up here. Since retiring, I play a lot of pickle ball with my neighbours and local club, and have started attending social events at our subdivision’s clubhouse- I used to decline them because I thought they were for “old” people. I am experiencing the joy of making new friends, discovering what connects us and learning more deeply what is going on in their lives and who they are. My husband, on the other hand, has become a social recluse, choosing not to socialize with neighbours we have known for nearly 18 years in this particular neighbourhood beyond greeting them when he walks the dog. That is a choice he has made and another story… I, on the other hand, feel enriched and energized by all of these connections, old and new. Let’s just say that my boys aren’t worried about me as I am getting older- they know I am well-held.
Yay! Pickle ball!
Your boys sound like the best souls (they probably get that from their mama)
Aw, thanks. The pickle ball craze is a healthy way for people of all ages to come together regularly and have fun together. I say that my husband would be a lot happier if he’d play pickle ball!🤪
Hahaha, bless his heart
Laura it's so damn rad you're finding this! I am seriously thrilled for you. How close to Sudbury are you?! :) I'm a Shoresy fan hahaha. I love that you found something you can connect with so many on. What a gift.
Very far from Sudbury! Although, funny enough, that is where my husband was originally from. I am a 10 minute walk to the shores of Lake Huron, about 3.5 hours from downtown Toronto.
I love that you found Shoresy! I just started to rewatch the whole series this week! Letterkenny is also a Canadian gem!
There was rarely a day my mama didn't visit my very beloved & dearly missed Goong Goong (Canto for grandfather) when we moved him to a nursing home.
To be his dragon at the gate when we lost my Namesake was the gift. To know that being his late wife's Mini would do everything she could to make sure he was okay?
Maybe that's the gift. When your kin is the community that beats brightest in your bloodstream.
And, if that doesn't serve where you're at? Maybe the gift is that you get to build & pick & choose your own.
Certainly I find that to also be true, that the bonds are tight in a small community where people are closely connected by blood or have know each other since childhood. It can be a gift; for some, one can be outsider although people are usually amenable to bringing you into the ‘fold’ once they figure out how you are connected to them in some way (work, neighbourhood, interests).
I like to hope there's space for Everyone, and that more connects us than divides us
First off, Goong Goong is so rad. I love that term. ALso I love this line: "When your kin is the community that beats brightest in your bloodstream." THank you for it.
Zomg. Mushu would be mad with the shame this Mulan* brought on her family - it's specific, see. Goong Goong being maternal grandfather. Ing Ing being the paternal, I think.
* yes, it blew my mind when I saw Mulan again this Summer & realised we had the same surname (when I already have the stretching stick & Training Montage life. I KNOW.)
If only I could have community when I need it. It's so hard to rebuild when you loose it all, all at once. I'm doing all I can do, often more than I should be doing. It's exhausting and sometimes I don't think it will happen. I sometimes catch glimpses of it, but it never stays. People already have their little units and they don't let new people in easily. We've been conditioned to not trust strangers. I give 110% with the hope I get maybe 10% back. I don't know what else to do. 😔
Same…it’s hard to give anything anymore when you don’t even get that 10%
I don't even know how to encourage people to get off their phones or converse in real life conversations. 😔
My biggest thing is trying to make plans and you get the response of “yeah that sounds great”. I say cool let me know when you are available and then never hear back. If I have to keep asking I start to feel like I’m begging for attention. I’m way over doing that.
We feel this ALL the time too here Ellie. We want it so much, but it's just so hard to come by in our age, in our location.