Miami can be a lonely place. Ten Days of Connection can make it a more welcoming one
Loneliness, disconnection and a weakening of bonds that create community. Those are what Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, calls “the quiet challenges” that so many of us struggle with now, and even before the pandemic.
Loneliness, he says, is more prevalent than diabetes, but just as much of a public-health crisis — and one that he has made a central theme in his work.
It may seem unusual for the nation’s top doctor to focus on something that seems to be more about our emotional than our physical selves, but Murthy — who visited his hometown of Miami recently — believes loneliness is threaded through many of society’s problems. Lack of trust in institutions or even our neighbors, misinformation that so many have embraced through social media, healthcare-worker burnout, rising levels of anxiety and depression in teens — many of those issues have a common root of disconnection, alienation or loneliness. COVID made it all more acute.
We’ve seen that sense of disconnection at play during the pandemic with people refusing to mask up even when they knew it could save others. And we see it right in our own town. Miami has a reputation as a playground where the fun never ends, but it can be a hard place to make deep friendships or create your own tribe. Yet those ties are crucial to our well-being and may well help us solve some of our toughest challenges.
‘ON THEIR OWN’
“To me, this is the difference between being 330 million people who are just out there on their own versus being a country, being one community of people who recognize that we have got to look out for one another,” Murthy said during an interview with the Miami Herald Editorial Board and reporters.
He wrote a book about it in 2021, “Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.” He’s not the only one taking loneliness seriously. In the United Kingdom, for example, as Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer wrote, there’s actually a government “loneliness minister” and a #LetsTalkLoneliness campaign after surveys indicated that up to a you can sort by intensity level, topic or location. Tens of thousands of your neighbors are going to join in to find common ground, build connections and increase their understanding of different issue areas.
Every one of us is responsible for increasing the health of our community. We're in this boat together. And for the next 10 days, we owe it to ourselves and our community to pick up an oar and row.
– Rebecca Fishman Lipsey, president and CEO, The Miami Foundation Matthew S. Anderson, executive director, MCCJ Joan Godoy, executive director, Radical Partners Jacob Solomon, president, Greater Miami Jewish Federation Joe Zubizarreta, interim president and CEO, United Way Leslie Miller Saiontz, founder, Achieve Miami Claudia Grillo
OPEN CARRY
According to the April 29 Miami Herald online story, “‘Constitutional carry’ will be Florida law before I’m done as governor, DeSantis says,” our governor has declared its open season for packing heat. Conflict resolution via the barrel of a gun is nothing short of reckless.
The governor and his Republican cronies care little for the safety and welfare of the general public. This is more of his bully politics, and it is time to say No to DeSantis and his destructive governing in November.
In the meantime, let’s hurry to buy our bulletproof vests.
– Shari Somerstein,
Plantation
MINI GOLF
Now that city of Miami commissioners have approved the land for a Major League Soccer stadium, an aerial view of the site indicates the amount of green space available. While I understand some green area is to be made available for park space, I wonder why enough space could not be created to at least provide a nine-hole mini-golf course, also
BOB MCFARLIN
fifth of adults there felt lonely most or all of the time. Likewise, Japan created a minister for loneliness and isolation in 2021.
Loneliness is associated with all sorts of ills, both physical and mental. It’s been linked to heart attacks, dementia and premature deaths, and yet we don’t think of it as a publichealth problem.
WARNING SIGN
We’ve learned to treat loneliness as a “bad feeling we’ve got to figure out or put up with,” Murthy said.
“The reality is it’s much more than that. It’s a warning signal that’s similar to hunger or thirst that tells us when something we need that’s critical for our survival is missing, and in this case it’s social connection.
“That warning light has been flashing for a long time, but we haven’t seen it. . . . It’s time for us to recognize what’s happening.”
We have to reframe the issue. This is not something confined to older people, and it’s not necessarily about isolation. Murthy said he has spoken with college students, young parents — even members of Congress — who said they felt deeply alone despite having people all around them.
He’s spoken to people who told him they felt that they had to bear the burdens of life alone, that no one had their back, that if they disappeared tomorrow, no one would care.
