Loneliness, Yoga and Isolation

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

Kurt Vonnegut said this in 1982, decades before humanity would become steeped in a world of social media, cellphones, pandemics and artificial intelligence. I think he would be horrified at just how un-lonely the world was in the early 80s compared to today. I’ve read more and more headlines about today’s loneliness epidemic, and have observed firsthand the decline of clubs, sports leagues, religion and spontaneous gatherings, along with the rise of privacy fences, ear buds and cellphones, all of which are built to quash potential conversations. My daughter, while attending orientation at the University of Louisville eight years ago, lamented the fact that in an earlier era when students waited for the festivities to begin, they would have struck up conversations rather than leaning on the comfort of scrolling through their phones.

By contrast, I can still remember the first person I spoke to at my graduate school orientation in 1992. Today, that conversation would likely never occur.

But hell, when it comes to disengaging, I’m exhibit A, or at least B or C. After being a late holdout on the purchase of a flip-phone, and eventually a smartphone, I’ve become adept at passing time via a screen versus speaking with a fellow human being, and after years of heavy involvement at my synagogue and other volunteer activities, I’ve pulled away. And, for the moment, this disengagement feels…good. Comfortable. Cocoon-like. But as Roger Waters concluded in Pink Floyd’s magnum opus The Wall, isolation decays the mind. It places us too much inside our own heads and our own echo chambers, and the inevitable result is loneliness and perhaps even a descension into fear and paranoia.

All of this brought to mind something I read in Benjamin Lorr’s book about groceries that I blogged about a few months ago. In it, he references a previous book of investigative journalism that he authored called Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.

Lorr writes about his immersion into the world of yoga, where people “would enter a studio and bend for eight hours a day, busy doctors, lawyers, bankers who would sneak off to fit in an hour and a half on their lunch break. In yoga it was self-betterment, self-improvement, or becoming a stronger, more radiant version of yourself.  And in it, I found a whole community based on this ethos: people reveling in the very real ways they had transformed from couch potatoes and addicts, remarking after every class about just how much more capable they felt now. But wat was the end? What did you do once you became a better version of yourself? Where did all this self-improvement lead? The answer was always back to more yoga. Never volunteer at a clinic or a food kitchen, never for a studio owner to open more classes to the poor or injured. Never to take our radiant yoga bodies and put them to use in the service for others. And so those lawyers or doctors would go on to use that extra energy to bend for longer house, and when they had a vacation they went off in search of themselves, spiraling deeper and deeper into the practice, becoming ever more capable humans, who could push their bodies into ever more drastic positions.”

It’s similar to the philosopher who devotes a life to the study of ethics while never lifting a finger to help another person, or the theologian who reads the scripture in one hand and turns away the beggar in the other.

And how lovely it is to judge others and think, “Well, that’s not me.” But most of us practice our version of self-immersion, perhaps in worlds other than yoga. For me, it’s writing and composing, record-shopping, listening to music, watching baseball, organizing photos, etc.

And when was the last time I volunteered? It’s been a year, a full five months past the deadline I’d set for myself to get started again.

Time to make a change, I know. Studies show time after time that one of the best ways to cure loneliness is to volunteer to help others, to engage with our fellow human beings. So why are we working so hard as a society to do anything but?

The Space We Occupy

There was once a time when I could fit virtually all of my worldly possessions inside my ’85 Tercel.  When I made the trip to grad school in 1992, I even folded a mattress in half and wedge it into the hatchback, and for the next two years I slept on that mattress placed directly on the floor. Aside from my CDs and books, I had little else. Life was grand.

A few years later, when my wife and I moved into an apartment, then a larger apartment, and then our first home, much of our free time was spent purchasing items to fill the newly allotted space: a dining room table, an entertainment center (remember those?), dressers, coffee tables, couches, cribs and toys. Regular trips to furniture stores didn’t seem burdensome – it was a fun and rewarding experience to build our home lives together – but since those early days of adulthood, the frenzy of purchases has waned, with only an occasional tweak to freshen up the place.

We’ve now been living in our second home – an 1800 square-foot bungalow – for over twenty-two years, and a house that once sheltered a family of five is now inhabited by just my wife and me, our adult children living on their own. You would think that with three fewer people our home would suddenly seem enormous. Not so. The desire to occupy space with objects has been replaced by a different kind of desire: to occupy every square foot of our home with ourselves, as if we suddenly realize that our wings had been confined while raising children and now need to spread wide and reach into every square foot of our home, filling space the way our furniture once did, voraciously, insatiably.

