Nobody Wins
Social isolation hit us hard this past year and a half. If we’re being honest, we were no strangers to it before. We leave our families to pursue work in order to buy goods that further separate us from our families. We sit in offices or cubicles alone. We stand in grocery lines on our phones instead of interacting with those around us. We sit at restaurant tables with partners while scrolling the social media pages of those we barely know. We live far from extended family, unable to make a quick drive to enjoy a Sunday supper or weeknight BBQ.
We keep our feelings for others to ourselves.
When is the last time you called a friend to let them know how thankful you are to have them in your life? Sure, it’s assumed, but it’s a nice thing to hear. We want to know we matter. We’re biologically wired to be social creatures and have a strong need from birth to connect. We’re pack animals with an inherent drive for attachment. It’s adaptive for us to bond with other humans. And yet, as adults, we fight to separate ourselves and force our children to do the same—encouraging them to sleep in separate rooms, learn independence by “crying it out,” and go off to camp despite the fact that they don’t want to do that.
It’s adaptive for me to say that I have love for you and that I care about your needs. It’s in human interest for me to feed you, comfort you, and pick you up when you’re down. The newborn human is entirely dependent on the adults in its life for food, warmth, shelter, and the comfort of physical touch. We never lose this need for others, the need for comfort and love.
We are pack animals, meant to connect.
Why have we forgotten this? It is to our destruction—and I use the term “our” on an individual level and on the level of the human race—that we denigrate or dismiss the struggles of our neighbors. It is to our destruction that we hold feelings of love and concern to ourselves. How difficult is it to give someone water when they are thirsty, to offer a meal to a neighbor who has none, or to call a friend and say, “Hey, I have love in my heart for you, and I’d like you to know?”
There are no haves or have-nots. Life is not a competition to discover who is the greatest human, “greatest” being defined by who collects the most material goods and displays the least level of vulnerable emotion. That’s not how it works. We each have something to offer the other, and we each are in some way in need. All of us. You don’t prove you are more evolved by having more cars in your drive, just like you don’t prove you have no need for love because you can shut your feelings down.
I’d like to see us become more human—to share with others, confess our needs. I’d like to see us reach out, love, reach up. I’d like to see us connect.
