Loneliness Connects Us All

Six Months of Learning, Writing, Gathering—and What’s Ahead

Almost exactly six months ago, I started this Substack to raise awareness about the often misunderstood phenomenon of loneliness. At that time, I didn’t know (and still don’t) where this journey would lead us. Yet, it has revealed and resonated so much more than I could have hoped for. So, I thought it was time for a little review of this project, Sharing Our Loneliness—how it’s going, and where it’s headed.

First, a heartfelt thank you to you—yes, you! Thank you for being curious and supportive of my work. It means a lot that there are around 500 people from around the world choosing to hear my perspective on this topic every once in a while. It brings me joy to receive your comments, feedback, and messages, sharing articles, research, and opinions on loneliness that you come across.

This engagement makes the entire endeavor less lonely and more enriching.

I might be biased, but loneliness is cutting through the noise more and more. Since the WHO announcement, more nuanced reflections and interventions have been shared. Here’s a curated list, including some of my own contributions.

Recommended reads

• ChatGPT-4o is here—and so is the inquiry into next-level human-A.I. relationships. I wrote about it recently, and so have Jessica Grose for The New York Times and Jennifer Wilson for The New Yorker.

• Ex-Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg is building Meeno, an AI relationship coach—which my colleague Ron Ivey, a research fellow at Harvard University, is viewing critically. Read all about it in the Financial Times.

• I also had the pleasure of sharing some of my views at “Can AI Heal Loneliness,“ an online session hosted by the Dubai Future Forum and Remote Daily.

• Bumble acquired community building app Geneva to shift its focus further towards friendships amid the “loneliness economy”.

• “We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society,” wrote Kenan Malik for The Guardian and I couldn’t agree more.

• We need to take male loneliness seriously—

  Jindy Mann
  and I hosted a gathering together a month ago and plan upcoming ones in Berlin this summer.

• As I wrote before, the politics of loneliness have been observed best by political philosopher Hannah Arendt. Here’s a Politico interview with a leading Arendt scholar Samantha Rose Hill and how it relates to today’s landscape.

• Psychologist and researcher Dr. Sam Carr emphasizes the need for destigmatizing loneliness with his work on “All the Lonely People“

• Parents, too, are feeling it (newsletter upcoming!)

• The Foundation for Social Connection, which puts out an amazing weekly newsletter by the way, published an Action Guide for Building Socially Connected Community for local leaders as well as The SOCIAL Framework in the Built Environment Sector.

• Save the date: Loneliness Awareness Week is coming up from June 10 -16, 2024!

Current favorite third places

• The Offline Club, a face-to-face refuge from the digital world

• Reading Rhythms, not-a-book-club reading parties in New York

• Unplugged’s digital detox retreats

• Wowza Club for joint activities in New York and San Francisco

• Walking clubs for women in Barcelona, New York, Munich, and other places

• Listening bars, to be alone without feeling alone

• Library choirs opening for over-60s in Gloucestershire

• Marmelade Companions to re-engage with your local community

• Lange Tafeln Neukölln, a community project in my neighborhood on May 31

• Japanese community cafés that bring everyone together

• The Long Table, a pay-what-you-can restaurant in Strout, U.K., where every meal offers an opportunity for a meaningful connection with the community

• Hyper Voisins, a neighborhood initiative, reclaiming citizen engagement on a hyper-local level

Community gatherings

In the past months, I hosted community gatherings in Berlin, Lisbon, and Madrid to come together for (self-)reflection, dialogue, connection skill practices, and never not with live music, playfulness, and serendipity for what wanted to emerge. For me, these gatherings are ways to experiment, learn, and understand better what needs there are and how I might contribute. They’re also a lot of fun :)

Here’s what the participants said:

”A dwelling between loneliness and closeness, reflection, thoughfulness, practical, loving, social.”

“A space to learn about the feeling of loneliness that we all share, and how truly we are not alone in feeling it. Followed by the opportunity to explore that topic through fun and connecting exercises.”

“Great experience for self inquiry and expressing your life experience as a man.”

”Super nice energy, gathering with a very diverse pool of interesting people. A little time for you to reflect about yourself in the company of others.”

Next up: The Surprising Match of Awe and Loneliness, this Sunday, May 26 in Berlin. Hosted together with my friend, social entrepreneur, and founder of

Awe Exchange

,

Laura Francois

. Join us!

In addition, a small group of about 15-20 people met at our monthly online community circles on a specific topic of loneliness, every last Thursday. It’s now a ritual to spend an hour together in this group-led space, reflecting thoughtfully, and connecting deeper than your usual Zoom call.

Next up: How Is A.I. Reshaping Human Connection?, next Thursday, May 30 at 20:00 CET on Zoom. You can sign up here for free!

Stay tuned for future events by subscribing to my calendar or checking my website, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

Speaking

I had the pleasure of sharing my views on loneliness at the House of Beautiful Business gathering, Between the Two of Us, from May 2-5 in Tangér, Morrocco, and am looking forward to upcoming events! Maybe catch you here or there?

Next up: The Conference, from August 27-28, in Malmö, Sweden.

For other appearances on podcasts or future engagements, please see my website.

Learning, Practicing, and Teaching

After finalizing my foundational Dyad program with Humanize, I am now enrolled in their teacher training on understanding the emotional, social, and relational depth of humans and human relationships. At the heart of it is a practice to enhance our capacity for compassion, emotional resilience, and perspective-taking based on a 15-minute daily partner-based exercise based on the practice of presence, active listening, interoceptive body awareness, and gratitude.

Based on 20+ years of neuroscience under the leadership of Dr. Tania Singer and the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin, and developed further as an innovative, contemplative practice to help foster connection skills, for me, they serve one meaningful response to the current crisis of loneliness. I can’t wait to share more!

Finally, a few last words.

In many ways, loneliness is the feeling of our Zeitgeist.

One of deep separation, isolation, and othering amidst a never-ending dopamine-spiking scroll of keeping us stimulated, distracted, and adding to our busy-as-it-gets agendas in a futile search for meaning and a true sense of self.

In a world where the “I” comes first, we’ve diffused our expectations and capacities of what real human intimacy and connection are and can feel like. We must unlearn to relearn what makes the interdependence of “I” and “We” by recentering what’s between us—our relationships to one another—at the heart of everything again.

While modernity, individualism, and neoliberal capitalism are telling us to set ourselves apart by becoming apart, competing for external validation, materialism, and award-winning impact, we must pause. All the more in a moment of deep fragmentation and crisis, we need to recognize each other in our brokenness to remake ourselves as the world we want to change.

Instead of enduring it alone, we can choose to suffer together.

By opening up to the uncomfortable yet uniquely shared human experience of loneliness—and its power to connect us all.

By cultivating our capacity for care and compassion (which means ”suffering together”).

By seeing ourselves in the other, whether a human being or a living thing.

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What would you like to see more of in this newsletter and my work in general? What are some burning questions you have on the topic of loneliness, connection, and community? Are there any people, projects, or businesses you’d like me to become aware of? Reach out via email anytime.

Thank you for reading and for being here. Until soon! 💛

Monika