My wife and I have our favorite spaces for everything: a space to listen to music and a space to play music. A space to watch most TV, another space for me to watch football.  A space to read for my wife, a space to read for me.  A space to sleep if we’re both resting peacefully, another space if one of us is snoring. A space to eat when it’s just the two of us, another space when we’re entertaining. All three bathrooms – one on each floor – are utilized, especially since late-night necessities arise with far greater frequency in our sixth decades. The only room we don’t occupy is my son’s old room, primarily because it’s still officially his room, decorated as it was the day he graduated high school, but soon that space will be fair game and we’ll remodel it for some other purpose. What exactly? Who know, but I guarantee that we’ll find something to justify absorbing this space.

Today when we have visitors, the house suddenly feels small, because these people are, um…IN OUR SPACE! What do you mean I can’t use this bathroom?  But I wanted to read in this chair, not that chair. I was about to make breakfast and you’re standing in my way.

How did our parents do it, raising families of four or five or six in a three-bedroom ranch?

If my wife and I are lucky, there will come a time when we have to downsize, discard items, and take with us only our most important possessions as we move into a one or two-bedroom apartment. Will our wings feel confined then? Or will we by then have figuratively clipped them, truncating our desire to stretch freely and inhabit multiple spaces? I hope the latter, but I fear that of all the challenging transitions we endure in a lifetime, this last step may be the hardest.

Joan Didion questions the Simple Life

File this under a quick addendum to by blog from two weeks ago in which I discuss the very reasonable desire to life a happy, normal life, but how we as a society benefit greatly from those who are willing to go all-in on selfish pursuits, often at the expense of their coworkers, friends and family.

I had never heard of Joan Didion until today. Clearly my oversite, as The New York Times today reported on the New York Public Library’s acquisition of Joan Didion’s archives. I read the article and I now know that you could fill yet another room with things I don’t know (the mansion keeps expanding). But beyond that, I was taken with a quote by Miss Didion.

Jennifer Schussler writes, "Didion, 22 at the time and less than a year out of the University of California, Berkeley, also added her thoughts on a book she had recently read that lamented the conformism of her peers. ‘All anyone in this generation wants is security and group belonging,” she wrote, “and what will happen to the world if nobody is willing to risk that security to gain the big things?’”

What indeed! One can hardly be blamed for desiring security and belonging, but it’s true that most of us will be mourned only by our friends and family and not by larger society. It’s a trade-off most of us make happily. Fortunately and unfortunately, there are plenty of ambitious souls on the planet willing to risk everything in the name of glory.

Love, Marriage and Divorce

Thirty years ago today my future wife and I spent our first evening together by watching the film Malcolm X on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but not before Alice was carded for the rated R movie. Twenty-three years old and a second-year graduate student at the time, Alice fished out her driver’s license with good humor. Afterwards, even after ogling at Denzel Washington for three hours, she was interested enough in me to go out again, and the rest is history. Score one for the little guy. We’re celebrating today by avoiding each other; I’m on the tail end of a bout with COVID.

Just a few years prior to our successful first date, most would likely have put money on neither me nor most of my college buddies from ever finding a woman to marry, much less maintaining a successful marriage for close to thirty years. Somehow most of us beat the odds, and a few even convinced two women to marry them (though not at the same time) – a remarkable feat. That most of my friends have managed to maintain successful marriages led me to wonder about divorce rates today versus the 1970s and 1980s. The narrative I’ve told myself is that divorce was much more prevalent years ago when women were finally given more freedom to flee a marriage that wasn’t up to snuff.

But anecdotally, when looking back to my childhood, I can’t think of any close friends of mine whose parents went through divorce. A few moms were on their second marriages, but none of my friend’s parents split up during our childhoods or – for that matter – since, clearly beating the odds. It could very well be, as I’ve often suspected, that I unintentionally gravitated toward friends who had stable home lives, satisfying some need in me.

According to statistics, divorce rates peaked from 1976-1980, hovering at or over 50%. My parents’ divorce fell into this timeframe. Since then, the rates have dropped. Statistics can vary, but most experts agree that the divorce rate is lower than it’s been in fifty years. However, so is the marriage rate. So who the hell knows?

