SPEAKER_00 0:04

Just feeling lonely as awful as that is isn't going to get you friends. We're in this cultivated community that's beautiful that is actually set up to give every single household maximum personal space.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

We're setting out on a mission to rebuild American community. This is really, really personal if it's going to work. It's that group of friends. But do we any of us even have a group of friends like that?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

I think the reality is that most of us have given up on that, Dan. It's more like a simulation.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Well, welcome everyone to Abundant conversations about the life everyone's actually looking for and what's getting in the way. I'm Dan Jarvis here with my good friend and also licensed family therapist Del Fasenfeld. And today, as a part of our season about America's future, we're looking at America's sense of community. How's it going? Now, groups of friends obviously still exist, and there are clubs and there are events and there are fun things to do, but it doesn't seem like the average person is getting enough friendship connection these days. A lot of people report being lonely, and I thought we could open that up and just talk about why that might be.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Absolutely. And I think if we're going to survive well as a civilization, as a country, and our personal lives, we've got to figure this out because uh it really stinks to be lonely.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

So before we get to what's wrong, let's start with what's right. If we look back at kind of American culture for the last 250 years and the culture, obviously, that we live in right now, there are lots of social connections that we all share and some really fun and amazing moments that we get to have as neighborhoods, as communities, as families. We certainly don't want to sell all that short. There's a lot to celebrate. Think about in my life. I have so many people around me, but I realize I might be there there might be a lot of people who don't share that experience. They really are lonely. They don't have a lot of people around them. So that's why I'm kind of glad you're here today, Dell, to talk to us about what community means, how we get it. But as you think about America right now, what would be some of the things that you see that you'd say, hey, these are legitimate reasons to celebrate things that you would say make our country stronger?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

One of the cool things about America, at least the American vision, is that it was a melting pot. Kind of remove some of the barriers that typically through history have kept people separated and kind of put us all in the same mix where we had this dream of being uh kind of equals. Americans are very social and we are very friendly. I remember being studying abroad, you know, in my college years, and they could say they could always tell the Americans coming. I said, How do you how do you know that we're Americans? They said, Well, because you have this you have the silly grins on your face. So we we were kind of known as the people around the world, for good or bad, who lead with a smile. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

I I just finished reading a book that was fascinating to me. I would imagine it's kind of geeky to most people, but it was about the War of 1812 and Andrew Jackson and how he saved New Orleans. And one of the things he had to do was get the population of New Orleans together to fight against the British. And the people that were in the actual battle, it was a mix of backwoodsmen from Tennessee pirates, uh, privateers that were operating off the coastline, uh, Native Americans, slaves, and then a whole variety of French settlers that were there that didn't like the it was this really strange coalition of people that normally would have all sorts of problems with one another, but they all united against a common enemy, and Andrew Jackson was kind of their figure to pull them together. He was demonstrating our national motto, out of many one. And somehow, if you if you ask the question, like, hey, what is what's a French person look like, or what would a what's a British person look like, you can kind of get an image in your mind. But if you say, What does an American look like? Well, I have no idea because Americans really are a mix of everybody from everywhere who share some ideals together. And so, yes, our nation was built on this premise of being a community together, maybe even with people that normally wouldn't be in the same room for so for some reason. And so I feel like we have a lot of that going for us. I've experienced it in my own life. I grew up in a small town in Ohio. Now I live in a farm community in Michigan, and in both contexts, I feel like there are probably a lot of people on the sidelines that are missing it. But if you choose to engage in community, there are all sorts of things to do with other people.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

That's right, and just infinite choice. You know, I mean, they're I think one of the benefits of just being a free society and having some of these ideals is that there's really something for everybody, a little bit of everything available everywhere. You know, and so our I think our number of choices are probably higher than anywhere in the world, whether it be in the grocery store or just for your social life.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

