Photo credit: Isis Franca

It’s the second day of middle school and there is that one kid, the new kid, who is sitting alone at lunch. He brought his lunch, so he’s hoping kids will sit with him after they go through the lunch line. He picks a big table so it can accommodate anyone who wants to sit. He sits, but no one comes. It’s a big cafeteria, so they don’t see him, or they do and just pick another table.

Maybe you know that kid. Maybe you were that kid. But, yesterday, that kid was my son.

I grew up in the same house for most of my life. I knew all the same people from 1st grade to 12th grade. Even then though, the cafeteria could be a scary place. It’s really a scary place for the new kid though.

I don’t want to tell him it gets harder in adulthood when you are the “new adult,” even harder when your kids move away from home.

Connection. It’s important, but it’s hard too. Its presence is life giving and its absence, suffocating.

Dr. Brené Brown writes in her book Braving the Wilderness about a group of women who would meet by the river in their village to wash clothes. In time, technology advanced and washing machines entered their lives. While the women embraced the technology that gave them time back in their day, the village began to see a rise in depression rates. Why?

While technology solved one problem, it eliminated the reason for those village members to gather. The absence of community became an unintended side effect and because of that, a connection was lost.

Keeping connection, creating it, and trying to find it are at times easy, and at times exceptionally difficult.

So, for the purpose of this article of thought, I ask this: 1) We hear a fair amount about connection. Really, why the fuss? 2) Why does it feel like such a leap of faith, no matter your age? Is it worth it?

In 2000, researchers Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain were studying longevity in Sardinia and determined that this community had a large number of male centenarians (people living 100 years of age or more). Pes and Poulain called them “blue zones.” Around that same time, Dan Buettner was identifying “all of the world’s longest-lived people and identifying their common denominators.”

What resulted was a partnership and research that identified where these places existed and more importantly, why. National Geographic got involved and, in the book, The Blue Zones, five communities have been named as blue zones: 1) Ikaria, Greece 2) Okinawa, Japan 3) Ogliastra Region, Sardinia 4) Loma Linda, California 5) Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica

These communities share certain characteristics, namely: their diet, a level of exercise, and spiritual and social….you guessed it, connections.

The food they eat was a focus in a number of articles and TV shows, including The Today Show, but what went hand-in-hand with the food is the social network around it.

Buettner says in the linked piece above that the potluck teams that formed around food are “four or five friends together…If we could put it in a pill it’d be a pharmaceutical blockbuster because, you know, loneliness in this country shaves about eight years off your life expectancy.”

Loneliness. It’s a word people are sometimes afraid to say, but it is a powerful one. Its influence is real and feeling connected can be quite the shield.

These blue zones showed a level of connectedness, a collective that looked out for one another. The idea of the collective goes back too far to properly document. We are human after all. But bear with me as I connect two separate researchers for a moment, just to illustrate how culture influences this topic.

Geert Hofstede, a Dutch researcher, surveyed more than 100,000 IBM employees in the late 1960s and early 1970s in more than 50 countries. He compared their answers to create a cultural dimensions model. For this article, I am going to address just one of them — individualism vs collectivism.

The individualism index is intended to show how interdependent a society is among its members. Is their self-image defined by “we” or “I”? In individualistic cultures, people are accustomed to looking after themselves and their immediate family only, whereas in collective cultures, its members belong to groups that in turn take care of them in exchange for “loyalty.”

The USA’s score for individuality is high at 91. Hofstede’s organization notes that there is a: “high degree of geographical mobility in the United States. Americans are the best joiners in the world; however it is often difficult, especially among men, to develop deep friendships.”

Just as a comparison, Asian cultures such as China and South Korea who rank 20 and 18 respectively on the individualism spectrum, foster “strong relationships where everyone takes responsibility for fellow members of their group.”

One of my critiques of Hofstede’s work is that he surveyed an educated class of individuals and thus, most likely was capturing the dominant social values of a country. Many different types of communities can exist within a country, so I am curious if the community where we reside helps us to connect, regardless of being in an individualistic or collective culture.

For example, one of the blue zones listed above is in California. The Seventh-day Adventist church started in Loma Linda in the 1840s and according to the Blue Zones has around 9,000 members who live 10 years longer than the average life span around them.

If I were a betting woman, I would guess they score low on Hofstede’s individualism scale. But let’s dig deeper to why this is important or relevant.

Photo credit: Andy Li

How easily we can connect with others, especially in the face of occupations that require frequent moves, can take more of a toll on us that we realize.

How good are you at saying, “I’m fine?” I often joke that “I’m fine” is a military spouse mantra. The house could be leaking from every open surface and no doubt, one of us would say “It’s fine. I’m fine. We’re fine.” It is a way to keep on moving, as sometimes there just isn’t much we can do about a situation.

