The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

The Sandbox

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C O M P A S S I O N
never leaves with clean hands. . .
and the only time
OUT OF THE BOX
isn’t so great
is when it’s a
s a n d b o x
. . .just how much sand
is still in your sandbox
or has it all
l i t e r a l l y
been thrown away. . . ?

THE WORLD
is upside down
and off its axis
seemingly with no hope of
r i g h t i n g
itself
everyone seems to be grabbing for anything
that even remotely looks like
T H E I R S
(especially opinions)

JUST WEARING A MASK
(or not)
will get you labeled
and that’ll negate you
in blink-of-the-eye-quickness. . .
CASE IN POINT:
(from two acquaintances in a Facebook Discussion)
(ROB WROTE):
This shouldn’t be a political post, but offending people appears almost as easy as blinking these days and seems to happen with a near similar frequency. 
Today I met with my neurologist via zoom. We discussed the current condition of my health and the reality that heat is a destructive force in my life. Overheating complicates my already fragile central nervous system and causes frequent pseudo exacerbations and tailspins that are difficult to describe. I won’t bore you with the details, but the Dr. told me that I can’t risk going out and being near people who aren’t wearing masks in these ongoing days of Covid. If I were to get a fever, it would be “very, very bad” for me, let’s just leave it at that. 
Now I don’t know each of your views pertaining to mask wearing and, honestly, I marvel at its political ties, though I know that I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m just trying to send a reminder that some of us aren’t in a position to ponder the political angles, we are just trying to keep our heads above water and would like to not be permanently confined to our homes, where it sometimes ironically seems that we might drown for lack of oxygen. 
I encourage you to think of adorning a mask as if it were an empathy enhancer, regardless of any other benefits it may or may not have. 
Stay healthy, friends. One day we will hug again 
(WENDY REPLIED):
I think what is interesting about this conversation is that your highly trained doctor says to wear one, but my highly trained doctor says not too. It is what makes this part of the mask conversation so hard. I too, am considered extremely immune compromised but my doctor does not believe they protect us and in fact believes they are harming us more and providing an environment for more virus to grow. I work as an essential employee, have not been sick, wear mask in limited capacity and have stayed healthy.   Many doctors believe that this is why we are seeing virus transmission go up in areas that are mandating it. Also on the flip side of this, my mother, who is asthmatic and my uncle who has COPD, cant wear them without getting deathly sick.  It is a unique conversation to each individual, their unique situation and their health care providers feelings on it.  It should not be mandated by any government entity for that reason. I respect what your doctor is telling you for you, but it can’t be something that is mandated for everyone. We do not know each person’s unique situation which why judgement to wear or not wear should be something we as individuals should  not be passing and should be an individuals decision to do or not to do based on these specific factors.  What could save your life, might take my mom’s life.  This is a very real thing we need to see in the true light for what it is.  It does mean that many people like you can’t be out in the general population right now, but it should not mean everyone has to wear a mask because of that. If you wear one and stay socially distant, you will stay safe. I am sorry that the health factors make life more difficult for you during this time
(ROB REPLIED)
Wendy – Thanks for a thoughtful reply. I am of the opinion that some of your examples are the exception to the rule, but none the less, thanks for addressing the argument rather than attacking the individual. Tip of the cap to you.

Playing in the sandbox without getting
G R I T T Y
is not just possible or plausible
but actually
providential

little boy playing in the sand
Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

​Sand in the box
is never the problem
It’s always the sand
the seemingly unremovable sand
on the hands
between the toes
in the shorts
in the eyes
that causes the
not-so-nice-play
in the sandbox 
GRIT
has its place(S)
but purposely
recklessly
deliberately
in the eyes
is never one of them
Sand in the box
is never the problem
as much as 
s a n d
out of the box

We are way past the time
of playing nice
. . .it’s now time
to just
BE NICE
(ALWAYS)
(ALL-WAYS)


Mental CALISTHENICS

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Ever since early MARCH 2020
when we entered into our COVID19 Pandemic
our heads have been jammed back with
F A C T S
some true
some false
some somewhere in-between
and it’s all been enough to literally make your head
E X P L O D E
so when you think you are literally
going out of your mind
real it all back in
(no duct tape necessary)
You’re not alone—people around the world are depressed, anxious, and stressed, some more than others.

 KIRA M. NEWMAN is the managing editor of GREATER GOOD which is all about reeling it all in as it appears to be falling all out shares with us some great DO’S and DON’T’S. . .

Epidemiologists and virologists around the world are scrambling to understand and prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. There is another group of researchers who are concerned about a slightly different foe: the mental health pandemic.

Facing an infectious disease, we have been forced to maintain distance from each other, all while going through levels of fear, uncertainty, job loss, and grief that are unprecedented for many people. 

“In an ironic twist, many of the strategies that are critical to ensuring our collective public health during this pandemic may put people at greater risk for . . . mental health issues,” write Frederick Buttell and Regardt J. Ferreira at Tulane University in a recent, special issue of the journal Psychological Trauma. 

In brand-new studies coming out of China, Spain, the United States, and other countries, researchers are discovering in real time how we are collectively coping with this worldwide event. The results are not uplifting, but they aren’t surprising either. We are suffering, some of us worse than others. You don’t have to have lost a job or a loved one to be affected. Humans are complex, and so are emotional responses to the pandemic. 

When this all started, we learned how viruses spread and how to wash our hands like pros. Now we have lessons to learn about what happens to mental health in a crisis like this, so we can find ways to address it. 

We’re anxious, depressed, and traumatized

As COVID-19 spread through China in January and February, researchers were already sending out questionnaires to citizens locked down in their homes. In half a dozen studies with over 10,000 respondents, they found that people were experiencing worse mental health problems than before the pandemic—high symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Up to half showed serious signs of depression (depending on the study), while up to 35 percent showed serious anxiety.  

One survey followed over 1,700 people in 190 Chinese cities from late January to late February. During the height of the pandemic, their stress, anxiety, and depression didn’t change. Their symptoms of PTSD declined slightly—but they were still high enough to be worrisome. People weren’t getting worse, but they also didn’t seem to be getting used to pandemic life. 

The results look no better in other countries. In late March, nearly 3,500 people were surveyed in Spain, when the country ranked second in the world in COVID-19 deaths. Many people met the criteria for clinical mental health problems: 19 percent for depression, almost a quarter for anxiety, and 16 percent for PTSD. Within a week after Slovenia declared an epidemic, over half of the thousands of people surveyed had high stress levels. In April, 14 percent of Americans were experiencing serious psychological distress, more than triple the rate in 2018. 