So when America was first getting, you know, was getting started, a Frenchman de Tocqueville, we've talked about him in previous podcasts, came and he wrote his observations on democracy in America. Thick book, lots of lots of observations, lots of things to learn and to think about what that early American culture was really made of. Something he said, which I guess I've taken for granted my whole life, I never even realized this was special, but he was amazed at the number of clubs and associations that he was finding in America for every possible thematic purpose, you know. So here's what he sp said specifically. He said, Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which they all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, feudal, very general, very particular, immense, and small. Americans use associations to give fetes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries, to create hospitals, prisons, schools. He goes on and on and on. And I guess it wasn't that way in the old world. Maybe you just looked up to your monarch or something and they were in charge of all that. But here Americans as free citizens, if you see a need, you have to rally your neighbors together and meet that need on your own. Or if you have a particular love for something, like, I don't know, flowers or building or bowling, you have to make a league and create an opportunity to get together. Well, that's a really interesting cultural heritage point that we've all been handed, and I didn't even realize it was that special.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, and I think that's probably why the loss of some of that in more recent years feels as painful as it does to people. One of the reasons why they maybe they're saying they're so lonely is that some of these things were just part of uh the I the what they experienced growing up and what they hoped for and what they expected, and when that starts not happening as much, you feel like you're missing out.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

I remember my dad when I was a little kid, my dad was in a bowling league, and it was a really big deal when he would allow me to tag along with him. But I don't know if that's as common anymore.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah, well, I think it isn't, Dan. One of the things that sociologists are noting is just that the third places, they call it third places. We have our work and we have our homes, but third places would be more like where we're talking about where we would go bowling or we'd be part of a club or you know, a society or some sort of group or where we meet our friends. Those places across the board are declining in terms of participation rates. You know, you say, well, that's who cares? Like who cares how many people are bowling? Well, at one level, yeah, who does care? Bowling isn't going to change the world. But at another level, one of the sociologists actually titled his book, Bowling Alone, because the the function of a bowling league isn't actually not about bowling. It's about bringing people together who know your name and that you feel a part of and that actually fill your life with connection. And if we're doing less and less of that, the question is where do we find our connections? Right. And those things are really um disappearing at a pretty alarming rate. Where sociologists are pointing out, man, the ways that we gather seem to really be changing.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

When De Tocqueville wrote this, he was also comparing it to some of the political winds that were blowing in Europe back in those days, some toward freedom, but some just toward revolution, whether or not it would result in freedom. And he made this observation about the the importance of these associations that kind of rises above their stated purpose. Here's what he said it is clear that if each citizen, as he becomes individually weaker and consequentially more incapable in isolation of preserving his freedom, kind of saying, like, if if if if somebody feels isolated, they can't unite together and preserve freedom. Like you have no friends, if you have no sense of community, this whole American experiment isn't going to work. There is an importance to whether or not you know your neighbors, or whether or not you feel any kind of connection in your town square, or whether you're a part of a club of other people who like to do what you do. Those things are in and of themselves, they may serve a purpose, but they serve a larger purpose of uniting American society together. And without those bonds, you start to be suspect of your neighbors. You start to feel like you're just an island on your own.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, everything, everything really changes based on how connected you feel and who you think you belong to or don't. And we're gonna I think we're gonna talk a little bit about all the things that that impacts. But I will tell you this like I can tell as I tell you as a counselor that there is a vast difference between the people who feel like they're connected and the people who feel like they're alone. I mean, it's a completely different world that they live in.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

So the opportunities are still all around us. I mean, that's what we can celebrate. I I made a quick list just thinking about the area I live in in southwest Michigan, things I know of, just right off the top of my head, I'm sure I could even think of more, community connection opportunities that are just everywhere. Right now it's summer, so we're getting ready for our big county fair, and like everybody goes to the fair. And then there's all sorts of subgroups attached to that that people might know each other because they're raising the same kind of animals or they enjoy the same kind of hobbies. There's a thing called C12, which is a group of business leaders around and they talk about how to have good principle in their businesses. There are meal trains for sick people, there are funeral dinners. I know our church provides those for people to kind of connect community together. Youth sports leagues all over the place, there are scouting programs, there are De Tocqueville was right in his time, but I think you would still see that right now. The issue is that all those things are there, but it feels like there's a whole segment of our society, maybe because they move around a lot or for whatever reason, maybe they're just on their screens too much, that don't access all those connection opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

