This is an open letter in response to Rachel's letter.
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Dear Racho,
Thank you for your letter. It seems that you have been put through a lot lately, and I’m sorry that life has been hard; at the same time, good for you for being resilient (as you have been since I knew you) and taking your hard times as opportunities for personal growth.
I am in complete agreement with you that not being friends with someone doesn’t imply that you don’t care about them. In fact, I care about a the wellbeing of people that I’ve never met, and I’m sure you do too. Additionally, letting a friendship with someone "run its course" does not imply that you are secretly wishing that person’s demise. There are so many variables to investigate in each case that it’s hard to establish any universal rules, so I have decided not to try.
You said that you noticed some errors in your understanding of friendship and re-conceptualized friendship to include reciprocated trust and respect. Loneliness, then, is the feeling that you are not being respected, trusted, and cared for (I added that last one, but I’m guessing you’d agree). Its symptoms are both psychological and physical, including both sadness and fatigue. Loneliness affects our bodies and minds so intensely not because we are “weak” or “lack independence,” but because human interaction and social stability are fundamental human needs, comparable to food and shelter.
Humans are not meant to live in solitude; on the contrary, we need to know that we are part of a tribe, caring for others who care for us. Studies in both neuroscience and evolutionary science corroborate the idea that human beings have a need for deep human interactions and being part of a group. fMRI studies have shown that isolation and rejection activate the same cortexes in the brain associated with physical pain. Similarly, comforting people in distress and performing charitable acts have been shown to activate the reward centers of the brain. In this way, our mood may relate importantly to our social lives. These findings are said to support theories in evolutionary science which posit that being social in this way has had evolutionary advantages, such as a more plentiful food supply as a result of division of labor. Thus, the desire for a trusty “squad” (as I guess our generation has decided to call it) is not indicative of weakness or dependence, but actually a part of the human condition. We have no choice but to acclimate to it, and do what we can to meet our needs.
The problem today is that modern life exacerbates loneliness the more you participate in it. We traverse the globe to pursue higher education, and then move homes again to pursue our careers. Sometimes our jobs make us move every month. This makes it nearly impossible to establish a physical home base from which to maintain our relationships. The big conundrum is that we have desires to participate in modern life and to lead healthy social lives, two desires which compete with each other. Learning how to reconcile these two needs in the modern world is just something that our generation needs to suss out.
The question becomes: how do I reconcile my desires to maintain my squad and my desire to pursue an active career in the modern world? This seems difficult because the easiest way to establish trust and respect (the essential properties of friendship, as defined by you) is through physical proximity and frequent interaction; however, they are necessary only if this is the only means for establishing trust and respect. Then, the question you need to answer is whether there other methods that are sufficient.
Maybe I can help in answering this question by describing my childhood, and how it informed my ways of maintaining relationships today. Growing up in Hawaii with zero relatives on the island (aside from my parents) was an experience that I think is a bit different from what a lot of kids in Hawaii experience. I always heard about my friends’ annual family gatherings where hundreds of relatives met and held a party at one relative’s home. I have not really experienced that before.
It felt more like my family was in some kind of space shuttle. We ate, slept, and lived in the space shuttle. We had our own strange language, a mixture of Japanese and English. Our space shuttle floated about in space, removed from any one planet. We were suspended in the void. Aside from the occasional muffled sounds of pop music from the distant planets, we heard only the gentle whirring of the shuttle’s propellers.
We did however frequently visit other planets. On weekday mornings, the space shuttle stopped at planet Hawaii in the village of School, where I spent about 10 hours a day, studying various subjects and talking to friends and teachers. Once a year, the space shuttle landed on Washington planet, where my aunt and grandparents were. The population on this planet mostly spoke English, and they loved cooked salmon of the nearby planet Alaska as well as coffee. Every other summer, the space shuttle went to planet Japan where my other grandparents and aunt and uncle, as well as my parents’ friends and former coworkers were. Here, the populace spoke Japanese and ate cooked and raw fish.
The three of us were always entering a new destination into the navigation function of the shuttle and rocketing all over space, to places where we had friends and relatives who were happy to see us and went out with us to gorgeous attractions and establishments with delicious foods. Sometimes, these people even came to our space shuttle, and we took them to different attractions on planet Hawaii, which was the planet we frequented the most. Sometimes, usually at the end of the year, messages from these people were transmitted to our space shuttle too. If we ever wanted to hear someone’s voice, we just bloop-blooped a couple buttons in the space shuttle to utilize a contraption that allowed us to converse with him or her. In fact, because inter-planetary travel was so costly in both time and money, my parents made it part of our routine to frequently bloop our relatives and friends.
When I turned eighteen, I moved into a new space shuttle of my own. I still live there, floating about and listening in the silent void to the familiar whir of the propeller. Although I now station my space shuttle on planet Washington, I still visit planet Hawaii to meet with my parents on their old shuttle, and I still visit planet Japan. However, I do not have my parents in my shuttle to bloop my relatives and friends for me, and I have noticed that I forget to do it all the time. In fact I firmly believe that I probably would not do it at all unless I am periodically reminded of it; this isn’t because I don’t find conversing with them to be meaningful, but because operating my space shuttle is arduous work, and time passes by so quickly that I simply forget. After enough time passes without interacting with them, I notice that I am lonely. Now I set my devices to periodically remind me to communicate with the people I care about. Space shuttles are remarkably advanced in their ability to give me reminders!
This isn’t to imply that my childhood was some kind of futuristic fantasy, or that I was a delusional child (though you are welcome to make that argument if you so wish). I guess what I mean to say is that, growing up, even though it felt like my family and I were often removed in many ways from society, and even though the people that are dear to us were not in close proximity to us, I never really felt lonely, with respect to my family and relatives. My family made a habit of routinely utilizing the technology needed to contact and visit our faraway loved ones, and through this contact I knew that these people cared about us. I have tried my best to do this now that I am on my own, though building that routine is not easy. Sometimes I do become lonely because my habits are not yet firmly developed.
Yes, it’s hard and irksome to have to reincorporate these technologies in a new way, but it can certainly be done over time. So maybe you have to habitually utilize Skype or FaceTime, maybe on a weekly basis. Making new habits is annoying, but that is one significant way we can resolve the competing desires problem. Aside from what you have already been doing, such as taking your medication when necessary and and building your professional network, building a routine for communicating with long-distance friends can significantly help you to continue thriving and growing in the modern world without becoming too lonely.
Anyway, I am a mere bloop away, whenever needed.
Rina