And studies find that this stress and anxiety fuels poor sleep, creating a vicious cycle. The more we lay awake at night during the pandemic, rehashing worries we have no control over, the worse our mental health becomes.

Some of us are lonely, but not all

Stay-at-home orders and social distancing have left many people isolated, so it makes sense that we would be feeling lonely. And, indeed, nearly 1 in 7 U.S. adults said they were often or always lonely in April 2020, up over 25 percent from 2018. But when another group of researchers surveyed over 1,500 people in the U.S., they were surprised to find “remarkable resilience.” Not only did people not become lonelier over time, but they actually gained a greater sense of support from others from January to April.

All the phone calls and video chats with family and friends may be helping, write Martina Luchetti and her coauthors from Florida State University, as well as a new sense of togetherness. “Many people have felt part of community-wide efforts to slow the spread of the virus. The feeling of . . . being in this together may increase resilience.”

However, this hasn’t been true for everyone. People who are younger or living alone, or who have a chronic health condition, are lonelier than other groups. In fact, one study in the U.S. in April and May (before any restrictions were lifted) found that almost two thirds of people under 30 had high levels of loneliness, and 37 percent felt they had low support from their family. 

“Feeling cut off from social groups may lead one to feel vulnerable and pessimistic about one’s circumstances,” write Cindy H. Liu and her coauthors.

In early April, the United Nations called for immediate global action to combat the increasing violence against women and girls during the pandemic. 

The effects depend on your personality, lifestyle, and demographics

While older people have greater health risks from COVID-19, it seems to be younger people who are struggling emotionally. According to studies from Spain, China, and Slovenia, younger people tend to be more depressed, anxious, stressed, and traumatized in the era of COVID-19. The same is true for women, who may also be more lonely.  

There’s no clear explanation for why this might be true, but researchers have some speculations. Women tend to have worse mental health in general, and certain stressors right now—like the added burden of caregiving and the risk of losing jobs—may fall more heavily on women. 

For younger people, it could be the disruptions to their routines that are to blame, particularly for college students who have had to adjust to online schooling. In studies across both China and the United States, the more the pandemic was affecting people’s daily lives, the more anxious they felt. 

Personality also influences how we fare in tough times. Two related traits that seem to matter during the pandemic are our ability to tolerate uncertainty and our ability to tolerate distress. While it’s hard for anyone to struggle or face the unknown, some people are less comfortable with it than others. And right now, it’s those people who seem to be ruminating more, feeling more afraid, and experiencing more depression, anxiety, and PTSD. 

It’s worse for disadvantaged groups

In studies across the world, researchers investigated what else might make people vulnerable to mental health problems during the pandemic. They found a few key factors that put people at risk. 

For one, people with poor health or chronic diseases tend to have higher symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and PTSD, several studies found. Of course, this might be because these are also the people with greater health risks from COVID-19. 

Your income and education matter, too. The less stable your income and the less educated you are, studies suggest, the more anxiety, depression, and stress you will experience. The pandemic is threatening the economy, affecting everyone’s financial future, but the situation is worse for people who were already struggling. In a very real sense, we’re not all in the same boat.

“It is an inescapable fact that people lower on the socioeconomic ladder are struggling more”

―David Sbarra, Ph.D.

A Pew survey of nearly 5,000 Americans in April found that the lowest-income people were most afraid of getting COVID-19, too. “[While] Americans may be struggling with the emotional challenges of the pandemic, it is an inescapable fact that people lower on the socioeconomic ladder are struggling more,” says psychologist David Sbarra. 

The effects are compounded by racism

Those unequal effects extend all the way to who lives and who dies. 

In fact, Black people are more likely to be infected, less likely to be tested and treated, and less likely to survive if they get COVID-19. According to Andrea King Collier in an article for Greater Good, a history of racism means the Black community is confronting the pandemic with worse health, less access to care, and more distrust of the medical system.  

That means they have more reason to be fearful for their own lives, and they are more likely to experience loss. In fact, Pew research suggests that more than a quarter of Black Americans know someone who was hospitalized or died from COVID-19, compared to 1 in 10 white Americans. 

These hardships worsened after the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minnesota. His death catalyzed nationwide protests for racial justice—but at the same time, many observers say, it made the pandemic even harder for many Black Americans.

“Black people have been hit on all sides with the threat of loss of life,” saysRiana Anderson, assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. “It is exhausting. Depleting. Depressing. And absolutely an additional stressor.” She argues that family and community support is a strength of the Black community, but physical distancing restrictions have made it more difficult to access that power. 

Other people of color are suffering disproportionally under the pandemic, too. Nearly one-fifth of Latino adults were experiencing serious psychological distress in April 2020; the CDC estimates that Latinos make up over half of the U.S. agricultural workforce, a group of essential workers whose jobs put them at greater risk of infection. Discrimination against Asians has risen since the pandemic started in Wuhan, China. 

YOUR WORK SITUATION MATTERS

One of the biggest disruptions to our daily lives today is how the pandemic has affected our work. 

Doctors, nurses, and paramedics are taking on the urgent task of caring for COVID-19 patients, while other essential workers are putting themselves at risk to sell food, deliver mail, and pick up trash. Many office jobs have transitioned to remote work, asking employees to isolate at home, with many precariously juggling work and care for children or elders. 

Other people have been unable to continue work during the pandemic, waiting for the time when they’ll be called back, while some have been laid off entirely. Unemployment in the U.S. more than quadrupled from February to April, leveling off in July at 10 percent. 

A Chinese survey in mid-February examined some of these work situations, though not all. What was clear is that people who are unable to work temporarily—even if they don’t get laid off—have worse mental health. And while working in an office might seem risky, it was the people working from home who were actually more distressed and less satisfied with their lives. 

Caring for yourself and others

There’s a lot we don’t have control over in this situation, which is stressful in and of itself. You may have some of the risk factors mentioned above, and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

But what can you control? That’s the first question to ask. 

For example, research from 28 countries conducted in mid-March found that the more people used social media, the more fearful they were. Frequent social media users in China were more likely to feel both depressed and anxious at the same time. Part of the reason may be because, particularly when the pandemic was ramping up, it was the main topic of discussion online. If being on Facebook doesn’t feel good, consider putting limits on social media time.

