“If you have everything imaginable, but you have no connection to other people, what do you have?”
— Peter Attia
Dear Friends,
It is always nice when one of the world’s experts on longevity understands there are deeper dimensions to life than living longer.
Years ago, some friends and I were on a 3-month environmental walk across Japan, and each night we had to find shelter and gather cardboard to sleep on. One night we found a half-mile long covered atrium in a mall, and put down our cardboard to sleep.
In the middle of the night, I heard someone come near us, and I woke up that next morning to see a homeless man leaving. Of all the places he could put his cardboard, he had put his cardboard right next to ours, and slept very close to us … I guess simply to feel less alone.
And it hit me what a shared need this is: we seek to be close to other people.
What if …
As Attia asks, what if we could have everything we ever wanted, all the money and power we hoped for, but no connection to other people, no true friends … what kind of life would that be?
I actually know people for whom the entire focus of their lives was moving up the corporate ladder, and later in life realize, “Ok, I have this big house, this great car, but something is missing.”
The missing piece: authentic human connection.
Making Space for Human Connection
I am reading Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation, which I highly recommend, and he and others point out, there is a significant difference when kids play together in person versus play via a screen … and we adults may not be that different.
How willing are we to put away our phone or computer and talk to someone at a cafe? Or drive to see a dear friend in person?
If human connection matters, how are we each fostering that?
May you have find ways to nourish this today — to see, connect, and make space for this shared human experience that seems to be such a need.
As I was finishing this piece in a cafe, a person came up to me and said, “I know you from Wisdom 2.0 zooms!“ Human connection found me…
Also Wisdom 2.0 2024 starts tomorrow … digital tickets are still available here >>>
Blessings,
Thank you for this - a beautiful reminder to get my headphone off - let's see if human connection finds me too 💛
The great rewiring happened to adults too. We need to figure out what exactly happened, so we can make sense of the world around us.