CHANGE, Reminder #5 - Community > Isolation
“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” — Booker T. Washington
“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
We need each other.
We need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
Living in family and being a part of community are the primary ways we accomplish this innate desire within our hearts.
When change comes, we desperately need a shoulder to cry on, a hand to high-five, a body to hug, an ear to talk to, a person to redirect our attention toward, a perspective from a different view.
This is Reminder #5, and we will need this reminder our entire lives:
The experience of change is drastically different when in community versus isolation.
Realizing What Prompts Isolation
Deep in our bones there are competing impulses that operate out of competing narratives. These are: 1) the desire for relations and friendship with our fellow humans, and 2) the desire to journey out beyond, traveling our own path, walking to the beat of our own drum. Both of these desires can be expressed in positive and negative ways, for both ourselves and for those around us. Yet, the first desire, the desire innate in us as relational beings, is a fundamental need as a human being. The hard part about this core-need is that it is non-obvious.
If you’re like me, I’m sure that you’ve been in that place before… *feeling like no one is interested in you; no one understands you, no one cares about you; everyone else is having a good time except you; everyone else has friends upon friends and you don’t have a single person to talk to… this is the place of loneliness.
It’s easy to relate to loneliness because we have all experienced it at some point (and often many points) in our lives. More times than not, this loneliness is self-afflicted. While we all don’t want to hear or admit this, it is the underlying reality we must realize if we are to effectively pursue community in times of change.
Think about the last time you were lonely. What prompted it?
Maybe you were spending a night at home and felt lonely because you weren’t out and about around other people. Maybe you were sad for some reason and decided to cancel a phone call with a friend or family member, deepening your state. Maybe you were scrolling through social media and seeing all the best moments of others’ lives, leading you to a sinking feeling that you live a boring life. Maybe instead of having someone over for dinner you decided to just binge you new favorite show and end up feeling despondent five hours later.
Loneliness is often an effect of our own laziness or lack of commitment to community or relationships.
These illustrations are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how we default to isolation, even when we have become familiar with what it produces. You see, what prompts isolation is often following our feelings above our plans. I love Plato’s metaphor for this: “If the chariot is the body, the horses are our emotions, and the rider is our mind - if the horses are dragging the rider against his will, danger is coming.”
Emotions are not bad, but they are often bad at directions.
In times of change, if we follow our emotions and self-isolate (note: I am not referring to self-quarantining which serves an important role in our current environment), we are putting fuel to the fire of our fear-response system and the already unsettling forces that come with change.
Before we can fully believe in this reminder, we must see and recognize the effects of isolation.
Recognizing The Effects Of Isolation
We have all experienced the effects of loneliness and isolation, albeit to varying degrees.
Throughout my own periods of isolation, I’ve experienced pieces and versions of many of these affects. Here is a short-list of attributes associated with isolation:
— Begin spinning false-narratives in your self-talk (about past, present, and future)
— A growing cynicism towards most things
— Delusion can creep in with believing too much or too little of yourself and your worth
— Increased feelings of being an outsider
— No one supports you so why support anyone else
— The world begins to entirely revolve around you and your feelings
— You just can’t win
— Tendency to see the bad in everyone and everything
— Ultimately it serves to divide instead of unite (on a host of levels)
While these are a some of the felt or experienced affects of loneliness and isolation, there are also a host of physiological affects and psychological affects that have been studied.
To this point, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, found that loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity (Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015).
Psychologist Louise Hawkley, PhD, a senior research scientist at the research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, also points to evidence linking perceived social isolation with adverse health consequences including depression, poor sleep quality, impaired executive function, accelerated cognitive decline, poor cardiovascular function and impaired immunity at every stage of life (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Vol. 370, No. 1669, 2015).
Holt-Lunstad went on to say: “Being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need—crucial to both well-being and survival.” (all from: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation)
If this is true in times of normalcy, how much more is it true in times of immense change? How much more is this true in facing a global pandemic threatening our health and wellness at large?
Now, more than ever, community is needed, and loneliness and isolation must be combated.
Returning To The Fold
Now you may be thinking: “How can I pursue community when I’m required to social-distance and stay at home?” Thank God for technology.
I will readily assent that virtual hangouts, meetings, and conversations hold no candle to real-life, in-person time together, but they still fulfill the role of connecting us to our fellow humans and surrounding us with love and support from a community of people that care.
I am so thankful for the timing of COVID because of all the technologies we are able to use! Being able to hop on a Zoom call with someone half-way around the world whenever you want is such a luxury to have and a blessing for these unprecedented times. We are able to connect (or reconnect) with others even more seamlessly from the comforts of our own home than if we had to schedule a coffee-catchup at some other location. The ease and accessibility makes fostering community virtually an easier reality than pre-COVID.
But don’t let that ease and accessibility fool you, because to do so you still are required to put in the work. The feelings associated with this time of immense change and quarantining will prompt you to feel like defaulting to isolation, to entertaining yourself to death without making an effort to connect with those you love. Lethargy, fear, laziness, pursuit of comfort—all can quickly become our default in times of change, and each one of them will prompt us to isolate instead of pursuing community.
And that is the key word for returning: pursuit.
“Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and know the other.” — David Spangler
If we are going to live in community and enter a place of thriving, especially in the midst of change, we must pursue it. There is simply no other way.
Change can be a beautiful thing, and one of the integral aspects of change that brings beauty is experiencing it with others, in relation, in community.
This is open and accessible to all, if only we would pursue it.