Does that mean ignorance is bliss? No. Finding the right sources of information is key. In fact, Chinese people who were highly satisfied with the health information they got about COVID-19 tended to have lower stress, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Being informed helps reduce uncertainty and anxiety—but overloading ourselves with information can also be unsettling. Online or offline, reading news or imagining worst-case scenarios with family, the people who spent three or more hours a day focusing on COVID-19 were more anxious.  

Besides taking breaks from news and social media, practicing basic safety and hygiene could go a long way for your mental health. In Chinese studies in January and February, people who engaged in proper hand washing, wore masks, and avoided sharing utensils tended to experience less depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD. 

Since March, Greater Good has been sharing tips for well-being during COVID-19. For the most part, these are nothing new. In normal life and in a pandemic, we fare better when we try to stay connected in our relationships, cope with stress in healthy ways, and find a sense of agency. 

But we can’t self-improve our way out of the pain and difficulty. What we’re going through right now is a trauma, or at least a major stressor on a global scale. This is one of those times when life really is harder by a little bit or a lot, depending on your situation. Feeling bad is part of being human—and right now, that’s something many of us need to face, even as we work to feel better, stay connected, and help others.

FACT:
There are no quick fixes
FACT:
Science
literally is happening in real time
with no time for
hypothesis
trials or errors
findings
evidence based data
r e s u l t s
FACT:
It’s a blend of our
HEART AND HEAD
that’ll give us
the best of what we
FEEL
and
THINK
to not just
survive
rise above
endure
sustain
but actually revive what COVID-19
can’t infect
THE HUMAN SPIRIT

How’s that for some
REAL-TIME
MENTAL CALESTHENICS
?


A COMMERCIAL BREAK

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Are you in need of a Commercial Break. . .
We all seem to be scrambling for
THAT
Remote Control
(not of our TV’s)
of our lives
that’ll not fast forward us through the Commercial
to get back to our regular program
but actually
S T O P
The Regular Scheduled Program
to literally give us a much needed
b r e a k
and show us
give us
not what we need to buy
b u t
WHAT WE NEED TO HAVE
(and no, it’s not a Dodge Ram Truck)

After all of the
C L O C K S
have Ticked their
T O C K S
what we need is more than a program
or a commercial can promise or give
but just the same
the seeds to our fertile fields
can be found there
in the middle of both
on our
EIGHTH DAY. . .

. . .so before your HOUR GLASS
goes Sandless
c o n s i d e r
maybe not so much how you’d spend your
E I G H T H DAY
as how you’d
INVEST IT

Just don’t put that in
Your Field
and Plant it
. . .Harvest it
and take it to
MARKET
for the Farmer in all of us
. . .it just could be
The Commercial Break
needed from this
not-so-great-regular-program


BEMOANERS

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Let’s face it,
We don’t Bemoan
We don’t Lament
We don’t Rue
. . .We REGRET
A LOT
and any time we have a close call
or spend a few months in a
FIRST TIME DEBILITATING PANDEMIC
we begin to do a lot of things that often
whittle down to some good
honest to God
honest to Self
figuring out
life review
which is one of the biggest reasons
WE REGRET

The top five regrets of the dying
 A palliative nurse has recorded the top five regrets of the dying. Photograph: Montgomery Martin/Alamy

There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

“This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.”

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

“Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.”

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

“This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”

I am always cautious to never minimize
or worse
take away someone’s regrets
(they are theirs and even somewhat sacred)
or worse to
“There, There, There,”
them away
but I always like balancing them out a little bit with:
WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD?

WHAT ARE YOUR BEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS?

WHAT PAGE OF YOUR BOOK WOULD YOU NEVER TEAR OUT?

WHAT MOMENTS ARE YOU GLAD YOU DUPLICATED?

WHAT BAD THING TURNED OUT TO BE A REALLY GOOD THING?

w h i c h
leads us to
maybe the most important question now
on this Wednesday, July 29 moment:
What’s your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
N O W
is the time
forever keeping it from being a
r e g r e t
A surefire
BEMOAN BEGON
e l i x i r
. . .I’ll take a double-shot;
JOIN ME

WE BELONG TOGETHER

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M U S I C
at it’s best will do much more than just
make your foot tap
or your head, bob. . .
it’ll literally make your
H E A R T B E A T
d i f f e r e n t l y
. . .and not just for a while–
for an e v e r. . .

I love the simpleness and yet significances of JJ Heller’s music

For years J J’s timeless love song,
“THE BOAT SONG”
 has been played at weddings and funerals in slideshows.
I loved this quirky, homemade video featuring
many pairs of found objects to match her lyrics
but like most songs I’m not so sure we get the
message in the message:

WE BELONG TOGETHER

It’s not just about finding the love of your life
It’s not just about being silly and funny for someone
It’s not just about love and truly
BEING IN IT

. . .Oh it is about relationships. . .

It’s about
BELONGING. . .
TOGETHER

B E L O N G I N G

I love the quote from Mother Teresa
(now Saint Teresa of Calcutta)
where she said the biggest threat to us and our world was that people don’t feel as though they BELONG. . .

“IF WE HAVE NO PEACE,” she said, “IT IS BECAUSE WE HAVE FORGOTTEN THAT WE BELONG TO EACH OTHER.”

We’ve all felt it before, haven’t we:
DO I BELONG
or
WHERE DO I BELONG ?

It hits us at our heart level
It’s more real than typed or spoken word
It’s more desperate than our next breath or heartbeat. . .
B E L O N G I N G

We want to
BELONG,
TOGETHER,
o f t e n
again and again
for an ever. . .

and here’s the best part:
WE HAVE THE POWER
to not only include others
but to actually make them feel
THEY BELONG

Each of us gets to decide whether we want to name-call, gaslight, sow fear or whether we really want to elevate, empower, life others up
I N C L U D E

Let our Caring Catalyst Message be:
“COME HERE
YOU ARE WELCOME
YOU BELONG”

We are all vulnerable
We are all human
WE ALL BELONG TOGETHER. . .

See. . .
I told you it was more than just a love song
. . .this is a pure
PANDEMIC BUSTER
A HUMAN UNIFER
(and none too soon)
Hum along
and more
. . .put the
P E P
in another’s
S T E P

The LISTENING Cure

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DO YOU. . .
Do you
LOVE ENOUGH
to Listen. . . ?
Maybe what the world needs more of
RIGHT NOW
are not

an abundance of Loving Hearts
but
HEARING EARS. . .

