Basically what the title says, two questions:
- Do you feel lonely or socially isolated?
- If you are, what are you trying to change that?
According to the WHO it’s an epidemic,
I’ve been emigrating to different countries about every 15 years and had to rebuild a network of friends from scratch every time. The younger I was the easier it was obviously. But that is a lot of work and you need to invest time and energy which I sometimes don’t have so much, especially now with a small child which needs a lot of attention.
We meet up as a family with other families about once a month and it’s really great, but while my wife keeps in contact with the other mothers in between online, somehow we dads don’t even have a group chat where we would do that and perhaps propose to meet up, it’s always the women who propose it.
It’s kind of weird that its like that and I should change it.
While the WHO doesn’t call it outright an epidemic, it seems they think it’s such a big problem that they created a specific commission to foster social connection: https://www.who.int/news/item/15-11-2023-who-launches-commission-to-foster-social-connection
Actually yes, I’ve been feeling like that. I heard about https://timeleft.com/ (dinner with strangers) and thought it was such a cool concept. You sign up on the site, answer lots of questions about your personality, and then they have an algorithm that matches you with other people for a dinner somewhere where you live.
I went to one of those and ended up with 5 people, and still are in touch with 4 of them. Playing pool with them in a week. :)
There are many, many people feeling like we do. Just go meet them! I bet you will like it, and if not, it’s just a dinner. Nobody knows your full name so you can easily disappear and never meet those people again if needed.
