I'm listening to The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World. It's the third in a series, which started with The Art of Happiness, a Handbook for Living, that a psychiatrist, Howard Cutler, has written along with the Dalai Lama. Confession: I had started the first book several years back, and when I checked this audio book out of the library, that was the one I thought I was getting. This book actually seems more appropriate for the current time, though, in the wake of the Vegas and Parkland shootings.
Obviously Cutler and HHDL (that's His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the unintiated) have a good rapport if they are working together on their third book together, and that rapport does come through. The Dalai Lama is a funny dude. When Cutler asks him the simple question of how do we get humans to better see the humanity in each other, HHDL suggests that if Martians invaded Earth we'd all ban together pretty quickly. "Okay, well apart from that..," continues Cutler.
Im only a short way into the book, but it seems that the main premise is an important one, and I wanted to share. The Dalai Lama suggests that a good deal of the trouble that occurs amongst humans today is because we have lost our sense of community. Tibetans are shocked when they hear that Westerners can live for years alongside neighbors that they do not know. Cutler admits that he doesn't know his neighbors, and I admit that I don't know mine at all. And it isn't just our immediate neighbors that we've lost touch with. We don't socialize in the ways we once did. Television and the internet has removed a lot of the personal interaction we once used to have. Church attendence is down. Socializing with coworkers has been eaten into by longer and longer commute times. Many of us live in different cities or even states from where we grew up in numbers that are unprecedented. We've become a lonely society. The average number of intimate friends that Americans said they had has decreased from three ten or twenty years ago to two now. Twenty-five percent of us say that we have no real intimate friends at all.
That loneliness is literally killing us. Sometimes it's showing up at the door to the school armed with an AR-15. Sometimes it shows in a suicide rate that is the highest it has been in thirty years (Is it just coincidence that the three states with the lowest population densities, Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana, have the three highest suicide rates amongst U.S. states?) . More often it shows in heart disease and cancer rates in lonely people. One health study showed that lonely, disconnected people are four times more likely to catch a cold than someone who isn't.
I struggle with making human connections. It's a lack of self-confidence and really a bit of cowardice generally that keeps me in my little bubble. For years I tried to overcome that with alcohol. Finally I've come to the harsh truth that breaking down my reserve with alcohol doesn't work for me. I've been struggling again for about the past five months of feeling disconnected once again. So listneing to this book has come at a good time. It came as a revelation that what I really need is to connect within a community. It's almost absurd that it comes as a revelation to me, since Jen has been saying as much for at least the past half-dozen years, though not in the same words.
As I sat and thought last night, I realized I am part of a great many communities. I'm a Rockies fan and last night we had our season ticket draft. Sure we only meet once a year, but that has been for the last dozen or so years. In a broader sense I connect with other Rockies fans online and connect with sports fans generally. Sports fandom is a community that is overlooked as a meaningful one to many people. There is a community of people I work with here at Nordstrom and beyond in a general sense of technical people in the Denver area. I'm a member of Mensa and the Triple Nine Society, not that that in itself is meaningful, as we have much less in common amongst ourselves beyond a high IQ. But within those groups I identify with subgroups. It gives me a group to sound off about running or books or politics. In quitting drinking I attended a handful of AA meetings. That is a community, and an important one for some people. It can be very lonely when you quit drinking and for the past number of years the only new friends you made were people at the bar.
Being a part of those communities is not the same as being connected to them, however, just as living next to people doesn't make you connected to your neighbors. I'm working on that. Just identifying all the opportunities I really have was an unexpected step for me. Maybe I'll actually make a Mensa meeting in the next 6 months.
I didn't start this intending to write so much about myself. I meant it more to get people thinking more about community and what they can do to be more connected. For those of you who struggle with it like I do, keep trying. Do little things to reach out. Be brave. Don't let rejection deter you.Think of the communities you are a part of and what you can do to be connected within them. For those of you who don't struggle, reach out to those of us who do. We'll likely reject you using crucifixes and garlic as if you've walked out of a monster movie. Don't let rejection deter you either. Eventually we'll run out of garlic.
