time spent offline

How did the most connected generation end up being the loneliest?

If there is one thing that defines the internet generation, it is loneliness. Loneliness plagues modern life. More and more, we find ourselves without plenty deep and meaningful relationships and beloved communities that provide us environments of healing where we can find wholeness and wellness, ones that we can consistently go back to, to return to ourselves; a place of being. To compensate for this lack of community, connections, and belonging, we turn all our focus and energy towards our romantic relationship. We use romance as the only space where we seek to feel connected, loved, cared for, understood, and all the other emotional cravings we seek.

Hollywood plays a big role in making romance the be all and end all relationship worth pursuing and attaining. In reality, it is unhealthy to require one person to fulfill all our emotional needs. All of us desire, and deserve, to live in community. From family, friends, acquaintances, to book clubs, places of worship, fitness group, and so much more, we can all cultivate and build a deep and life-sustaining social life filled with connections, all types of love, care, wholeness, and wellness. Better yet, it can be done without internet connection.

(Mindset shift) People are good, and they are good for you.

The internet tricks you into believing people are no good. Irrational, stupid, and foolish, they are not worth the effort it takes to show up, pay attention, and get to know them in real life. It’s amazing how people are rarely any of those things in reality. And worth every bit of effort it takes to show up, pay attention, and get closer to them. They are often kind, gentle, caring, charming, understanding, pleasant and full of surprises. They are willing to talk to you; tell you stories, listen to your response intently, make you laugh and laugh at your attempt at humour too— family, friends, acquaintance, and even strangers.

I had to get off the “internet” and start paying attention to reality all around me to realize people are good most of the time. I spend a lot of time around people; taking public transportation, a job that requires me to be around lots of and all kinds of people, always doing something somewhere, and it is rare someone is truly cruel, offensive, aggressive, unreasonable, irrational and stupid in reality. Yet, if you stay too long online, you might start believing the world has gone mad and there is no goodness is left to be found. Lies.

The internet, with its unlimited access to “people exactly like me,” also encourages the worst kind of anti-social behaviour; disposing of people, relationships, and communities unless they make us feel 100% good 100% of the time. Instead of learning to be patient, kind, compassionate and understanding, the internet traps us in echo chambers that encourage and amplify the worst kind of existence: Angry and isolated from otherwise good and decent humans because “they are not exactly like me;” because “they don’t make me feel good all the time:” Grow up! I have lived plenty of lives, all around the world, have been around all kinds of people— people exactly like me and people so unlike me— and here is a simple truth: people are the same, at the very core, after the veil of shallow markers of identity and individuality lifts.

All it takes is paying attention to everyone we come in contact with as if our lives depend on it. In doing so, through conversations, listening intently and sharing our stories, we arrive at a sense of wellness and wholeness so pure, so delightful, it can only come from feeling deeply connected to the Other.

Diversify your fulfillments.

Here is a mistake people make: We look to find one or two people to satisfy our complex emotional, social, communal needs— a partner, one or two friends from grade school, our parents and/or children, the neighbour down the street. Then we feel frustrated when they don’t get us; all that encompasses who we are.

We feel deeply unsatisfied because although our parents help us move apartments, make sense of our finances, and provide warm meals to come home to, they don’t understand why anyone, let alone you, care about climate change so obsessively, or that weird obsession you picked up in college called Twitter. And, your childhood friends are great and you love them dearly, and you even call them up to go see the bands you loved together in teenhood, and you keep each other tethered to the past; of childhood dreams and teenage angst— it’s too embarrassing to think about now but nostalgia feels sweet, and it’s nice somebody remembers you, and you remember them. Oh, and your partner, maybe the only person in the world who knows you almost better than you know yourself, but you like to read books in cafes and he loves to build things from scratch. He doesn’t understand why you live in your head so much, and you resent his inability to join your inner-dialogue circus.