In one of the podcasts for “Unlocking Us,” Dr. Brené Brown and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the 19th U.S. Surgeon General from 2014–2017, dive headfirst into his book Together. They specifically address the idea of connection and why things like its opposing force, loneliness, really matter.

Murphy noted that in his research he found that people wouldn’t say things like “I’m lonely,” they would instead say that they were really tired or carrying a load by themselves.

Admitting to being lonely, he says, carries a deep stigma. Murphy says it is not so easy to identify, like the kid sitting alone at the corner of the party.

It can manifest in social withdrawal with emotions like anger, irritability, and can lead to illness. In fact, he stated that his time in government illuminated the fact that loneliness was often a key contributor to addiction, substance abuse, disorders, as well as a key component driving violence.

Turn on the TV. You can see that everywhere. Is our society just lonely?

Yikes, there are no commercials about that. But being around people doesn’t necessarily mean connection.

Brown notes in her podcast with Murphy that some of the loneliest times she has ever been was when she was surrounded by people — even ones she knew and loved. She also stated that some of her most connected and fulfilling times was when she was alone.

Connection can come in so many forms. Murphy writes in Together that researchers have identified three dimensions of loneliness, as it relates to relationships.

Intimate or emotional loneliness is the longing for a close confidant or intimate partner, someone with whom you share a deep mutual bond of affection and trust. Relational or social loneliness is the yearning for quality friendships, social companionship, and support. Collective loneliness is the hunger for a network or community of people who share your sense of purpose and interests.

Murphy states that if we lack relationships in these dimensions, we can feel lonely. He says that is why people in supportive marriages can still feel lonely for friends or community.

Ironically, Murphy says that one of the scariest times in his childhood was…lunchtime. Going into the cafeteria and wondering if anyone would sit beside him is something he remembers as an adult. He recognized that he was shy and because he lacked some of those relational connections, it left him feeling lonely, even though he had deeper intimate connections in life.

Connection isn’t one thing, in one area of our lives. Tying in the cultural piece above, individualistic cultures may support one of those relationships and collective ones may support the other.

But the point is, we need all three. We need each other, no matter where we live.

Photo credit: Timon Studler

In the military community, we are nearing the end of PCS season (permanent change of season, a topic in another article) and now begins the process of starting over. Starting new.

There are certainly many, many other occupations that move around, so I am not attempting to slight any of those. The military is just easy for me to write about.

A quick google search will reveal a plethora of ideas on how to start over. Take the military out of it and just google “how to make new friends” and they will say something similar: join, volunteer, take a class, etc.

I could list them all, maybe you were expecting me to. I am not, but what I will note is that, like the Blue Zones, there is something they all have in common.

You must put yourself out there. You have to try. You have to show up. And, man, that is hard. It’s so hard, they make graduate students practice it.

A long time ago, in another life, I worked at a business school with some fabulous folks. Those fabulous folks were trying to prepare MBA students to be ready for some basic things like…putting yourself out there and networking. For some, this came very easily. Graduate school provided a ready-made opportunity to find like-minded people.

However, for others, especially our foreign students, it could be hard. Really hard. Have you ever tried to network in another language? I have. It is stressful and not fun. It’s hard to listen and process words at the same time. Let’s not even talk about an articulate response.

But even when you speak the same language it can be hard — I am talking to you military service members from any country. At almost every reception, you know how to find each other and only talk to each other the rest of the night.

We get insulated. We get comfortable. It takes effort to try and learn about someone new and it takes effort to put yourself out there.

And I will be frank, sometimes that whole process is tiring. And daunting. And intimidating. But there is no shortcut. It takes practice.

Connection takes work. But look what happens when it does.

It’s family you never knew you never had. It’s a smile. It’s a shared experience. It’s learning about someone new. It’s learning they are like you. It’s learning they are nothing like you.

It’s learning. Learning is growing. And growth means you are alive. It’s the opposite of loneliness.

The next time you feel a lack of connection, I urge you — have courage and take a leap of faith. Whatever that leap of faith looks like for you, try.

And if you aren’t the “new” person, you try too. Don’t insulate yourself from expanding, from growing, from connecting. Take the leap. We should never stop learning, never stop growing.

I’ll end with a passage Brown highlighted from Murphy’s book in her podcast:

“Creating a connected life begins with the decisions we make in our day-to-day lives. Do we choose to make time for people? Do we show up as our true selves? Do we seek out others with kindness, recognizing the power of service to bring us together? This work isn’t always easy, it requires courage, the courage to be vulnerable, to take a chance on others, to believe in ourselves. But as we build connected lives, we make it possible to build a connected world.”

Have courage, folks. We’re all in this together.