How Many People do we Need in Our Lives?

As many as possible, I think.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Early 20th century American journalist, novelist and lawyer, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, ‘There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.’ I don’t know how that has played out in modern disasters, but it is certainly the case that scarcity of food makes humans very anxious. Particularly when food is, generally, always available for people in the first world. (The presence of poverty and food deserts notwithstanding.)

I was thinking about this lately, but I started to ponder another question. I wonder just how many friends and family members are there between contented connection and helpless loneliness?

I see patients all day, every day, who are desperately lonely. Some live alone but with family nearby part of the time. Others live alone but with no living family and precious few friends. Still others live in facilities where they are surrounded by staff and other residents, but deep in their hearts they know that they might just as well live on a deserted island. They have no sense of belonging. They feel as if they are utterly alone.

When we are young and active, when we are in the prime of life, working, raising children, enjoying relationships, we can feel immersed in human connection. Sometimes, quite frankly, we need a break! Still, for those with good relationships a partner is a constant solace. Likewise children, into whose lives we pour our own, and then they return the favor upstream over time.

Sometimes we are busily caring for aging parents, helping adult children, guiding and enjoying grandchildren. It can seem like a carnival with so much activity, so much of a sense of purpose and love!

And yet, at some point the party dissipates. The carnival lights are dimmed. The crowd becomes sparse. We look around for familiar faces and hope for the next gathering.

Is there a number? When half of our children move away? When one parent passes from this life? When high school classmates and professional colleagues begin to become seriously ill?

From what I’ve seen, most people in their later years are fortunate to have three or four close family members or friends who remain. At least, that’s how it seems now. I don’t know if it was always that way.

In ages past we were bound by the ties of large families. Those families cared for one another, defended one another, shared joy and sorrow, shared myth, legend and faith. They often lived in regions where names were known and connected for generations, for centuries.

Families remembered and revered graves and the locations associated with their names and sagas. I well remember decorating the graves of my ancestors in Cabell and Lincoln County, WV. My wife’s family has done same in Mingo County for as long as I have known them. The vast networks of our families were points of pride and joy.

Sadly we are an ever more isolated species. We have become convinced that electronic connections are the same as physicality. That social media friends are the same as, well, friends. We have traded DNA testing and Google searches of ancestors for reunions and the joy of stories told over picnics.

The pandemic made it worse as men and women, boys and girls felt it safest to stay in houses and apartments and avoid any direct contact not absolutely necessary. They couldn’t or didn’t visit family and shunned strangers during that bizarre time.

To make things worse, global populations are falling. The US is barely hanging on to positive population growth. Much of the world is declining. What that means (obviously) is that people aren’t having children; certainly not as many as they formerly did. My father-in-law was one of 17 children. No, that’s not a typo. 17 children, 12 of whom survived to adulthood.

Today that sort of fertility would not only shock but probably anger many people. When we had four children people looked at us askance, and asked ‘don’t you ever watch television?’

So many young people now have been taught that this world is just too dangerous, or the climate too imperiled, or the population too overwhelming for them to have children of their own. ‘How could I justify bringing a child into such a troubled world?’ As if the world were ever untroubled in its long, chaotic history.

Some of them simply look at the math, and the time required, and decide that they aren’t going to waste good money and youthful bodies raising snotty-nosed children when they could be engaging in adventure travel and taking photos around the world at opportune moments.

And yet, again, how many people are there between connection and loneliness? Between assistance and powerlessness?

Perhaps, asked another way, why would we want fewer people in our lives? My mother-in-law’s funeral was last week. While it was sad, it was also triumphant. People came from all over to comfort the family, to pay her their respects, to speak lovingly of what she meant to them. Until the very end of her life she was buoyed up on a sea of adoring husband, loving children and laughing grandchildren, tides that washed against her shore constantly.

Help was ever only a phone-call away. Loneliness assuaged by a shared meal, game night or pedicure, which could be summoned to her benevolent court with a phone call. She will never know how many people stand between comfort and calamity, for she never had to face the possibility, much less the reality, of being all alone.

And yet, I have seen the lonely. Some are young, with mental illness, addiction, homelessness or developmental delays. They often have family members who have abandoned them. Or if not, who can barely help them due to age or poverty. Their circles of friends may be quite small.

I have also seen the aging men and women whose friends have died, who had no children, whose children left this life before them, or whose children (for a variety of reasons) are not part of their lives. There is a kind of desperation in their eyes in moments of need and trial. Or maybe it’s less desperation than resignation.

‘So this is how it ends,’ they seem to say. ‘I didn’t imagine it would be like this…I was so strong yesterday.’

They have a poverty of deep connection. There is no shared history to call upon, no tribe to summon when they need help or simply kindness.

They have no true champions. No advocates. No comforters who know their stories, share their memories, understand what wonders they brought to life, what they attained, or what wounds they bore. No one who is there, not because of salary, but because of the deep bonds of family and friendship alone.

Government agencies, however well meaning their workers, are poor substitutes. They are overwhelmed and cannot help in any capacity that comes faintly close to the love of friends and family. Neighbors? They generally have their own trials, their own agendas, their own responsibilities. Especially when they, too, are sick or struggling.

Hospitals sometimes become sanctuary sites, rest areas between illness, injury or infirmity and the hope of a place, someplace, where there are at least other people readily available when illness strikes, strength fades or mind dims. Still, those workers in nursing homes and rehab centers try to be kind. But they too are inadequate to the task. And soon enough, the number of those needing residential care will far outstrip not only the available workers but the number of facilities available.

Too make things more grim, all too commonly the lonely and aged are robbed or abused, their need and vulnerability making them easy prey for wicked men and women who would use them and their resources. (And may God give them justice.)

The sad fact is, as isolated as we think we can be, hiding behind computer screens and cell-phones, between anxieties and phobias, between business and busy-ness, we simply need other people. And the more the merrier.

We all need connection. We need our own clans. Our own groups. Our own churches or synagogues, mosques or temples. We need deep relationship. These things can go a long way towards helping and comforting the lonely. They can make hard times better, hopelessness hopeful. They can protect against danger, hunger, disease and abuse by simply showing up and standing by those who are frail and powerless.

And we desperately need to recover the critical importance of family, of having marriages that last and having children, and children again.

Those young men and women now, who think that they will save money by being childless, will only spend whatever they save in their later years, as they need home health, deliveries of food and medication, rides to the doctor and sitters to stay with them. In due course they will become weaker themselves and will only look back at photos of grand times, rather than into the loving eyes of another generation. (Be those children born or adopted it matters not, for everyone needs a place.)

When I was a young physician, I assumed everyone had someone. But now, one of my standard questions, asked in particular of the old but of anyone with that lonely, terrified look is this.

‘Do you live alone?’

The answer is important on many levels. It helps me plan, helps me to know what they can and cannot do.

And it reminds me just how blessed I am that I have so many people in my life to love, and be loved by, as the years roll on.