☀️ Micro Morning Meditation: When You're Feeling Lonely And Unsupported

Remember your extended families.

1. Morning Contemplation

🎧 You can find the audio version of this morning’s contemplation below.

Good morning.

Giving a commencement address at SUNY Fredonia in 1978, the writer Kurt Vonnegut told his audience of graduating students that the two experiences that will try a person most are loneliness and boredom.

To this problem, he provided a simple solution:

We are all so lonesome, so much of the time, because we are meant to live in extended families, to have dozens or even hundreds of relatives nearby. Do what you can to get yourselves extended families no matter how arbitrary they may be. We all need more people in our lives and they do not have to be high grade people either. They can be imbeciles because what matters is numbers.

The twist of humor at the end notwithstanding, this is wise advice. It’s Stoic advice, too. None of us, the Stoics believed, were formed by nature to be islands.

We are not completely independent of one another. Ancient philosophers explained human nature and rationality in terms of selflessness, reciprocity, and community.

And it’s not just a coincidental by-product of being on the same planet’s surface at the same time. The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius put it more strongly than that: We’re actually here for the sake of one another. We exist for mutual support.

In Pity the Reader, her excellent book on the life and writing of Vonnegut, Suzanne McConnell builds on this notion of the extended family, reminding us of the arbitrariness we’re permitted to employ when building our own:

Whether by profession, personal history, purpose, or whatever, Vonnegut points out myriad ways in which we group ourselves.

Physicians feel themselves related to other physicians, lawyers to lawyers, writers to writers, athletes to athletes, politicians to politicians, and so on.

Being in an extended family is mostly a matter of deciding to be. It’s comforting to know that all it really takes is our contributing a share of our spirit to that group.

And if that still seems difficult, Suzanne McConnell advises sitting with this exercise for a few minutes:

A helpful thing to do, when you’re feeling lonely and unsupported, is to list the groups in which you are both purposely and accidentally a part, from your biological relatives, neighbors, and friends to the people who go to your yoga class or get a coffee at the same time you do at your local Starbucks, and so on. And don’t forget the pets you know.

2. Morning Meditation

Sit down in a safe, comfortable spot, close your eyes, and take a few minutes to meditate on this morning's theme.

Adapted from illustrations: Benoît DE HAAS. License: CC-BY-SA

Listen to the short meditation below as I guide you to briefly reflect on the key points from today's contemplation.​​