The fact of the matter is that because we are complex beings with diverse interests, needs, desires, curiosity, and dreams, in order to have a rich, fulfilling, deeply satisfying social life, we require diverse people to enjoy diverse experiences, conversations, activities with. Everybody ain’t for everything; that’s a decent mantra for cultivating diverse friendships, relationships, connections and communities in our lives.

Most Fridays, I meet a friend for the thing that gives me the most fulfilment in life: Deep, intellectual conversation on all things related to philosophy, psychology, politics, and the complexities of being humans in the modern world. Once that need is satisfied, I can meet my other friend for brunch and get excited about manifesting our deepest desires; being in our feminine energy, healing our childhood wounds to receive miracles, and believing that the Universe provides all that we seek. It would be insane for my other friend, on Fridays, to talk about visualizing and manifesting your life— he might even feel disappointed at my naivety. Later, I call my friend from college, separated by going our separate distances after graduation, and we talk about our family drama, loss, and grief, and cheer each other on for what is yet to come for us. After that, I can settle into the evening with a movie with my partner, and other funny business. With a few well-sustained connections, I feel deeply fulfilled intellectually, emotionally, socially.

People are everywhere.

There is no shortage of people in the world; in your world.

If we are not too quick to judge, resent, and push people away, it becomes evident the sheer number of people we are constantly surrounded by: If you spend too much time scrolling on avatars online, you might not pay attention to this simple fact. Too busy chasing online validation— the likes, followers, and emojis left at the altar of your self-obsession (another selfie???)— real people start to feel tedious. They require too much; too much attention, they seem to want to talk about themselves incessantly (how dare they!), and you can’t just scroll them away. This inability to invest our energy and effort in real people in real life pushes us further into the digital; further isolating us from one another.

This a good start to live in community: Pay attention to people already in your life; parents, grandparents, siblings, spouse, children, childhood friends, your neighbours and even your co-workers. Sure, relationships are complex, dynamic, and godawful sometimes but you would be surprised by how much more connected you will feel just by paying better attention to the people already in your life. The trick is to focus on your similarities rather than your differences. This is especially important if you are dealing with relationships that are damaged overtime, or distance has created friction in the ease of flow that was once readily available. Just talk, ask questions, listen intently— forget yourself a bit— and find things to laugh about; that’s about all the advice you need for how to connect well with people.

Truthfully, you don’t need too many relationships to have a fulfilling social life either. You just need diverse relationships that satisfy the different aspects of your personality, interests, desires, and curiosity. I love fitness: I get all my fitness related blabber out at the fitness studio. Sometimes even just being around people dedicated to the same goal and interest helps me feel deeply connected to others in the space and nurture my love for fitness. It’s nice to see similar faces, banter and shoot the shit between classes too. A meetup bookclub is my other favourite community: I get to read books I wouldn’t read otherwise and meet with ladies to discuss said books about once a month. I met a really good friend there too. Two more things I would like to add to continue enriching my social life is volunteering in a garden to connect with people with similar love for nature and the earth, and volunteering at the Toronto Public Library reading for children program: Books and children are my two favourite things in the world.

In short…

The real challenge is always showing up in the world in a way that aligns with what we desire for our living. If you want to live in community, it will take deliberate practice and effort. There won’t be a magic moment where you go from spending all your time on one side of your bed scrolling through social media to spending a whole weekend wandering around the city with all kinds of good people. It requires so much effort, especially in the beginning, but all worthwhile things in life require effort: If it were easy, we won’t have a loneliness epidemic. A connected, people-filled, satisfying social life is a worthwhile pursuit, one of the best things that came out of my unplugging journey. I had no choice— without social media, without the internet, without digital clutter— but to find real people, real communities, real connections in real time. It all came together to me, reading Chapter 10: Sweet Communion in Sisters of the Yam, where bell hook urges readers to live in community: Wait, I live in community! And it will only get bigger, better, fuller the more deliberate effort I put into it, the more attention I pay.