That's right. And it's the the question that I think is interesting to think about and also maybe even make some personal decisions about is that you could think of it two ways. Is like if I have a lot of friends, do I join groups? Do I go do stuff with them? Or is it actually the opposite that when I go to a group, I find my friends. The people that are sitting and feeling more and more alone, they're not necessarily availing themselves of the opportunity to go to one of the groups and they think, well, I have no friends. So it's like what caused what? Is it you are you not involved because you have no friends, or you have no friends because you're not actually involved in anything?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah. Well, I could also see some skill sets that if you if you hang out in groups a lot, you probably get better at interacting in a group. But if you're totally alone all the time, and then you just jump into a group, you might feel really awkward, you might stand off in the corner and not really know what to say, because it's almost like a social skill that you haven't developed very well.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yeah, it's like a muscle. And one of the crazy things about being on the wrong side of the involvement and friendship equation is that when you're feeling lonely and you're feeling a little down and discouraged about that, the last thing that you feel like doing is having the energy to actually go attend one of these groups. So you get into this like downward spiral where the more lonely and disconnected you feel, the more likely you are to stay at home. The more likely you are to stay at home, the less likely you are to be in context that actually would promote connection. And it just starts to feed on itself.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

It's like, wow, how do you get out of this spiral?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

That is absolutely true from my perspective as a pastor in our church. Just thinking as people, if people are struggling, one of the things they tend to do is pull away from church, which is the very opposite of the like what you ought to do is lean into it, right? But it's those those emotions of feeling that isolation and feeling that kind of I'm just worn out and I'm just depressed and I just want to be alone. And then it cycles around and it just you get kind of dig a deeper and deeper hole of being alone.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yes. And we're actually in an era where it's easier and easier to not have to go anywhere. So I, you know, I'm I'm a Walpart Walmart Plus member and an Amazon Prime member, and give me my one click, you know, purchasing power. I I love stuff showing up at my door without much effort. What a convenience. What a great time to be alive. The downside of that is the more packages that are showing up at my door from my one click, it means that I'm not making as many trips into the community. Right. Even to do something routine like go to the store to get my groceries or to purchase something that I need. What actually helped makes us happy and gives us a sense of well-being is not just how many close friends that we have. We need close friends. We need a group of people who actually we can count on and who know us and will look after us and we can look after. But I kind of discount the importance of what sociologists call soft ties. Soft ties are the relationships that we have that are, they're not really friends, but they're people that I would see on a regular basis. It's the person at the checkout counter who you go there enough and on a frequency, frequent enough basis that you actually recognize them and they recognize you, and they actually smile when they when they uh see you because they recognize your face. Maybe you they even know your name. The more that's a soft tie. That's another thing that's disappearing in America as we as we have the ability to do more and more from the convenience of our own home or on our computer, is that we are not forming those levels of soft ties out and about. We're just not having as many social interactions. And it turns out that even though you're not going to count on the person who recognized you at the counter to be one of your inmost friends, that sense of recognition and knowing someone's face and them knowing yours, that experience of seeing someone on a regular basis, turns out it's really important for how you feel about your well-being and your life because somewhere at a really deep biological level, you're thinking to yourself, do I belong to anyone? Am I a part of anything? Would anybody really even know if I disappeared? Who else like shares my experience in life? And we need not only close friends, but we need soft ties. We need all kinds of layers of relationships, not just the most close and intimate ones. A lot of people are sitting home and going, like, man, I don't even have anybody that actually is a close friend. Like I don't really have that in my life, and I feel so incredibly alone. I need that. You do need that. But the question becomes, how do you found how do you f actually form that deeper connections? Well, it turns out that those soft ties and people that you're just you just uh are a part of a group with or are doing things with or participating with in a community actually become kind of like a funnel out of which you filter down eventually to build the closer and closer connections. Those are the kind of people who eventually drop through the funnel and become a close friend. So it's sort of all feeding on itself if you follow what I'm saying. When we're not forming the soft ties, we're not a part of the connections, we're doing more and more from our living room.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

The convenience is awesome, but we're we're paying a cost sometimes that we don't even quantify. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

