It seems that, universally, we all know the feeling of loneliness. How would you describe loneliness? Across the more than one hundred interviews conducted on In Search of Wisdom, several guests raised concerns about the epidemic of loneliness.
***Let’s connect! I’m facilitating a free meetup for The Walled Garden tomorrow (Friday, 14 Oct @11:30 am EST) on Universal Truths for an Age of Isolation.
Wisdom traditions point to the truth of interconnectedness. Why do so many of us experience loneliness? Is there a connection crisis?
In his book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek H. Murthy (21st Surgeon General) described loneliness this way,
Loneliness is the subjective feeling that you’re lacking the social connections you need. It can feel like being stranded, abandoned, or cut off from the people with whom you belong—even if you’re surrounded by other people. What’s missing when you’re lonely is the feeling of closeness, trust, and the affection of genuine friends, loved ones, and community.
“In community after community, I met lonely people who felt homeless even though they had a roof over their heads.” ― Vivek H. Murthy, Together
As discussed previously in No One Is an Island, the American philosopher William James observed, “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.” It is important to acknowledge that this is not a new problem. Two thousand years ago, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius attempted to deepen his understanding of this truth.
In Meditations, Marcus wrote,
You should meditate often on the connection of all things in the universe and their relationship to each other. […]
In a way, all things are interwoven and therefore have a family feeling for each other: one thing follows another in due order through the tension of movement, the common spirit inspiring them, and the unity of all beings.
As legend has it, when Diogenes the Cynic was asked where he came from, he responded with one word: kosmopolites, meaning “a citizen of the world.” The philosopher Martha Nussbaum suggests this brief moment started a long tradition of cosmopolitan political thought in the Western tradition.
In The Cosmopolitan Tradition, Nussbaum writes,
By calling himself not simply a dweller in the world but a citizen of the world, Diogenes suggests, as well, the possibility of a politics, or a moral approach to politics, that focuses on the humanity we share rather than the marks of local origin, status, class, and gender that divide us.
The cosmopolitan view (by the Cynics and Stoics) urges us to recognize all human beings’ equal and unconditional worth, a worth grounded in moral choice capacity rather than on traits that depend on fortuitous natural or social arrangements.
The Stoics (and others) utilized a visual known as Hierocles’ circles or oikeiôsis (see above) to practice the wisdom of connection. The objective is to draw further circles inward, treating our family as ourselves, friends as family, and so on, until ultimately, the entire human race.
Marcus Aurelius used the analogy of a branch to stress the need to remain connected to the whole community. Marcus wrote,
A branch cut from its neighboring branch is necessarily cut away from the whole tree. In the same way, a human being severed from just one other human has dropped from the whole community. Now the branch is cut off by someone else, but a man separates himself from his neighbor by his hatred or rejection, not realizing that he has thereby severed himself from the wider society of fellow citizens. Only there is this gift from Zeus who brought together the human community: we can grow back again to our neighbor and resume our place in the complement of the whole.
My interview with Nancy Sherman (author of Stoic Wisdom) revealed that the roots of interconnectedness in Stoicism run just as deep as those of self-reliance. We have much to learn from the ancients and mistakes to avoid. Wisdom can help unite us to face our individual and shared challenges. “But only when empathy and mercy course through the veins of reason,” explained Sherman.
***If you’re free tomorrow (Friday, 14 Oct @11:30 am EST), I hope you’ll join me for a facilitated discussion on Universal Truths for an Age of Isolation.
As many of you know, I ask all my podcast guests the question: “What is wisdom?” Many of the responses connect with seeing clearly (ourselves, others, and the world) or without delusion.
Contemporary life makes it easy to forget that we are connected. It seems a certain degree of wisdom is required to see and experience our connection. But as Seneca stressed, “No one ever became wise merely by chance.”
This wisdom must be sought after; even Marcus Aurelius had to embark on the search. He had to cultivate and “meditate on the connection of all things” (Even Marcus Aurelius had to work to expand his circles).
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. Do you have ideas for the Perennial Meditations community to cultivate greater connection (book club, monthly meetup, slack/telegram)?