An epidemic of loneliness

Last week, US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy published an important opinion piece in the NY Times about an epidemic of loneliness in the United States. In his essay, Murthy asserts that half of Americans are lonely, and he proposes a national framework to "rebuild social connection and community" in America.

I have been thinking about his words ever since -- the raw disclosure of his own struggle with loneliness, the profound impact impact of loneliness on health and disease, its magnification of the polarization that already plagues our nation. 

Murthy's words left me reflecting about what it means to be in community, what it means to feel loved. And how challenging it can feel to make meaningful social connections.  These reflections feel exceptionally poignant as we are currently living so far from our beloved neighborhood, church, school, work, families and friends. 

I recall a soon-to-be-friend who once shared in a group, "I just really want friends. Why is it so hard to make friends!?" And another who, after years of building our friendship, remarked ruefully, "I don't understand. Why did it take us ten years to become friends?!"

I am also left thinking about patients lying sick in hospital beds with literally no one in the world to come visit them. Patients, plenty of them, who die alone. I am haunted by those who died alone during COVID and our public health policies that ensured this. I wonder, is it ever okay to die alone?

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Living far away gives one a unique perspective on one's homeland and one's culture. It is akin to looking down on one's hometown from the window of an airplane: everything at home looks just like you imagine it, but totally different. You admire the familiar bits, note the important landmarks, can see how nicely the pieces fit together, but also you see the idiosyncrasies, the roads to nowhere, the abandoned projects, the gaps.

I miss home. I miss hot showers and the grocery store and lap swim at the city pool. I miss our county parks and the creek trail that runs by my house. I miss my church. My mom. My work. My friends. But there are plenty of parts I do not miss. I do not miss the infinite stream of emails, slack messages, or the mountain of medical charts always awaiting completion. I do not miss hunting for parking spaces in crowded lots. I do not miss 7 am work meetings, or zoom meetings, or an interminable task list that often feels pretty frivolous. 

I can see fairly clearly from my window seat how the very structures of American life make us lonely. Or at least leave us feeling alone.

Yes, it is much more comfortable to drive my own private car and listen to interesting podcasts than it is to cram into the back of a pick-up truck and tolerate someone else's music. It is more convenient to buy socks online with a credit card than to negotiate with a woman at the market and insist she find a way to make change for my $20 bill. It is simpler to slide into the self-checkout line than have to interact with a real human worker. It is easier to pick up tacos than to walk down the street to ask a friend, Sylvia, to please cook some chicken for our taco night. It's also easier to attend meetings from home on my laptop than to find the time and space to meet face-to-face. 

It is definitely easier with the conveniences of American life: not having to interact with live humans, not being forced to talk with people who may want to chat for a few minutes, or who may have an opinion about what I am doing, or, god forbid, may have something they need from me.

It is certainly easier.  But is easier better?

I met an Ecuadorian woman on the bus in Latacunga a few months back who had travelled several times to visit family in Florida. Her most memorable comments (I am paraphrasing): "People are so cold in America. They hardly look at each other. They hardly talk to one another. When I go visit my brother, I can literally go weeks without talking to a single human being other than him, sitting in that big beautiful house, alone. It feels so sad."

I certainly know plenty of people who sit in their big beautiful houses (or small ugly houses, for that matter) feeling alone.

I could be wrong, but I do not think that anyone in La Josefina is lonely. Life is not perfect. People definitely feel constrained or stuck, frustrated or irritated, boxed in or silenced, but they do not feel lonely. Perhaps it is simply because they are not alone. 

In La Josefina, multi-generational families live enmeshed (in all the good and bad ways that families do). Co-sleeping is commonplace; hardly anyone sleeps alone. Young and old(er) women meet up in the evenings to play competitive indoor soccer on the town court, local men bet big money on local Ecua-voli games right next door. Cousins chat idly as they prepare lunch side by side, or when they meet one another out in front of a tienda.

Neighbors plan local parades and annual fiestas. Parents and grandparents prepare the school grounds for the new academic year. People come together to troubleshoot problems with the water system and the electricity. Teachers call parents to find out why a child did not make it to school.  People who are not sitting on their porches in the evening, wander around, selling homemade treats and sweets. Families host parties, almost always outside in public view. 

In this tiny South American town, there are countless annoyances that result from living in close community: barking dogs, crowing roosters, amplified (and I mean LOUD) music, drunken neighbors stumbling by, strewn garbage, everyone knowing everyone's business, and more. But perhaps these annoyances are exactly what we trade for community, for a sense of social connection. 

When elders in town were dying in high numbers of COVID, people did not take them directly to hospitals or leave them isolated and alone. Instead, adult children and grandchildren, cousins and neighbors, many themselves at high risk for severe disease, took turns tending to their sick. They fed them and cleaned them and sat with them as they struggled to breathe. They tracked down medicine and oxygen; they essentially nursed them themselves. They could not imagine acting any other way. And the end result? Their sick did not die alone. Perhaps barking dogs and loud music are reasonable concessions for this, the ultimate reward.

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One final thought. Here in La Josefina, it is a social norm and cultural expectation that people make eye contact and greet one another each time they cross paths, even if it happens several times in a day. Buenos días or buenas tardes is sufficient -- nothing more is required --  but you literally never go by anyone without acknowledging their presence with a salutation. It is something that we have been drilling into our kids all year. 

At the end of a visit to Ecuador, a friend, who noticed this custom, resolved to return home and greet everyone she encountered with a simple "hello" or "good afternoon". After a few months, she texted and told me it was no longer happening; it just felt "awkward". I am paraphrasing, but she mentioned something about slipping back into an "I don't see you way of being". 

Why is it weird for Americans to greet one another? Why cannot we see one another? Is even that one simple acknowledgement of common humanity asking too much? How different might our lives be (and how much less lonely) if we were able to do just this for one another? If we could just look up and say, “Hello, I see you. . .”