So if we were going to make a list of barriers of what holds people back from experiencing real neighborhood, real community, definitely convenience would be one. That the technologies that surround us, from in an entertainment perspective and then also like a commercial perspective, allow us to hang out on our own for hours and hours. Maybe we don't even have to leave our house in an entire day. If you're assessing that as one reason that maybe community's dropping off, what would be some other barriers that stand in people's way?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Something that we don't even quantify, and it's actually like a is it a good or a bad thing? Like I live in a subdivision, I have a porch, but like almost every home in my subdivision, the way they constructed it, my porch is situated to give me ultimate privacy. It's in the back, not the front of my house. It's actually set up with the way that we actually build it to be shielded from direct line of sight from my neighbors' back porches. We're in this cultivated community that's beautiful that is actually set up to give every single household maximum personal space. And we kind of like part of that that way. Like I like my back porch, I like my privacy. But if you would have reversed, you know, and gone back a little bit, like 50 years, 100 years, houses weren't constructed like that. They were all constructed with front porches, and people would sit out on them because they also didn't have something else that now all of our homes or a lot of them have, which was centralized air conditioning. Centralized air conditioning meant that I didn't have to open my windows. It meant I didn't have to sit out on the front porch to even cool down. And so, man, do I want central air? Man, I love my central air, I love my climate-controlled life, I love my back porch. But the net result of that is that we all drive into our garages, close the door, decompress in the day in our climate-controlled house, and sit on our back porch without direct line of sight to our neighbors, and then we wonder why we're we don't have any friends. Well, because you know, the the uh conveniences of modern life have actually changed the spatial dynamics of our lives. And they're not bringing us into contact on purpose with other people.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

So I can see that definitely being true. I mean, that's my story is similar. What would you say to teenagers? You know, teenagers are still, for the most part, probably going to school, they're probably rubbing shoulders with a lot of other people. So it's not proximity that is exactly their problem, but but a lot of teens would still say, I feel lonely, I don't feel like anybody sees me. What's driving that?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

The advent of the smartphone. I'm still shocked that this iPhone is only like 18 years old. It just feels like we've had these things now for a lifetime. In fact, I sometimes will try to remember consciously what was my life like before I had this. But I spend, according to my screen time, over five hours a day on my phone. And that's sort of a confession, but I mean I it between work and everything else, like that's a lot of time with all of my relational experiences being mediated through a phone. And our phones go with us everywhere, so they go with us into they go with us into every relationship. And depending on how our hygiene or our habits with our technology are, it's becoming more and more common to be able to sort of talk to someone else and also talk to three other people. You know, I'm actually doing this podcast and monitoring other things, right? You know, because I've got my computer open and it's just like I had to turn my volume down a second ago because it was binging, and uh I get little notices, and so it's just become commonplace to be doing multiple things at one time, but it's kind of an illusion that I actually can do everything at once because uh every single one of those glances down at my screen or the texts I'm sending in between things or whatever are actually a shift of my attention. I can only pay attention to one thing at a time, so I'm shifting my attention, and so now my kids, like you know, my kids are I think my oldest is 27, but you know, most of them grew up with the iPhones through their like conscious developmental years, you know, like after they were young kids, they had phones at some point there. So so to them, they don't even I have to remember what life was like before the phone. The teenagers and the kids that you're referring to, they actually don't have a memory of life relating without being mediated through screens. So even the kids that are going to school and they're and so a lot of them are in virtual school and they're going right to their bedrooms and their main hangout groups are virtual or they're playing video games with others or mainly texting or interacting through the phone. That's a different kind of interaction that has good and bad to it, but it's just a really different quality of the way we make connections, what we even think of as our friends. We have sort of like really weird vocabulary now where we talk about Facebook friends. You could have 150,000 of those or whatever if you're super connected or whatever it is. And they're our friends, right? Facebook friends. But is that what a friend is? And what does that even mean? These kids are juggling things that I don't even comprehend. And I think we're all trying to figure out what is the kind of connections we're making in worlds that are mediated by these screens, what are the implications of them, what's the positive and negative side of that? But you're right, Dan, more and more and more people, especially younger and younger people, are saying that in the middle of all these technological connections, they don't feel like they have any friends. I think that's something that is critical to have a conversation about, think about, and actually figure out because it's an unprecedented moment to live in.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah. So why don't you put your therapist hat on here and let's talk about the success factors. If if you wanted to set out to build community in your life, so there's part of Instinct here is to go, America needs community, so like let's go out and get everybody involved. But so much of this is personal. It doesn't mean a whole lot to campaign for community out there if you yourself aren't living it. So if you were what what are some of the factors that have to be true in order for a person who currently doesn't have a very strong tie to their neighborhood to find it? What are the habits they need to develop?

