The Monday Column
around each other.
Bears, moose, rhinoceroses, aardvarks, badgers, koalas and foxes don’t need anyone (unless they’re mating). But we sapiens freak out if we spend more than 24 hours alone.
When we think about Andrew Fagan’s solo yachting adventures, we’re more impressed by his ability to be alone so long, than we are with his incredible sailing skills.
Take prison. A terrifying place where lots of really bad things can happen. Yet the worst punishment in prison is solitary confinement. No matter how bad the people in the yard are, it’s considered worse to be Voyage Innerspace on your own.
Some experts now claim being lonely is as bad for your health as obesity. A Brigham Young University study stated loneliness can be as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
The Harvard Business Review put it like this: “Loneliness is a growing health epidemic. We live in the most technologically connected age in the history of civilisation, yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s.”
We are pack animals. There is nothing in life better than being in a team and working towards a goal. That’s what humans love to do. It doesn’t matter if we make it. It’s the jokes, gossip, drama and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids companionship on the way that make us happy. We crave real bonds not digital ones.
The world we live in is very new but we’re still running hunter gatherer software in our brains. Those guys spent their lives in close knit bands wondering around together fighting for survival. We can’t do that anymore. But we still crave it. We need each other. mond Lens The Dia- The Adventures of a Micro-Man Marvel Comics’ Ant-Man.
What links them is the anxiety that if natural processes of growth are subject to human control, they might
Whoever you are, there are people out there for you somewhere.
Family can’t be trusted. Kids are great when they are around but they will leave you. If you do things right your offspring will grow up and find their own path. You are unlikely to see them more than once a week once they have families of their own.
Give Cat Stevens Father and Son a spin for a complete explanation of why they have to go.
Your partner can’t be trusted. He or she is likely to leave you at some point. Either for someone else or the grave. Your job will leave you, too.
So get some teams together. It’s easier said than done, but reach out and find a bunch of back-up plans. Multiple long-term hangout options.
Go old school: rugby clubs,