Going Where You’ve Always Wished You Could Go
How we wandered into a landscape of loneliness… and how we walk each other home
How we wandered into a landscape of loneliness… and how we walk each other home.
by Carl Nassar, Ph.D.
May 11, 2024
When I was six years old, I walked onto a bright yellow school bus for the very first time and cautiously sat in one of its many dark green hard vinyl seats. As the bus ascended a steep hill on its way to school, two older kids rose up from their seats.
They’d spotted a small, intellectually-delayed boy sitting alone. They walked over to him, grabbed his plastic orange lunch box, riffled through it, pulled out black licorice, and separated it from its foil wrapping. Then, they tossed the licorice on the ground, stomped on it, and insisted, “You like your licorice better this way!”
The boy protested, but only for the brief moment before they forced the licorice into his open mouth. He gagged and cried, while I sat frozen in my seat, terrified by the unfolding scene, and certain I’d be next.
Each of us carries our own unique stories from our childhoods, stories speaking to awful events that happened to our classmates around us, to our friends and family members, and to ourselves when we were very young.
In the aftermath of most of these events, we found ourselves alone, with no one to listen to what had happened and no one to soothe our fears and sorrows.
We were alone far too often as the losses and traumas piled up in our childhoods, one atop the other. Everything built up inside. Eventually, we retreated within ourselves and attempted to box in these memories. All the while, the world around us felt more frightening and more dangerous.
For most of humanity’s time on this planet, this wasn’t the case.
For almost all our two hundred thousand year history, we humans were born into villages welcoming us into the world as children and guiding us with many hands through the turbulent waters of adolescence.
When the unavoidable struggles of life fell upon us, our fellow villagers interrupted their lives, slowed their rhythms and for however long it took, held us tenderly so we could surrender completely to our feelings, letting them all fall out.
Receiving this response, our childhood wounds remained surface wounds, never penetrating deep into our souls, and our faith in ourselves and our world was restored.
We, humans, evolved in this village setting, so it’s no wonder our brains and bodies experience true security in each other’s arms, and it’s no wonder we feel our value when we see the loving, soothing gazes of those around us.
Over the course of the past few thousand years and accelerating over the past few hundred years, the villages of the world have been overrun. Today, they sit on the brink of extinction. What greets you and I upon our arrival on this planet is not a village, but the consumer culture.
Growing up here, we are taught to find security not in each other’s arms, but by achieving on our own and collecting wealth all alone.
As we grow up here, we’re told not to find our value in the loving gazes of the people around us, but instead in what we accomplish, what we earn and what we own.
We end up isolated and alone, with a felt sense that this is not the world you and I are meant to live in, that we’re born for something better. Because, in fact, we are.
Our great work is the reclamation of our cultures of connection. While this may sound like a lofty goal requiring grand multinational plans to accomplish, you and I can begin today. All we need to do is slow down when we enter into relationships with the people around us.
This decision to slow down is consistent with the research that shows hurrying together actually disrupts our sense of belonging, whereas slowing down promotes it.
We can make time to talk in-depth, authentically catch up, joke around and play together, communicate affectionately and engage in simple shared activities, all with a willingness to be genuine and vulnerable.
These strengthen the bonds connecting us to one another, allowing us to build our own individual subcultures of connection within the larger consumer culture.
This isn’t easy work, especially in a world where your early traumas and losses caused you to retreat within yourself; especially in a world where you were taught safety doesn’t lie with other people but in your ability to busily earn your own wealth.
But this is our great work nevertheless and through each small act of connection, you and I build the world we were born for together.
Carl Nassar, Ph.D., is an award-winning therapist, author and researcher specializing in the impact of culture on our individual and collective well-being.
Communication Intelligence
May 11, 2024