Obviously Cutler and HHDL (that's His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the unintiated) have a good rapport if they are working together on their third book together, and that rapport does come through. The Dalai Lama is a funny dude. When Cutler asks him the simple question of how do we get humans to better see the humanity in each other, HHDL suggests that if Martians invaded Earth we'd all ban together pretty quickly. "Okay, well apart from that..," continues Cutler.
Im only a short way into the book, but it seems that the main premise is an important one, and I wanted to share. The Dalai Lama suggests that a good deal of the trouble that occurs amongst humans today is because we have lost our sense of community. Tibetans are shocked when they hear that Westerners can live for years alongside neighbors that they do not know. Cutler admits that he doesn't know his neighbors, and I admit that I don't know mine at all. And it isn't just our immediate neighbors that we've lost touch with. We don't socialize in the ways we once did. Television and the internet has removed a lot of the personal interaction we once used to have. Church attendence is down. Socializing with coworkers has been eaten into by longer and longer commute times. Many of us live in different cities or even states from where we grew up in numbers that are unprecedented. We've become a lonely society. The average number of intimate friends that Americans said they had has decreased from three ten or twenty years ago to two now. Twenty-five percent of us say that we have no real intimate friends at all.
That loneliness is literally killing us. Sometimes it's showing up at the door to the school armed with an AR-15. Sometimes it shows in a suicide rate that is the highest it has been in thirty years (Is it just coincidence that the three states with the lowest population densities, Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana, have the three highest suicide rates amongst U.S. states?) . More often it shows in heart disease and cancer rates in lonely people. One health study showed that lonely, disconnected people are four times more likely to catch a cold than someone who isn't.
I struggle with making human connections. It's a lack of self-confidence and really a bit of cowardice generally that keeps me in my little bubble. For years I tried to overcome that with alcohol. Finally I've come to the harsh truth that breaking down my reserve with alcohol doesn't work for me. I've been struggling again for about the past five months of feeling disconnected once again. So listneing to this book has come at a good time. It came as a revelation that what I really need is to connect within a community. It's almost absurd that it comes as a revelation to me, since Jen has been saying as much for at least the past half-dozen years, though not in the same words.
As I sat and thought last night, I realized I am part of a great many communities. I'm a Rockies fan and last night we had our season ticket draft. Sure we only meet once a year, but that has been for the last dozen or so years. In a broader sense I connect with other Rockies fans online and connect with sports fans generally. Sports fandom is a community that is overlooked as a meaningful one to many people. There is a community of people I work with here at Nordstrom and beyond in a general sense of technical people in the Denver area. I'm a member of Mensa and the Triple Nine Society, not that that in itself is meaningful, as we have much less in common amongst ourselves beyond a high IQ. But within those groups I identify with subgroups. It gives me a group to sound off about running or books or politics. In quitting drinking I attended a handful of AA meetings. That is a community, and an important one for some people. It can be very lonely when you quit drinking and for the past number of years the only new friends you made were people at the bar.
Being a part of those communities is not the same as being connected to them, however, just as living next to people doesn't make you connected to your neighbors. I'm working on that. Just identifying all the opportunities I really have was an unexpected step for me. Maybe I'll actually make a Mensa meeting in the next 6 months.
I didn't start this intending to write so much about myself. I meant it more to get people thinking more about community and what they can do to be more connected. For those of you who struggle with it like I do, keep trying. Do little things to reach out. Be brave. Don't let rejection deter you.Think of the communities you are a part of and what you can do to be connected within them. For those of you who don't struggle, reach out to those of us who do. We'll likely reject you using crucifixes and garlic as if you've walked out of a monster movie. Don't let rejection deter you either. Eventually we'll run out of garlic.