How Deep Listening Can Make You More Compassionately Persuasive
. . .any need for THAT?

You’re more likely to change an opponent’s mind when you ask questions, listen sincerely, and tell stories.  . .
sound too easy
or can we truly
GET ALONG
in a more simple,
less complicated way. . . ?

Well,  EDWARD LEMPINEN, a journalist shares with us THAT KIND of
H O P E

Our nation is locked in a state of polarization unprecedented in the past half-century, with deep, volatile divisions around issues of politics, race, religion, and the environment and yes, COVID-19. These issues can and have split families, break friendships, and create enormous stress in communities—and yet, having a constructive discussion about the disagreements often seems impossible and HEARING, well, no pun intended, IT IS UNHEARD OF. . .

If you’re trying to persuade someone on the other side of that chasm, UC Berkeley political scientist David Broockman says that, chances are, you’re going about it the wrong way. In a series of studies over the past five years, he has found insights that contradict much of what we think we know about engaging those who disagree with us.

When it comes to changing someone’s feelings about issues, he says, data are less compelling than human stories. Listening is more powerful than just talking. Accepting the other person, even if their ideas feel offensive, may open the door to constructive dialogue.

“It’s really hard to change people’s minds,” Broockman said in a recent interview. “When we talk about persuasion, we talk so much about how to make the most effective arguments, the most effective talking points. But we don’t talk so much about how to be a good listener, or about how to make people comfortable in talking to you and hearing from you.”

The ideas are counterintuitive. But the studies done by Broockman and Joshua Kalla, a former Berkeley Ph.D. student now on the faculty at Yale University, are backed by data collected in extensive fieldwork, and they’ve won attention for bringing new understanding to the art and science of political persuasion, where traditional tools don’t seem to work.

Their key work has focused on transgender rights and on immigration, two flashpoints in the nation’s culture wars, and they could be valuable across a range of our most rancorous debates, from racial justice to climate change and the November election. While their findings are not a cure-all—far from it, Broockman says—they could offer a path to reduced tension and improved dialogue for a sorely divided nation.

Inspired by painful personal experience

In some senses, the idea is not far from the “how to win friends” nostrums of Dale Carnegie in the mid 20th century, or from some schools of modern psychotherapy. But Broockman’s work rose from his experience as a young gay man growing up in Texas.

During his high school years, he attended a mock state government program with other students, many of them conservative, and found a climate of what he called “super-rampant homophobia.” In the same period, Texas voters approved a ban on same-sex marriage.

“I was a white, upper-middle-class kid who could have had every privilege in the world,” he recalled. “And then, all of a sudden, I realized there’s this big asterisk on that. It’s of course not the same as if I were a person of color, but it did give me insight into what it’s like to be on the wrong end of an important power relationship.”

From that experience rose his interest in political engagement—and in trying to understand people’s attitudes.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 2011, and his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 2015. After four years on the faculty at Stanford University, he returned to Berkeley this year as an associate professor. And while he has published widely on government, elections, and discrimination, persuasion has been a central focus.

Political campaigns are, of course, exercises in shaping opinion, and billions of dollars are spent on that goal. But a 2018 study by Broockman and Kalla shows that such campaigns are often an exercise in futility. After reviewing 49 published studies on political opinion and persuasion, they came to a stark conclusion: “The best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidate choices in general elections is zero.”

In other words, persuasion by conventional means in most partisan political campaigns is very rare.

But studies published in 2016 and earlier this year show Broockman and Kalla exploring unconventional means, and it’s here that they broke new ground.

Human connection through “deep canvassing”

In a polarized climate, on issues of existential importance, it can be difficult even to hear opinions that contradict our own—on issues such as same-sex marriage, for example, or climate change, or Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump. It seems offensive that someone doesn’t see the world as we do, and there’s a tendency to correct them, to tell them they’re not just wrong, but deplorable.

Expressing such frustration may provide emotional relief, but it’s not likely to persuade. In fact, it can make people harden their existing views.

For a 2016 study published in Science, Broockman and Kalla worked with the Los Angeles LGBT Center and SAVE, a South Florida LGBT organization, on a field assessment of voter attitudes toward a new Miami-area law protecting transgender people. One group of door-to-door canvassers, a control group, said nothing to residents about transphobia.

But another group engaged in “deep canvassing,” a process based on asking sensitive questions, listening to the answers with sincere interest, and then asking more questions. If residents expressed bias toward transgender people, the canvasser might ask them to recall a time when they were treated unfairly for being different and what that felt like.

The outcome? “These conversations substantially reduced transphobia, with decreases greater than Americans’ average decrease in homophobia from 1998 to 2012,” the research found. In effect, about 10% of the deep canvassing respondents shifted toward a more sympathetic view of transgender rights, with effects lasting for at least three months.

A second study, published this year, confirmed the 2016 research on transgender rights and showed that this two-way exchange was key to a conversation’s effectiveness. The study also added additional fieldwork on undocumented immigrants—and, again, the deep canvassing had a substantial effect, even though it was conducted during the heat of the 2018 U.S. Congressional election.

Among residents who were not asked about immigration, 29% supported pro-immigrant policies. But for those who were engaged in the reflection and storytelling of deep canvassing, the number rose to 33%; respondents were far more likely to say, for example, that undocumented immigrants should receive legal support and should not have to live in fear of deportation. Again, the impact was durable, lasting three months or more.

“I think, in today’s world, many communities have a call-out culture,” Broockman told Vox. “Twitter is obviously full of the notion that what we should do is condemn those who disagree with us. What we can now say, experimentally, (is that) the key to the success of these conversations is doing the exact opposite of that.”

When people get defensive, they resist

Why does deep canvassing work? Broockman offered a possible explanation.

Political and cultural opinions, including biases, are so deeply ingrained that they are part of our core identities. People almost universally want to do the right thing, and they want to be associated with groups that do the right thing. When that rightness is challenged, it’s a threat to their core identity.

“People don’t like to be told they’re wrong,” he explained. “So when people hear something that contrasts with their self-image, they immediately start generating counterarguments.”

Deep canvassing short-circuits that dynamic. Instead of presenting facts and data, or value judgments, he said, “you ask questions, dig in, make it a kind of collaborative dialogue where you’re genuinely open-minded. And then you might find that the other person is more able to be open-minded.”