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Yeah. Well, I think we've already kind of touched on a few of the clues to that. Relationships don't just happen out of thin air. So just wanting to be more connected, just feeling lonely as awful as that isn't going to get you friends. The lack of the social connections are actually the byproduct of the context that are you're forming, and the context that you're forming are actually a byproduct of the decisions you're making with your time and the context that you're putting yourself in and the awareness of what's producing what. So again, I gave that example of I love my Amazon Prime and my OneClick. I love the convenience of things being delivered to my door. What I didn't quantify is that the convenience that I'm getting from that is also coming at a unrecognized cost, which is that I'm not out of my house as much. I'm not out with people as much. The first thing I would say to someone is that relationships because they don't come out of thin air, you have to prime the pump. And you actually have to recognize that there's going to be a cost that you have to pay of your energy and of your focus and of your attention, of your time that might feel on one level like a cost to your convenience, but that if you want to have a friend, you've got to put yourself in situations where you're around people. There is just no other way around. So then we can talk about the strategies for that. But I would say, number one, if you don't sit down and actually say, what kind of context could I actually start putting into my life where I'm going to actually be around people on a regular basis, the odds are you're not going to change the friendship equation.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Well, and if you're used to if you've built your whole sense of happiness around the idea of convenience, the other thing that may stand in the way is that the people you're going to encounter are imperfect and they may rub you the wrong way, they may annoy you. And so in those moments, you might retreat back to your back porch and go, I don't know if I really want to be with these people to begin with, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

That's right. And so when I'm sitting on my back porch that doesn't have line of sight to my neighbor, on the one hand, I can say to myself, the benefit of this decision is that I'm not going to be interfered with in any way by any neighbors that I don't want to see.

unknown 24:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Right. Which one of them might be really nice and sometimes like so nice that they're invasive, and the other one might be crotchety and just sort of like, I don't want that negative interaction. In the sanctity of my back porch, I don't have to deal with either problem.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Do you think your local HOA lady could still find you if she wanted to?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

They will, they will definitely find you on Does Day. Yeah. For sure. But the flip side of that is if I'm going to have friends and I'm going to have a context of being around people, I've also got to learn how to tolerate a little bit the interference. I've got to develop a sort of like a willingness to persevere through not every interaction being exactly what I wanted on my timetable. Right. Right. And the exhaustion and the awkwardness and the everything that comes through pushing through what it actually takes to be known. And I think that's a personal decision, Dan. Like you're going to pay a cost and there's going to be an outcome. How do you want to spend your time? And is that convenience factor and the short-term ease that some of that's bringing worth actually being alone? Okay. And then this is really interesting. And we didn't talk about the health. This is because being alone is actually the worst possible thing that we can identify from a counseling perspective. For your mental health, but for your happiness level, like your flourishing, and but also for your physical health. Because loneliness is coated with all kinds of other really surprisingly negative physical outcomes. It's like it's actually like an epidemic that affects every part of you. To the point that some governments, like in Britain, they actually they actually appointed a minister of loneliness. They made it an official part of their health department. And the reason for that was they actually wanted to start to what they wanted people to start thinking of their connections as part of their health. And they wanted, they want, you know, like when you're not feeling well, you go to the doctor, and the doctor hopefully prescribes something that will help your body heal, like a medicine. They actually wanted in Britain doctors to be able to prescribe social connection.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

You need friends.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

So you would in Britain, you could with this, you would actually go to the doctor, and part of what they would evaluate in your life is not only how are you doing on your blood work and that kind of thing, they would actually say, How are you doing with your social connections? Because it's correlated so highly to your health. And then the doctor could say, You need some antibiotics or you need whatever. And you also need a group. Like your prescription for your health actually is to join a gardening club or to you have to join a club. They're actually tying some of that prescription to some of the benefits that you get for your health from your health plan. They'll actually help pay for some of that as part of your health because they know that if you don't join that group, you're gonna be more sick and you're gonna cost more money on the insurance. I mean, so this is I'm I'm just giving that example to show how intertwined this is. And you're asking me, what would I tell a person? I would say, listen, have you sat to evaluate as in the same way that you would evaluate your blood work on your or your health or your finances or any other like major factor of your life, your social connections, and do you have any kind of prescription for how you're gonna change your outcomes at the social level by what it is that what the medicine that you're sort of taking?

