Do You Ever Feel Lonely?
It’s 8:30am and I’m walking through the grand opening of a Publix down our street. I’m here for no other reason than that my husband is a civic nerd and drug me here for this momentous day. It’s big news. Not just because a Publix opened, but because our neighborhood is considered a food desert.
A food desert is defined as:
an urban area (often low-income) in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.
This means that people living in these areas have to travel farther to get good, healthy options, often perpetuating lots of other systemic issues.
So, the news is only partially the store. The real news is the proximity. And as I’m walking down this pristinely stocked aisle, I wonder how many reading this are not in a food desert, but a friendship desert.
This is in so many ways the epitome of young adult life. The issue isn’t that you don’t have access to great, healthy friendships. It’s just often that they aren’t in your proximity. Old friends have moved, and potentially new friends can be hard to find. And in a workforce that’s 66% remote or hybrid, things are changing.
I’m not going to tell you to get a roommate, but today, almost 30% of people live alone — that’s up 25% from 1990. That’s 25% of people (typically young people) who don’t have anyone to pull them out of bed after a breakup or when depression hits, 25% of people who aren’t learning real-time conflict resolution, and 25% of people who are carrying the onus of living expenses on their own. It’s certainly a move toward insular living.
This post isn’t a list of solutions but a pep talk for the lonely…a pep talk I’ve had to give myself over and over in recent days.
While you’re searching for close friends, find friends that are close.
We all want deep, kindred friendships, but I don’t want that pressure to keep us from giving the unexpected people a shot. Prioritizing friends who are close to you in proximity, is just as important as deepening relationships with friends who live farther away. I don’t mean your city, I mean who are your friends within a 10-minute drive of you? Who can you grab when you need someone to work with at a coffee shop or go with you to the doctor?
This is something I want to re-prioritize in my life. While I love to plan and meet up with my friends who aren’t nearby, it’s the people on the hard days who can stop by my house that keep me from going to dark places. It’s the inconvenient calls in the middle of the day that I don’t ignore because there’s something so human about letting another human change your plans. The fabric of community is people you can do life with. And the flashlight in the dark cave of loneliness is a million seemingly insignificant moments of choosing to do life together instead of alone.
There’s something so human about letting another human change your plans.
It’s the “Hey, do you want to get some work done together at that coffee shop down the street?” and the “We are walking by your house! You there?” that bring a certain uncontrolled richness to life and we have to be careful not to rob ourselves of these moments.
I know someone reading this would rather bunk up in their space than give the sometimes awkward or unexpected a try, but if you feel like you’re living in a friendship desert, look around for the nearest Publix, it might be closer than you think.