That’s where sharing stories becomes important. “People want to listen to stories,” Broockman continued. “They kind of suspend their disbelief. They say, ‘Alright, I’m hearing a story, I want to get into it. I’m not going to treat this like an argument where I need to counterpunch. This is just someone sharing their authentic experience with me. And then, I’m going to kind of reach my own conclusions.’”

Because bias toward LGBTQ people or other groups can be deeply rooted in identity, this more compassionate approach to persuasion reduces the sense of threat. “Actually changing attitudes is going to require an approach that’s not just based on statistics or arguments,” Broockman said, “but on stories that humanize those groups.”

An expanding sense of possibility

Even with deep canvassing, shifting opinions is difficult. Race-based prejudice is freighted with a long, shameful history, and Broockman predicts that will be especially resistant to change.

Still, he’s hopeful. In his research on immigration, deep canvassing produced a gain of four percentage points—that’s not much, but in a close election, four points can turn defeat to victory. He also sees possible applications for this approach across a range of issues and elections.

Broockman made another observation about conducting the research—one that was informal, but essential: Deep canvassing also opened canvassers’ minds to substantive conversations about difficult issues with those who disagreed with them. Just as the vast majority of voters willingly had such conversations, canvassers trained in the technique were eager to keep having them, too.

That appetite on both sides can create the conditions for change. And it suggests that individuals, too, can use principles of deep canvassing to engage with family and friends trying to build a bridge across the divide.

“We live in an age of righteous indignation toward those who disagree with us,” Broockman said. “It’s on all sides, in so many current social debates. . . . But a lot of that can get tempered when you actually meet and engage with the people who disagree with you. It’s work, and it can be difficult. But what we gain from that, in addition to advocating for our causes, is realizing that we might have more in common than we think.”

Can it be this simple:
L I S T E N I N G
spells

And that a
S P E L L
that needs cast upon us
A L L

hands heart love
Photo by ATC Comm Photo on Pexels.com


YOUR Rainbow Connection

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What is it about this song that it touches the heart of so many of us? How did this song become such a classic moment in Muppet history?

It all started in 1978 when Jim Henson was searching for a composer to write the music to The Muppet Movie. Since being a good friend of Jim’s since his appearance on The Muppet Show, the young Paul Williams got the job. “Rainbow Connection” was written to be the song to the Muppets as “When You Wish Upon A Star” had been to Walt Disney. In many ways, “Rainbow Connection” is also very similar to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from Jim Henson’s favorite film, The Wizard of Oz (1939), which was “an opening establishment driving urge for something more.”

Rainbow Connection was the first Oscar nomination for the Muppets, at the 52nd Academy Awards. Sadly, the song lost to “It Goes Like It Goes” from Norma Rae. While the Muppets would gain various other nominations throughout the years, it would be another 32 years until the Muppets would win an Oscar for best song (“Man Or Muppet” in 2012).

The song has had over 30 covers by noted singers including Sarah McLachan, Judy Collins, the Carpenters, Weezer, Willie Nelson, Jim Brickman, Jason Mraz, and many others. It was also performed by the Muppets themselves in The Muppets at Walt Disney World, The Muppets, The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years, and many more.

For many, the song is truly about finding yourself and following your dreams. This is the beginning for most Muppet fans, and where it all started. It’s where Kermit decides to leave the swamp and make millions of people happy, and the rest is history. Another reason might just be that Muppet fans know that they now have an entire screening of The Muppet Movie ahead of them.

This song gives the same message as Disney’s Pinocchio gave, which is really in essence, to believe in yourself, and follow your dreams. It sounds a little cheesy when I explain it like that, but that’s how I feel about it personally.

At the end of the film, when Kermit builds his family of all his friends who believe in him and share his dream (after the set gets blown to pieces), a rainbow shines through the hole in the ceiling, showing that Kermit had finally found his “Rainbow Connection” and is exactly where he wanted to be.

S T I L L
. . .the real question especially during our COVID-19
hazy, crazy Fog
isn’t so much
WHEN WILL THE SUN SHINE
FREELY
BRIGHT AGAIN
so much as:
What message do you think
The Rainbow Connection
is giving off
FOR YOU. . .
and maybe even more:
IS IT SHAREABLE
?

An Easy Act to Follow

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IS THIS SAFE ENOUGH?
What to do
When to do it
HOW TO DO IT
WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO TO BE SAFE
AND TO KEEP THOSE AROUND US SAFE. . .
Buzz Sentences and remarks these days, huh?
So is this:
WE HAVE GIVEN UP ON COVID-19
BUT COVID-19 HAS NOT GIVEN UP ON US
So let’s simplify this
A G A I N
especially as we ready ourselves
for the upcoming 4th of July weekend

Here’s Five Easy Ways to Encourage Safe Behavior During the Pandemic

Research provides some tips on how to get each other to wear masks, wash our hands, and keep distance. 

Journalist  JILL SUTTIE with Time Magazine helps us navigate the not-so-complex into a simpler new NEW as we individually attempt to care for others enough to take COVID-19 down. . .

It’s frustrating to see people not comply with health advisories—and it’s worrying. Health experts report that wearing masks and keeping our distance are clearly effective at slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Washing our hands regularly, avoiding crowded spaces, and staying home when we feel ill are also ways of supporting public health goals.

How can we CARINGLY encourage people to take these seriously, especially when it’s inconvenient to them? 

Luckily, science suggests that there are many ways to nudge people in the right direction. Since we so badly need to keep this virus under control—especially once we have more freedom of movement—it becomes more important than ever to figure out what works. Here are five ways research has identified to encourage people to protect themselves and each other from the pandemic.

1. Appeal to concern for others

As a species, we humans naturally care about others’ welfare and will often act cooperatively for the benefit of our group. In fact, research shows that our first instincts in a disaster are to act “prosocially”—meaning, acting to benefit the welfare of others rather than doing what benefits us. 

In a recent study from Sweden, researchers measured participants’ prosociality by having them fill out a questionnaire and play an economics game in which they could avoid exposing others to risk for their own benefit; then, they collected information about what kinds of steps participants had taken to prevent viral spread. Their findings suggest that people with higher prosociality scores were more likely to follow guidelines about hygiene and social distancing, and they were more likely to buy masks, donate, or spend more time reading about the virus. 

As many of us have prosocial instincts already, appealing to that side of us might be important in a pandemic, as another recent study found. 