What I do know is that many of my colleagues and I have been very lucky, but we’ve also probably worked through marital issues in a way that our forebears did not. Paul McCartney’s lyrics from his 1989 song, “We Got Married,” are trite but on point:

It's not just a loving machine
It doesn't work out if you don't work at it

I tried composing something a little less hackneyed for my upcoming album, a song called “It Gets Better.” It didn’t make the cut, but I’m proud of the lyrics, and they sum up how I feel about being in a relationship that’s lasted thirty years: it’s better than ever. My favorite line, “It’s time for you to earn, what you think you deserve.”

Here’s to another thirty, Alice.

IT GETS BETTER (Copyright, Paul Heinz, 2023)

There’s no doubt the initial introduction
Provides all the function of seduction
To leave you riding high undeterred

But in time there’s a matter of transition
And some never temper the affliction
Of wanting things to stay as they were

Life may not go
Just as you planned
But you won’t know what I know
Until you stand where I stand

Love doesn’t grow weaker or meeker or bleaker
Although it’s been years since you met her
It only grows deeper so keep her you need her
Love doesn’t go stale, it gets better
It gets better

It’s been said that emotions lose their vigor
and fires of passion start to flicker
and leave you trembling out in the cold

Sure, we grow old, but love ages like a fine wine
It needs to be nurtured and in good time
It’ll set your beating heart all aglow

Don’t give in to a grim point of view
You will see what I see
If you just see things through

Love doesn’t grow weaker or meeker or bleaker
Since you found the wisdom to wed her
It only grows stronger the longer you long for her
You know she’s your greatest endeavor
It gets better

It takes courage
to handle life’s curves
It’s time for you to earn
What you think you deserve

Love doesn’t grow weaker or meeker or bleaker
So walk down the path where you led her
It only grows deeper so keep her you need her
You know that you’re better together

Love only grows richer and this is the picture
You’ve kept in your heart since you wed her
So never stop trying and strive ‘til you’re thriving
Yes this is your greatest endeavor
It gets better

The Costs of Work-Life Balance

Roxane Gay of the New York Times has an interesting piece this week on work-life balance, in which she commends the recent trend of people saying no to employers who ask for limitless sacrifices. After confessing that she is a workaholic, she writes, “The expectation that we should go above and beyond for employers who feel no reciprocal responsibility is a grand, incredibly destructive lie” and “it’s why an entire discourse rose around labeling people who are simply doing the jobs they were hired for, nothing more and nothing less, as ‘quiet quitting.’”

My HR professional wife has had to contend with this new way of thinking in our post-shutdown world (I hope post-shutdown). She has managers who are complaining about staff, calling them “lazy” or “not team players” solely because they do the work that’s been asked of them from home rather than in the office. My wife has had to push back.

“Do they do their work well?” 

“Yes.”

“Are they friendly with their co-workers and clients?”

“Yes.” 

“When you ask them to do something do they do it?”

“Yes.”

At which point my wife slaps her palm against her forehead. 

Do we really want people to stop making solid work-life choices that allow them to eat dinner with their children and make it to their after-school activities, if they also meet the essential objectives of their jobs?

Working from home may have some detrimental outcomes – we’ll see how this experiment goes – but so does working oneself to death, and the trend of young people resisting employers who want them to sacrifice their lives is a positive one. At least, it’s positive for the individual and for that individual’s family. I also try to consider things on a more macro level, because as a society we have benefitted greatly from people who are shitty parents but who have a drive to achieve greatness. 

I think of the lyrics to Rush’s song “Mission,” in which lyricist Neil Peart admires the drive and creativity of those who’ve contribute great works of art, film and architecture to our benefit while conceding that there is a cost to the individual, and by extension, that individual’s family.

We each pay a fabulous price
For our visions of paradise

Beethoven, Picasso, Einstein, Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc. – they’ve all benefitted our society in profound ways, but in many cases they left a trail of oppression and neglect in their wakes.

I view the myopic drive for greatness as akin to owning a boat. I’m glad to have a friend who owns one, but I’d never want the headache of owning one myself. The same can be said of a career that supersedes family. I’m glad some families have had to endure that hardship insofar as the result benefitted the greater good, but I’m sure glad mine isn’t one of them.