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Sure. One of the greatest benefits I feel like my parents gave me was it started with my mom. She decided to join a small country church when I was like four or five years old, and that church became my community more than my physical neighborhood. I knew a few neighbors, but my actual neighborhood was that little church, and I knew people from every generation, and I had some, some were peers, but it was everybody. It was like it was like this big extended family that I got to be a part of, and still today I know a lot of those people. I feel like I grew up with them, and that sense of having a social center, and those are people we ate with, we laughed with, you know, yeah, we went to church together, so there's a spiritual fellowship dynamic, but there were also all sorts of just pool parties and cookouts and things like that that all gave me as a child and then a teenager a sense that I was never really alone. There were always lots of people around me who were rooting for me, who knew my name, who cared about me. So even in my sad or dark moments, I had lots of people to turn to. And I didn't realize until later in life that that in itself was an incredible blessing that not everyone grows up with. Well, like family dinners or having a pool party at your house, or things that I was taking for granted as just part of my American experience. They had never felt any of those feelings. And part of that's they were coming from extremely broken and dysfunctional scenarios. But it definitely made me, first of all, grateful for what I have and what I had. But also this sense of I really want to invite people in. Like there's so much joy on the other side of making a decision to be friendly or to make a connection. And I think that's one of the reasons I I'm so passionate about work at the church. Of course, there's a theological dynamic to that. There's things I believe, but I also just love seeing people who were disconnected actually find their tribe, find their people, find a place to serve and enjoy, and see people smiling and eating ice cream together. And that's really special. And I feel like so many people are missing it.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Yeah, and I think back to that example that we talked about about bowling alone. As people stop to part they stop participating in third places, the loneliness epidemic has gone up. And churches are amazing third places. They are the kind of place that if you go to them regularly, you're gonna see some of the same faces. They're a place where people can actually learn to know your name. They're pro-social in the sense that they have ideals that want to like promote loving each other and taking care of one another. So they're already set up to sort of be pro-connection. They're a place where if you're lonely, you could come and it actually is set up to want to foster a pathway to that connection for you. And even if you have to push through the awkwardness and kind of learn some new things or the rituals, or you can say, I like this or don't like this about this particular church, or maybe even the church is getting it wrong in some ways, and they're certainly not perfect places, they're still set up at their core a lot of the time to be a place where connections can happen. And if you're not gonna get it there in the church, the question becomes, where are you gonna get it? That's what I'd say is the you were asking me what I'd say as a counselor. I'd say, Where are you gonna get that? If you're not going to church, where are you gonna go? Like the church is a great place. So if you don't like church, where are you gonna get that? I would say the feature that we're calming on in the church that this third place needs to have is if you just show up at places where people congregate, but it's not the same people, you're gonna lose a lot of the benefit of that.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Yeah, like the movie theater. Right. You're with people, but you don't know the other thing. Exactly. They'd be a great example.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Like it's haphazard that you're gonna see the same people there over and over. Where the group that you pick, whether it's a running club or an interest group, a gardening club or something, the upside feature of that is that you have the possibility of seeing the same people repeatedly, and that's going to multiply exponentially, like your that funnel effect of actually some of those people dropping through to where they actually form a more personal connection. That's what what we would call a friend eventually, right? Is someone who cares about you and you care about them and you know that person and they know you. We absolutely have to have that in America. We actually have to have that for life as human beings. It's really, really critical that we get it. We need love. We need love. We need to give and receive it. And being a human means that the sum total of your well-being is more than just having the stuff that you need or the food that you need or the entertainment that you need. You really need to know who you belong to and who belongs to you. You need to be part of a tribe, you need to have connection. Um, you won't be happy without it.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Right. So if we were setting out on a mission to rebuild American community, I think we would have to start personally with that. I found an old quote from Francis Schaefer. He was a cultural commentator and a great thinker. He has written books that are well worth reading about Western civilization, really, and where we're all going. And he was commenting on hospitality and the need for community, and I really like his take. He said, Don't start with a big program. Don't suddenly think you can add something to your church budget. He was talking to a Christian context here, and then just begin. Start personally and start in your home. And so often we hear something like this and we think, yep, everybody needs to go do something. So, no, no, you need to do something. This is really, really personal if it's going to work. Uh Schaefer said, You don't need a big program. You don't have to convince a pastor or a board. All you have to do is open your home and begin. And so if we were going to do that, we said, all right, today we want to make this really personal and go find some friends. A couple practical ideas. One that you've mentioned a couple times that I think is important is just to see the the power of your own kitchen table or your dining room table as a place where you could foster friendship just by inviting people into the life rhythms you already have. Or if you say, I don't want to have people over to my house right now, that that's okay. There are lots of restaurants open in your community that would be glad to have you. Just to be able to find a common table and sit down with someone and look at them and talk to them is a great first and obvious step.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