In that study, conducted in the United States at two points in time during the viral outbreak, researchers tested different messaging to see how it affected participants’ intentions to comply with preventative measures—like washing their hands frequently, not touching their face, staying home whenever possible, or stocking up on cleaning supplies.

In the first experiment in March, they tested different messages about COVID prevention: to protect others in one’s community, avoid becoming ill or dying oneself, or protect oneself and others (a combination). A fourth message did not emphasize potential victims at all.

Results showed that people were significantly more willing to take precautions if the message focused on benefiting others, with the combined message being no more effective than the prosocial message alone. This suggests that people may be most motivated to prevent the spread of the virus when primed with concern for other people. 

These results were somewhat surprising, says lead author Jillian Jordan, given that it could have gone either way. “There’s a lot of research suggesting that while people do care a great deal about themselves and are self-interested, people also care a lot about other people and those social motivations are big part of our behavior,” she says. 

In a follow-up experiment within the same study—conducted a month later, as coronavirus cases spiked in the U.S.—these differences around messaging effects tended to disappear, with appeals to promoting public or personal health being equally effective. Jordan isn’t sure why—it could have been small differences in her methods or the changing national conversation around the pandemic. But, whatever the case, prosocial messaging was surprisingly robust.

“The key takeaway is that prosocial messages are no less effective than self-interested messages,” she says. “That reaffirms the idea that prosocial motivation does have some power.” 

2. Be a role model

Unfortunately, there will always be people who are tempted to forego protections, especially the longer the risk period lasts. For those who are at less risk of serious illness, the temptation may be even stronger.

Researchers who study cooperative groups call these folks “free riders,” because they take advantage of others’ cooperative behavior to benefit themselves. For example, they may decide that with everyone else staying at home or wearing masks in public, they can safely go outside mask-free with little chance of infection. 

“When we leave our own homes, we are looking around and noticing if other people are wearing a mask”

―Dominic Packer, Lehigh University

Unfortunately, “free riders” can poison cooperative action. After all, being “good” comes at a cost of personal freedom, and, especially in a more individualistic society, that’s a hard lift. To see other people flaunting the rules could make compliant people feel they are being taken advantage of.

How to discourage free riders and make compliance the norm?

As one of the paper’s coauthors, Lehigh University psychologist Dominic Packer, argues, we’re subtly influenced by the behaviors of those around us. So, if we are exposed to people who are generally adhering to recommended guidelines, we are more apt to adhere to them ourselves, and that behavior can spread in a community.

“When we leave our own homes, we are looking around and noticing if other people are wearing a mask or showing up to grocery stores and waiting in lines, and we’re using that to inform us about how much other people are listening to the CDC and thinking it’s a good source of information,” says Packer.

3. Appeal to common humanity and shared values

Our tendency to go along with what we see others doing depends on our personal identities, too, says Packer. For example, in the U.S., social distancing and mask wearing has been embraced more by liberals/Democrats and eschewed more by conservatives/Republicans.

“Our politics are so polarized that we don’t just look at what members of our own group are doing and say, ‘Oh, I should do that’; we also look at whatever the out-group is doing and say, ‘Well, I shouldn’t do that,’” he says.

That’s why shaming people who don’t comply with norms probably won’t work well, says Packer. While shaming can get people to change their behavior when they identify strongly with the person shaming them—let’s say, your church group telling you to wear a mask—it can backfire and increase your opposition if you don’t identify with the person shaming you.

What can we do instead? It’s important to highlight our common humanity and remember our shared moral values. If this messaging isn’t coming from national leadership, we can encourage people to remember their other, non-political identities—as Americans, parents, or community members, for example—to help the norm spread, says Packer.

In spite of political bickering, he is encouraged that the norm of being careful has spread as much as it has. Creating a new norm around behaviors like wearing masks or staying indoors—which are foreign to most Americans—is pretty remarkable, he says.

“Given that we can’t draw on prior experiences and that we’re getting a lot of conflicting information from news outlets and government authorities, the amount of behavior change we have seen in such a short period of time is truly astonishing—like, unprecedented.” 

4. Make the messages authoritative and consistent

Prosocial messaging may help to keep people focused on being cooperative rather than looking out for themselves. But, with the messaging around the virus changing rapidly—and, in the U.S. at least, the messages being skewed for political reasons—it’s more difficult to keep that spirit of unified action alive.

Messaging matters when it comes to individual behavior. For example, one recent study found that when you frame the dangers from the coronavirus in economic costs rather than public health costs, people are less willing to take precautions to protect themselves or others from the virus. The study also found that when messages of precaution came from an authoritative source (in this experiment, President Trump), people were more willing to follow them than when they came from an expert source (the CDC).

This means that consistent messaging from authorities about the importance of maintaining social distancing and other forms of protection is helpful for encouraging ongoing compliance. Unfortunately, that’s not happening in the United States, where the pandemic has (at this writing) killed over 129,000 people—in part because of confused messaging. We can at least take responsibility for controlling our own messaging—to our kids and family, coworkers, and followers on social media. Perhaps our leaders will follow suit.

5. Make the positive impact visible

People need to hear that their actions are making a difference.

In a recent paper synthesizing decades of research, scientists suggest that we can encourage compliance with prevention measures by reporting on the benefits of accrued cooperation—meaning, let people know that their actions are resulting in lowered hospitalization and death rates. People are more likely to continue with difficult advice when they feel that it’s actually making a difference.

There’s also a good way to recognize each other’s efforts: gratitude. Saying “thanks” to other people who adhere to wearing masks and social distancing can also help, the researchers argue. Not only does gratitude make people feel good about what they’re doing, but it can also encourage them to “pay it forward” and to want to do more to help others. I actually tell those that I see with a mask, “THANK YOU FOR TAKING CARE OF ME”

Public displays of gratitude—as well as offering opportunities for people to help one another through neighborhood groups or community organizations—can build community, too, and bring momentum to the movement to continue taking precautions as time goes on.

“Doing so would spotlight the cooperation at the heart of social distancing and implement the reciprocity shown to generate cooperation in social dilemmas,” the study authors write.

