Never Alone, Never Connected
I’m running late posting this week, but I’ve been mulling this over for some time.
French philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” (He said it in French, of course, but that’s a good translation.)
Herman Melville wrote, “We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
A paradox occurs when something is true, and its opposite is also true. This is the paradox of human mental health. We need solitude. We also need connection.
Unfortunately, these days we get neither. It would be easy to blame the devices and the social media companies, and there is no doubt that they are exquisitely tuned to amplify and build upon human nature. But these are only tools. They are fast and efficient, but like with any tools, we can use them for good or evil.
As a culture, we have used them to put ourselves in this strange twilight zone that is almost the opposite of the paradox. Few of us are both nurtured by solitude and enlivened by connection. Mostly, we are never alone and also never connected.
I value time spent in quiet and solitude, and yet I pull out my phone whenever I have to spend a few minutes waiting somewhere. I hear the siren calls of email, Facebook, X, LinkedIn. When I’ve exhausted that, I have three games I rely on to distract me until the line at the bank or the coffee shop or the courthouse moves along.
I have many “connections,” thanks to that device. I have 998 connections on LinkedIn (just two away from 1,000!), and 1,170 followers. I have 1,100+ friends on Facebook. An Instagram reel went mini-viral with 2,400 views. In the world of social media, those numbers are modest, but they seem large to me. My wife is my best friend, and I’m fortunate to talk with her every day, but so much of that has become transactional, figuring out how to pay the bills, how to fix the plumbing issue, dealing with medical decisions for our disabled daughter. I have only seen my non-spousal best friend three times in the last six months, maybe talked on the phone another half dozen times. My other non-spousal best friend? I haven’t actually seen him since before the pandemic reset civilization.
Never alone, never connected.
Fortunately, consciousness of this can change things.
The same phone with the social media and the games has, right there on the main screen, a button for the Insight Timer and another for the Pause, Breathe, Reflect app. When I reach for the phone, at least sometimes I spot those and remember to just stop and savor the moment.
Yesterday, I attended a book release party for a friend who just had a new business parable published. (If you’re curious, it’s called Climb.) As an introvert, I find such events often overwhelm me, and for a while I hung out on the edges, reading the new book on my phone. But I really enjoy people—I’m a social introvert who enjoys gatherings, they just drain me. I spotted a couple of people who seemed similarly inclined, struck up a conversation one-on-one, and thus had a couple of great conversations, one of which went satisfyingly deep.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It certainly doesn’t have to stay this way.
If I may, I encourage you to value unstructured solitude. Even if you’re an extrovert who needs people to recharge, take some time to sit quietly in a room alone. Put your phone away. Observe your discomfort without judgment. Don’t try to stop thinking—that will just agitate your mind further. Just observe. Then go out and connect with someone beyond a surface, transactional level. You can take your phone with you, but keep it in your pocket. Look at and hear the person in front of you. They will feel seen and heard, and you will both feel better.
If you like what you read here, you might enjoy one or more of my books. You can find them here, and there are more to come.
Donn King is The Confidence Cultivator. He is the author of The Sparklight Chronicles series of business parables and a professor of communication studies (which means “a professor of standing up in front of people and saying stuff”). He’s also a pastor, a speaker, and a communication coach. Reach out to donn at donnking dot com to see how he could help you increase your impact, gain influence, and build your career.
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