That's right. I think the table, a table, having a meal together is a universal connecting point. And that that's worldwide. We all do our dinners and our table culture differently, but there's something about eating together that is an open door to human connection and to conversation. It would be really great, again, for with that technological hygiene to respect the table enough to put your phone down for dinner. I mean, just you know, just families that have dinner together, that do it with their friends, that put their phones down and even have a few minutes to say uh what was good about your week, you know, uh, what did you even do? What's you know, what are you up to? Uh maybe what's hard right now. Those kind of things just open up human connection at a level that's unbelievable. And they do it across, they break barriers down. Like, I mean, you can be from a completely different part of the world, as long as you speak the same language, you sit down at a at a dinner and like start to have a more kind of personal connection there and you form bonds. Dan, even like setting a goal to maybe do that even once a week, we actually sat for a while a night in our home that was just a night reserved. We didn't know who was going to be at the table necessarily. It was a it was a night set aside to have new people at the table and just reaching out to say, Hey, would you like to have some and I, you know, and again, if dinner's too much, sometimes even a cup of coffee and dessert, you know, or even just a even just a cold something to drink, you know, together, you'll be amazed at how welcome people are for that because they they so infrequently have the chance anymore in our crazy world to actually just sit down. And let's face it, like there's a lot of people who eat alone all the time. It sucks a lot of time. I mean, it's okay occasionally, but it sucks regularly to eat alone. And so that's the other thing that it's doing is it's uh it's giving you a sense of agency over the fact that I don't have to be alone. Like I can actually invite someone else.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

You know, one other little tidbit of wisdom that I think is helpful is to join join a group that meets automatically, not just when you feel like it, because if it's based on my feelings, or especially if there are multiple people and they all have to feel good and they all have to have a clear schedule, you're just gonna keep kicking that down the road, right? Oh, someday we'll get together. But if there is a weekly meeting of whatever it is you're doing, whether you show up at it or not, I think that can create a rhythm that allows you to see those people and to feel like you have a place you're supposed to be. For me, that's really helpful. Yeah, those in my life.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

And I think just a brain hack here is that pre-deciding the meeting's not only happening, pre-deciding that you're going to show up, what regardless of how you feel. I'm shocked, you know, anymore, like because I've run groups out of my home at how many people think of whatever they're committed to as optional. Um and I'm not talking about any one person. I guess it means they're not really committed. Well, yeah, they say, Yeah, we want to come and we really see the value of it, and we actually want, but then it's like, but you don't know what kind of week I had, and and then and then what ends up happening, I watch it all the time. You miss it because yeah, maybe you did have a rough week. Well, then the next week, now you haven't seen that those people for now two weeks. It's easier than next week to go, well, you know, they don't even care, anyways. I wasn't there, but you know, it's all the little internal games that end up happening in our minds that when we're trying to get over that inertia. And if you're just going to make your your all your decisions by your feelings, you can you so easily get into that downward spiral of where isolation produces more isolation. Now I feel more depressed, I feel less energy, I feel less able to. So, like picking something that at least for a period of time, you just decide I'm gonna show up every single week. Regardless, I'm gonna strengthen this muscle, I'm gonna take advantage of the opportunity to have the kind of the multiplication of all these bonds that just happen by frequenting something and sticking with it. I would say, man, that's one of life's hacks. It actually creates, I mean, I've talked to so many people, like when I actually push through those things that would just take me out of showing up. I'm almost always glad afterward that I did it. I did not want to do it at all. And I, and you know, sometimes maybe it's your spouse that doesn't want to go or one of your kids, and it's like, not tonight. And and then after we do it, we debrief it and go, Are you glad you went? It's like most of the time, yeah. I mean, yeah, I actually feel better. I feel more energy, I feel less depressed. You know, it's it's just a fact of being human that we get all these benefits. But because we have such a um convenience culture and we have so many options and we're so individualized that we just make our decisions on basis of on what we feel. And when it comes to this, Dan, man, we're a danger to ourselves. That's one of the reasons why we're so lonely. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Well, part of building America's future is building your next friendship, I suppose. Abundant is sponsored by Barion.life and originates from Barrian Center Bible Church in Southwest Michigan. Special production thanks to Ben Sanders, Trevor Jones, and our whole BCBC team. Help share abundance. Subscribe wherever you listen, pass this episode on to another person who needs it, and share whatever you're carrying at share at abundant.show. Until next time, live abundantly.