All of these steps—appealing to our prosocial natures and common humanity; being a good role model; consistent, authoritative messaging; and making impact visible—can help us to do the hard work of protecting others and increasing the common good. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we need to think of ourselves as one big human family all trying to fight this virus together. It’s really not a SMALL WORLD so much as just a BIG LIVING ROOM of which we all share a sacred space made even more hallowed by the care we can show for others just by MASKING UP

I’ve never been much of a
FINGER POINTER
but I don’t mind
POINTING OUT
that it doesn’t mean a whole lot
if I do for you what
I THINK YOU NEED
instead of what you’re telling me
WHAT YOU REALLY NEED
. . .that’s the true difference between
C A R I N G
and
a p a t h y
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
There’s no
M A S K I N G
the
variance

LESSOR LEARNED

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s o m e t i m e s
the best poem is the one that
i s n ‘ t
SOMETIMES
the best poem is a
T r U t H
that goes beyond
idyllic pandemic
o r
iambic pentameter
past rhyme or reason
free verse
or some fancy syllabic haiku
Sometimes
poems forget themselves
. . .their nicely arranged words
and go directly to a
f e e l
without a touch. . .
sometimes

Physically
Emotionally
Mentally
Socially
Symphonically
Lyrically
All waysically
I am so lessically
Without you

The greatest take-away from the COVID-19 Pandemic. . . ?

BE THE PROOF
of this
LESSOR LEARNED



YOUR BRAIN on Loneliness

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Your Brain on Loneliness
is like trying to read a small print
prescription bottle label in a pillowcase
with sunglasses on. . .
Murky
Foggy
A shadow of a shadow
A dream right before you wake up
that makes you question if it’s sleep
or a sad excuse of
sharp-sightedness
real or imagined
myth or fact
at best. . .
which begs the wondering
as we swim through this
COVID-19
s l u d g e:

How loneliness could be changing your brain and body

A growing amount of research shows loneliness could be linked to a range of health problems. Erin Carson recently reported some of these effects.

cnet-loneliness-story-2-illustration-1600x900-v1
Brett Pearce/CNET

People were already lonely before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Before COVID-19 stranded folks at home and made getting close to others an unnerving experience, researchers were realizing Americans were lonelier than ever. 

A  2018 study from health care insurer Cigna found that 54% of 20,000 Americans surveyed reported feeling lonely. In the span of a bit more than a year, the number rose to 61%. Generation Z adults 18-22 years old are supposedly the loneliest generation, outpacing Boomers, Gen X and Millennials, despite being more connected than ever. 

Loneliness has hit epidemic proportions, said Doug Nemecek, chief medical officer at Cigna. 

More troubling: A growing body of research suggesting that being lonely for a sustained period of time could be bad for people’s physical and mental wellbeing.

That same study from Cigna placed associated health risks on par with smoking and obesity. 

An 2018 article in The Lancet described the situation like this: “Imagine a condition that makes a person irritable, depressed and self-centered, and is associated with a 26% increase in the risk of premature mortality.” 

But these are strange times. As a result of COVID-19, keeping distance from others is the safest way to stay healthy, despite the fact it could compound feelings of isolation. It’s a new reason to consider how loneliness can impact everything from your brain, to your heart, to your immune system. 

Why we get lonely

Loneliness might conjure images of being apart from friends and family, but the feeling runs much deeper than not having plans on a Friday night or than going stag to a wedding. Evolutionarily, being part of a group has meant protection, sharing the workload and increased odds of survival. After all, humans take a long time to mature. We need our tribes. 

“It’s very distressing when we are not a part of a group,” said Julianne Holt-Lundstad, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. “We have to deal with our environment entirely on our own, without the help of others, which puts our brain in a state of alert, but that also signals the rest of our body to be in a state of alert.”

Staying in that state of alert, that high state of stress, means wear and tear on the body. Stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine can contribute to sleeplessness, weight gain and anxiety over extended periods of exposure, according to the Mayo Clinic. 

The pandemic, Holt-Lundstad pointed out, is possibly the most stressful experience many people have had in their lifetime. Daily life has been upended, unemployment has skyrocketed and more than 6 million people around the world have been infected. Normally, immense challenges like those would have you seeking the reassurance and support of family and friends. But due to the nature of virus, people are at least more physically alone than ever, making it that much harder to cope. 

Studying loneliness

Loneliness is something almost everyone can relate to, but scientists are still working to understand how and why it impacts health. One of the fundamental challenges of the research: Loneliness is a subjective feeling that can’t really be measured. Not even the size of a person’s social network can guarantee how lonely they are. 

Holt-Lundstad said it’s a matter of asking people how they feel in surveys, either directly (how often would you say you’re lonely?) or indirectly (do you feel you lack companionship?).  

NASA has been studying the effects of isolation and confinement on astronauts for years, coming to some of the same conclusions as myriad other studies: Isolating conditions can lead to cognitive and behavioral issues. Elsewhere, though, researchers are looking at biological aspects of loneliness and how it physically affects the body.

That can mean looking at brains.  . .

Researchers at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago studied 823 older adults during a four-year period. They used questionnaires to assess loneliness, classifications of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as tests of the participants’ thinking, learning and memory, and assigned a loneliness score between 1 and 5. They found a person’s risk factor for Alzheimer’s increased 51% for each point on the scale. 

Autopsies were performed on those who died during the study. Loneliness wasn’t shown to cause the “hallmark brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease, including nerve plaques and tangles, or tissue damaged by lack of blood flow.” However, one researcher involved in the study, Robert S. Wilson, said loneliness could make people more vulnerable to the “deleterious effects of age-related neuropathology.”

“Loneliness [can] be a good predictor of accelerated cognitive decline,” said Turhan Canli, professor of integrative neuroscience at Stony Brook University. 

gettyimages-1185563067
Scientists are looking at loneliness and gene expression.Getty Images

How exactly loneliness links up with health issues isn’t entirely understood. One idea, Canli said, is that if someone is lonely and feeling down on themselves, they might be less likely to take care of themselves. They might not eat right. They might drink too much, worry a lot, sleep too little. Habits like those can have longer-term effects.

Canli also talked about work he’s been involved in with another researcher at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, David Bennett, that explores how different genes are expressed in people who are or are not lonely. 

Some 30 years ago, Bennett started a longitudinal study whose participants agreed not only to annual physical and psychological checkups, but to donate their brains when they died. Researchers looked at two regions of the brain related to cognition and emotion. They found genes associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease and inflammatory diseases expressed in those who were lonelier. 

“There’s actually a network of connections between these different genes by which they can affect each other,” Canli said, “that might be an underlying genetic reason why these diseases might show up as a function of loneliness.”

