I found out about someone who died last weekend. He lived alone, no one reached for him over the weekend.

I remembered the announcements about the death of a famous person in the media, a few years ago. She hadn’t answered the phone in days. But no one thought to go over to her door and ring the doorbell.

In the age of super connectivity, of thousands of virtual ‘friends’, people leave life unseen. It’s as if by so much connection we become invisible to others. Too much focus on what is on social media, on TV, on Netflix, seemed to desensitize us, made us focus on everything and nothing at the same time.

Because I grew up in a neighborhood of houses, I experienced caring for others. Mom and Grandma used to say, ‘I haven’t seen the neighbor today, is she okay? I’m going to ask her. ‘In the evening we gathered in front of our houses, both us, the children and the elderly, the grandparents, who told us so many stories, and we sat there and listened in fascination.

When an older neighbor was very sick, we all went to her, one by one, to see her, to talk, to bring her something.

My mother still brings cakes, from what she cooks, to her neighbors. The thing is that they are happy, they love her for it.

One night a neighbor of my mother’s called me to tell me that he hadn’t seen her in the yard that day, that he hadn’t answered the phone, and that he was worried.

Maybe you will say that it is provincial, neighborhood or country behavior.

That now we are all busy, stressed, we don’t have time.

We don’t have time to go and see how someone is doing, but we have time to spend hours on social media (I don’t have anything to do with platforms, and I’m there, maybe too much), to run after shopping, to do well in front of the bosses or who knows what. The dehumanization that I often perceive, the indifference, translates into parallel loneliness, islands that have no connections between them, train tracks that do not touch.

It seemed easier to regret not talking to someone when they were gone than to talk to them and care when we were in the same city.

It is paradoxical, however, because all people need constant communication with others. But we use communication surrogates, relationship surrogates, friendship surrogates.

A simple Google search found the word loneliness in English with 366,000,000 results. I searched: ‘opposite of loneliness’: it has 14,700,000 results. Many problems, some less solutions.

The opposite of loneliness could be connection. But that type of connection in which we feel seen, appreciated, listened to. Otherwise we fall into the trap of empty words.

To create connections you need to:

  • Identify the people we want to spend time with, the ones we also care about and who make time for us;
  • Take steps towards those people, let’s not always wait. The phone works in both directions, both sides are good to ring.
  • Call when we know that an acquaintance goes through difficulties, that’s when then they need more support. I have a friend who is going through a very difficult time. He told me today that a friend of his calls him every day, on the way to the office and back home, that he tells a lot, from philosophy to society, from pandemic to cryptocurrencies, and all these discussions support him enormously.
  • Go see those who matter; I know, it’s a pandemic; I know, we’re scared. But we can not pause life, we can not resume it in a year or two from where we left it, we may not find it.
  • Start meetings, look for ideas for activities to do together, as we gathered in a circle, on the street, in the neighborhood. I watch a light series on Netflix – The Bold Type. The three friends and colleagues have the habit of going into a wardrobe and telling each other what they are going through, to support each other. It’s a ritual of theirs. I don’t know how many of us have such rituals. Three years ago I tried a reading club with my colleagues. We only saw each other three times. We probably don’t create such habits with the boss, I don’t know. But I think it can be a pretext for seeing each other.
  • Invite friends to lunch, dinner, tea, coffee, whatever. Even if it’s a pandemic, we can still protect ourselves. The pandemic is not an occasion for savagery.

Such habits help us a lot in difficult times. Now we no longer have the strength to keep our balance, to initiate something, to make any effort. It is one of the situations in which the ‘autopilot’ function is useful. At the same time, however, life on autopilot is not exactly life. I hope time is no wasted yet and we can still act.