What’s it about:

This book is a product of a cool US project from the Foundation of Art and Healing which aims to ‘address the growing public health concern of social isolation and chronic loneliness’. The book explores causes of loneliness and related issues, like illness, aging and trauma, and has a call to action for all of us to connect with ourselves and wider.

What Lynn learned:

• An antidote to loneliness isn’t just ‘meet more people’ – it might be more about connecting with yourself.

• Creative expression stimulates the same part of the brain as social activity.

• Research by Future Forum in 2021 showed that Black professionals were more likely than their white colleagues to enjoy remote working over returning to the office (3% vs 21%). Being remote actually increased belonging for some Black employees. An interesting one to think about in our diversity initiatives.

• Online networks can be differentiated from communities, as you belong to a community but a network you have control over.

• Doing nothing is extremely painful for people, as proven by social researchers at the University of Virginia in 2013, with some people opting to give themselves electric shocks in order to be doing something!

Fave quotes:

• ‘Anxious minds stuck in survival mode are more concerned with protecting than connect. Risk-averse minds will avoid human contact when possible.’ (p. 3).

• ‘Human connection, like hydration, is a need that is dangerous to ignore.’ (p. 46).

• ‘Is there a kind of mental and emotional workout that can strengthen our social selves as reliably as gym workouts strengthen our physical selves?’ (p. 53).

Why relevant right now:

Ah, this post-COVID, working-from-home, hyper-connected world can be lonely.

Interest factor: 4/5

Coffee table cred: 3/5

Ignorance of external world while reading: 4/5

Book cover design: 3/5

Help the existential crisis: 4.5/5