That’s not to say loneliness causes heart disease. There’s more research to do, including the role heritability plays in gene expression. Earlier work by a UCLA researcher named Steve Cole suggested one possibility — that the release of certain hormones while under the stress of sustained loneliness could be activating certain genes linked to health issues. 

“The subjective experience has to be translated somehow in the brain into biology, and so that’s that’s we’re looking at now,” Canli said. 

Better understanding these relationships could one day influence therapies designed to treat patients. 

The future of loneliness

Even as states are starting to relax lockdown orders and restrictions on restaurants, bars and other public places, the role social distancing could play in society is unknown. In April, Harvard researchers said intermittent social distancing could be necessary through 2022. 

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent 340 days in space, wrote a piece for The New York Times in March, offering advice based on his experience. Kelly recommends keeping a journal, sticking to a schedule and getting a hobby. 

Nemeck, from Cigna, noted that now more than ever, it’s more important to check in on others and be open to having honest conversations about feelings of loneliness, while batting down stigma attached to the feeling.

“We need to reach out to some friends and make sure we maintain those connections and have meaningful conversations,” he said. “It’s important for all of us to be comfortable asking other people how they feel.”

Loneliness, that most universal human condition, existed long before we could compare follower counts, of course. “Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man,” wrote the novelist Thomas Wolfe. But it’s impacting an increasing number of people, according to studies, with some even warning of a loneliness epidemic. At least one scientist is working on a pill to ease its pain.  

“Our culture has put upon us these expectations that if we’re going to be successful we need to have a huge network of contacts,” says Susan Matt, a history professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, who specializes in the history of emotions. “That extra set of expectations makes the experience of aloneness even harder. Our grandparents, our great-grandparents, didn’t think they were going to have an average of 338 Facebook friends.”   

Matt, along with Luke Fernandez, a computing professor at Weber State University, explore the connection between tech and emotion in their 2019 book Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter. Scouring letters, diaries and memoirs, they found that even though our Facebook-free ancestors felt lonely too, they had more modest expectations about the number of friendships they should have. They also considered loneliness an inescapable part of being human.  

Our forebears also weren’t confronted with endless Instagram-perfect vacation photos and posts about kids who seem incapable of anything but cuteness. Numerous studies have found social media can lead to feelings of depression, inadequacy and isolation as people compare their lives with everyone else’s carefully curated versions.   

Many of the subjects Matt and Fernandez interviewed for their book talked about this sort of FOMO, or fear of missing out. “It made people’s anxieties more apparent,” Matt says, giving them a “sense that was something going on and they weren’t a part of, that sense of being neglected or abandoned.”   

Loneliness, a big business 

Technology, as COVID-19 has made more clear than ever, can link people in amazing and unparalleled ways. It crosses geographical borders, broadens communities and opens the world to those with otherwise limited access. But these benefits can come at a cost. “[Technology] can distract us with endless activities that occupy our mental bandwidth and prevent us from recognizing the dearth of relationships that may mark our social lives,” Aboujaoude says.  

It can also prevent us from enjoying potential rewards of loneliness, and its close cousin, boredom. Both can, at least in limited doses, lead to self-awareness, creativity and a deeper appreciation for meaningful relationships.  

But loneliness can be devastating, even terrifying. A dark veil. A weight on the heart. 

“Loneliness and a dangerous world like the one we’re in add up to a challenging combination,” says Aboujaoude, whose books include Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality. “They produce a sense of vulnerability and can make people feel they lack a safety net or lifeline. If not recognized and addressed, they can also contribute to depression and other negative mood states.”  

work-from-home-9572
Connecting with others is just a click away, but sometimes those quick, easy connections come at a price. Angela Lang/CNET

Loneliness has other medical implications. Studies have linked loneliness to heart disease, diabetes, dementia and weakened immune systems, and it’s been called a strong predictor of premature death.  

A 2018 survey from health services company Cigna found that nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone or left out, though social media use on its own is not a predictor of loneliness levels. The researchers evaluated 20,000 subjects 18 or older using the well-established UCLA Loneliness Scale, a 20-item questionnaire developed to assess subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation.  

“The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness,” journalist and author Norman Cousins wrote. We are inherently social creatures, with anthropologists saying our social interactions have played a major role in our evolution as a species.  

Given how excruciating loneliness can feel, it comes as no surprise that hardware and software that promise instant connection hold such broad allure.  If there is an epidemic of loneliness, it goes hand in hand with the imperatives of capitalism.Luke Fernandez, computing professor and author

“They’re intent on selling us cures for loneliness,” Fernandez says of companies marketing eternal connectivity. “That’s what social media is partly about, a way of commodifying and pathologizing loneliness and offering us a cure. If there is an epidemic of loneliness, it goes hand in hand with the imperatives of capitalism.”   

radio
A French family gathers around a groundbreaking device, the radio, in 1925. Back then, “this idea that you could have companions in your home piped in from elsewhere was something to marvel at,” historian Susan Matt says. It also cultivated an intolerance of solitude, she says. Photo12/UIG/Getty Images

Look no further than the constant parade of Zoom activities that fill our lives during lockdown to see that aloneness is a state many would much prefer to avoid.  

“But nothing makes a room feel emptier than wanting someone in it,” poet Calla Quinn wrote.  

The Cigna study found that people who engage in frequent meaningful in-person interactions have lower loneliness scores and report better health than those who rarely interact with others face to face. Researchers who study loneliness say technology can help establish and enhance meaningful connections. But it can’t replace them.  What we’ve learned from coronavirus is the more we use technology, the more we actually want to be in person connecting to other people.Dan Schawbel, author

Schawbel cites research from Oxford University that found out of 150 Facebook friends, you can truly count on only four, on average, when you need a real friend. The kind who picks you up from the hospital after a procedure, helps you pack on moving day and listens to you dissect your breakup for the 16th time because you need to process it just once more, promise.   

“If we know through all these studies that the root of happiness is relationships,” he asks, “why are we letting technology deceive us into thinking we have more than we have?”   

Enter Zoom fatigue, the much-discussed condition du jour, which could end up being a harbinger of a renewed reach for connections beyond Facebook birthday messages.  

“What we’ve learned from coronavirus is the more we use technology, the more we actually want to be in person connecting to other people,” he says. “It’s pushing us to be more human.”   

And the best part. . .
When you’re busy making sure
S O M E O N E
else isn’t lonely
you have a sure fire personal
C U R E
. . .USE IT!

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man