When he talked with the Board, he was fresh out of a meeting with a group of Miami LGBTQ+ students. He said they described feeling as if they didn’t matter and that they had to fight just for the right to exist in a world eager to marginalize them. He said they felt “disheartened.”
“None of us,” he said, “wants to have our kids feel this way.”
A NEW CONVERSATION
We need to have a conversation — as a country and locally — about how we’ve filled our lives. We build our lives around work, fitting in friends and family around those demands, Murthy noted.
He argues that we need to turn that equation on its head, and make relationships the center of our lives.
“We can have the best science, we can have the best policy, we can have the best resources to invest in programs. But If we don’t have a community where people feel connected to one another, where they trust one another, then all of known as a “pitch and putt.”
This would allow golfers to still make use of the facility, although in a more limited way. At the very least, it would maintain some opportunity for golfers, who are being denied space almost everywhere because of money-hungry land grabs for parking and condos.
Stadium designers should consider this option.
– Doug Greist, Miami
ECHOES DON’T DIE
Marvin Dunn’s April 28 op-ed, “So, Gov. DeSantis, how much of Florida’s racist past do I have to hide from my students?” struck a chord. As a retired Black educator and native Floridian, I too, have had many of the same experiences that Dunn mentioned.
The county where I grew up had no school for Blacks who were ready for high school. Rather than let us attend the high school with white students, an agreement was
MONICA R. RICHARDSON
struck with a nearby county, and we were bused, every day, to the high school for Black students in that county.
If I were still teaching, I would probably lose my job, because if the occasion arose where I needed to relate that experience as part of my lesson, I wouldn’t hesitate to mention it.
Here’s a reminder to the governor and his party: You can’t kill memories.
– Ollie Daniels, Pembroke Pines
REPLY NEEDED
I thank Marvin Dunn for submitting those deeply pertinent questions to
Gov. Ron DeSantis about what may or may not be allowed to say now in a classroom.
I look forward to hearing or reading the governor’s responses.
In case he doesn’t respond, perhaps the Florida Legislature — which passed this new “Jim Crow” legislation — should respond.
Like Dunn, I was born
DANA BANKER
those resources will have limited impact.”
Murthy is bringing national heft to the issue, but in Miami, we’ve been fortunate to have an initiative called 10 Days of Connection, which has been around since 2017 to tackle this very problem.
Dozens of local organizations, including the Miami Herald, a co-founder, take part in events and efforts during the first 10 days in May designed to break us out of our bubbles and silos and risk getting to know people who aren’t necessarily like us. As a letter to the editor, below, from the initiative’s other co-founders astutely says:
“The antidote to polarization is not silence. It is discourse. It is connection.”
And, “Instead of writing each other off, it’s time to hear each other out. To focus on what unites us. To see the humanity in one another and to find healthy ways to build community with those from different places.”
Take a look at the calendar of events at 10daysofconnection.org and create your own connection experiences.
The pandemic has been hard on everyone but valuable lessons may yet come out of it, including the need to extend ourselves on behalf of others. Participate in an event. The 10 Days of Connection takes some of the “ick” factor out of getting out there, meeting people and actually talking to them about something deeper than the weather.
Take the 10 Days of Connection plunge.
‘‘ IF YOU THINK IT’S WEIRD FOR GROWN MEN TO PUT ON WIGS, ROUGE, HEELS AND STOCKINGS, I HAVE BAD NEWS FOR YOU ABOUT THE FOUNDING FATHERS.
and raised in the “Jim Crow” South. Though I received my elementary and high school education in Dade County schools, I learned very little about Blacks in America. Amazingly, I was 19 — and serving in the U.S. Air Force — when I learned that nearly 200,000 Black soldiers had served in the Union Army during the Civil War.
The direction DeSantis and this Republicancontrolled Legislature is headed will take us back to a time in Florida that generated all the questions asked by Dunn.
I challenge every citizen in the state to read Dunn’s questions, and try to answer them.
– Floyd Jordan, Miami Gardens
ELECTION FORCE
I want to congratulate Gov. Ron DeSantis for introducing something new into the American voting process: fear.
– William Dodd Brown, Chicago, IL
NANCY ANCRUM