How many of you may know the essay: “All I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten”?
The essay is simple and profound because it reminds us that what we learned in kindergarten remains relevant as we age. And maybe everything else we learn over the course of our academic careers is secondary to what we learned in kindergarten: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
The full essay is clever and worth a read. But what I want to focus on today is the last phrase in this essay: And it is still true, no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
The essayist is not talking about romance here, though that is lovely too. No, the essay is describing something very basic to being human. We are not meant to be alone. We need those who love us and those who just barely tolerate us. We need strangers and we need close friends. We need those with whom we agree and those with whom we disagree. We need to receive love and we need to give love.
Many of you have likely heard that we are living in what has been described as a loneliness epidemic. While the statistics vary depending on the study you follow, we are not looking at a good news story here. In a survey provided by Angus Reid in 2019 – that is before the pandemic, 48% of Canadians were identified as very or somewhat lonely. That is almost 1/2 of Canadians – and these were stats from before the pandemic. We know that loneliness has only become more extreme since 2020. The statistics, especially for young adults, are alarming. 32% of young adults were desolate – experiencing both loneliness and social isolation. Another 43% identified as lonely even though they were not socially isolated. Added together, 75% of young adults rate themselves as lonely. The impact of loneliness on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health is profound: Loneliness is now regarded as being as bad for you as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.
We are not meant to be alone. We are meant to walk through the world holding hands.
There are 4 types of people we need in our lives. Imagine a series of concentric circles. In the middle, we find the people with whom we are very close. We need these people because these are the people we can lean on without feeling like we are a burden; these are the people who know all about us and love us anyway. But we need more than just these people. We also need people in the next three rings of this concentric circle: The somewhat close, the people that are not-so-close but to whom we are connected, and, we need strangers. Unfortunately, for a whole variety of reasons, we tend not to meet as many strangers as we once did. Nor do we have as many relationships as possible with people with whom we are connected but not so close. How many of you prefer getting groceries delivered to your house? Or use self-checkout? How many of you avoid public transit (or ignore the person sitting next to you on the bus or plane)? It turns out that just connecting with those closest to us still leaves us lonely. We need all types of people in our lives.
Several years ago, I was in Ottawa for work and hailed a taxi to get to the train station. The ride to the train station was maybe 10 minutes long. The taxi driver is from Bangladesh and, well, I’ve been to Bangladesh. In that short taxi ride, the driver and I spoke and laughed and made sense of the world together. When I stepped out of the car, I wished him well. Then I asked him to pass along greetings to his wife and children for me. As I walked into the train station, I felt a bit foolish. I have never met this man’s wife and children. And as we had only met 10 minutes earlier, I also really didn’t know much about this man. But as a result of those short 10 minutes, I felt more human, more alive, more a part of the world I inhabit. In a way, you could say, I felt less lonely. And I hope he felt the same.
Graduates – as you leave Grebel and UW your world will both shrink and get bigger. Of course, your world will become bigger – your life and work will take you to fascinating places. You will meet new people and encounter new ideas. This is wonderful. But your world may also become smaller. As your life becomes busy and as your friends move on to new adventures, it may happen naturally over time, that you only relate to those with whom you are already close. In fact, in our busyness or because people around us change, we can be tempted to focus only on those very close to us. If we are not careful, we risk falling into loneliness.
If there are four different types of people we need, then there are also four types of belonging we need: We need to belong to ourselves. We need to belong to other people. And we need to belong to something bigger than us (typically we call that God though there are other ways too of belonging to something bigger than us.) And there is a 4th category too. We also need to belong to the land, to the earth that we inhabit.
You see loneliness comes in multiple forms: Psychological loneliness means we do not feel connected to ourselves. Social loneliness means we are disconnected from others. Spiritual or existential loneliness means we no longer feel like our lives have meaning. All of these forms of loneliness are correlated to the types of belonging we need. But here’s the thing: If we are missing even one of these four categories, we lose the others too – maybe not immediately but over time, yes. As human creatures we are hardwired for belonging. When our feelings of belonging falter, we suffer.
To be clear, the challenges related to belonging are not an individual phenomenon. If you are lonely, it is not because you are bad or unlovable. Sure, we could all be better at relating to one another. But we are also struggling collectively with a social inclination that favours the individual over the creation of belonging. And when that happens, our social fabric is at risk. In short, we polarize and move even further away from one another. Loneliness drives polarization. Polarization drives loneliness.
Loneliness generates fear of others. When we are lonely, we risk finding belonging by otherizing those we fear or by finding belonging in causes driven by fear of others. Perhaps most shockingly, the deeper our loneliness the more we eventually fear ourselves. But it goes the other way around too: Polarization thrives on fear of the other. With ever fewer people to trust, our circles become very small. Eventually the other is us.
The good news is that it does not need to be this way. We can buck the trend. No – we must buck the trend – for the sake of your life, the lives of the people around you, our society, and our world. And that brings me back to what we learned in kindergarten: No matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
What does this mean practically? When you go out into the world, look around you. Talk to strangers. Risk deeper connection with those close and not-so-close to you. Now and then, hang out with those you don’t like so much. Engage those with whom you disagree. Bring food to someone who is not doing so well. Pursue meaning. Practice self-compassion. Take time for wonder. Laugh. And walk lightly on the land.
Several weeks ago, I was flying home from Washington, DC. After what appeared to be a comedy of errors on the part of the airline, and after many long hours of delays in the departure lounge, we were told our flight was cancelled and we would not fly until the next morning. Immediately, people began signing up for lodging at nearby hotels. And in that moment, a tiny miracle happened. You see, during the 7 hours of waiting in the departure lounge, we had not really spoken at all with one another. Then, as we each tried to find both a hotel and a taxi to get us to the hotel, conversations between people began. It was almost like a bottle had been uncorked.
The room went from quiet to animated in the blink of an eye. A young woman next to me told me she was overwhelmed because she had never experienced a flight cancellation before. I told her she could stick with me, and we’d figure it out together. Two cousins from Cape Breton, a family from Nova Scotia, a couple from London, a man from Los Angeles – all of them piled into the taxi van next to my new friend and me. We laughed and shared stories with one another. We even took group photos together. The next morning, my new friend texted to make sure I was up so I wouldn’t miss our early morning flight home. Several of us hugged when we said goodbye.
When I was home again and people asked how my trip had gone, I noticed that I was smiling and laughing as I described the flight cancellation. The focus of my retelling was never the delay. No – the focus of my retelling was always the amazing people I met, the joyful conversations we shared, our laughter with one another. I told people how, after 7 hours of being alone in a departure lounge full of people, everything suddenly shifted. We discovered connection and yes, we experienced belonging. Despite very limited sleep, the spring in my step when I arrived home said it all. We were all just a little bit more human because of the community we had briefly built with one another.
No matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together. As you graduate and leave this place, may you always find people with whom to hold hands and, when you find them, may you always stick together.