I’m instantly suspicious when someone tells me that they never feel lonely. I want to call bullsh*t. But Minh – an Uber driver in Sydney – taught me different
Hello, you wonderful human.
I was in an Uber in Sydney recently and the driver and I were chatting. After all, I know that these conversations with strangers go a long way to making sure I stay socially well.
The driver’s name was Minh* and he addressed me by name, too. I like how the Uber app can help us know each other’s names. Minh asked me the usual questions: where was I from, what brought me to Sydney, what I did for a living, etc. I said that I was visiting Sydney for some meetings and a loneliness conference. I shared that I worked on helping people understand their loneliness to then get the connection that they’ve been missing. The response was the typical one: ‘Wow! You’re going to help so many people!’
I suppressed my usual response to that statement, which is ‘You’re people, too.’ I simply said, ‘Yep, that’s the plan!’
After a few moments navigating through a busy intersection, Minh said ‘I never get lonely.’
I hear this statement a lot, too. I almost instantly get suspicious. We can know that loneliness affects so many people, but we’re unaware of what loneliness looks and feels like in ourselves. Loneliness is something that affects other people, but not us.
I wanted to hear more from him.
About Minh
Minh shared that he was from a large Vietnamese family, that his grandparents still lived in the same house they bought in the 1970s and that his parents, aunts, uncles and cousins – and all their kids - lived a few blocks from each other in western Sydney. I got the sense that the grandparents house has long been the family’s gathering place.
Minh told me that he also has a lot of friends, including many from primary school, who still lived in the area. He chuckled when he told me that with such a big family and so many friends that there was always someone around and that he was never lonely.
I laughed with him and in my mind’s eye I could see a large, loud and gregarious multigenerational family gathering around a table heaving with food in a scene that I recall seeing daily when I lived in Ho Chi Minh City.
How I killed the vibe
I quickly thought: Oh, he’s conflating never being alone with never feeling lonely. This is common when talking about loneliness.
I said that I often hear what he just shared, but it’s also common for people to experience loneliness surrounded by crowds; working in busy offices, within large families or friendship circles.
I said that being surrounded by people doesn’t make us immune to loneliness, but not feeling seen and heard by those around us can leave us feeling lonely.
I feared that I’d killed the vibe in his car. I do that sometimes.
I shared with him the whole ‘loneliness is like hunger and thirst’ line, saying that just like hunger is our body’s way of telling us we need to eat something, loneliness is telling us that we need connection that’s important to us. Feeling lonely was nothing to feel ashamed about, and that our work is all about talking openly about loneliness to help us move though the shame and stigma and then do what’s needed to get the connection we need.
Honestly, I can’t really recall his verbal response, but I do remember seeing his sunglass covered eyes looking at me through the rearview mirror. I could see eyebrows above the rim of his sunglasses that I took as a sign that he was surprised and that he'd just learned something.
The cabin was silent for a little while.
Minh’s social wellness strategy
When he spoke next, Minh told me that he was taking one of his kids to tennis training after he dropped me off. And while his kid was playing tennis, Minh was going to play tennis with some of the other Dads for a few hours. He said that they do this every week. They were competitive, but it was great way to catch up with them and talk while also keeping fit.
He then said that after tennis, he’d drop around to his grandparents’ house because that’s where most people would be, and he’d get something good to eat there.
As Minh pulled up at my destination, I said that it was great to have met him. This can be a throwaway line, but I meant it sincerely.
He drove off. I rated him 5 stars. I went into my meeting feeling really uplifted by our conversation.
And that conversation has stayed with me.
My initial thought was that there was content in this interaction, and that content would have me calling bullshit on Minh’s ‘I never feel lonely’ declaration.
But something about that approach didn’t sit well with me. Indeed, the more I reflected on the conversation and the brief insight into Minh’s life that he shared, the more I thought that I could learn something from him.
Minh had cracked the code and was the poster child for social wellness.
He didn’t experience loneliness – not because he thought that he was immune to it – but because he was socially well.
He had family and friends where he felt seen and heard. He lived in an area in which he’d put down deep roots. It was home for him. Being an Uber driver gave him the flexibility to earn money and still be there for his kids, his wife, his extended family, his friends AND his community.
Driving an Uber also exposed him to interactions with strangers.
Minh was winning at life. I was jealous.
Let’s understand your loneliness
In the months since that interaction with Minh, I grown to believe that we could all learn from him.
While your life circumstances may not at all be reflected in Minh’s, could you adopt some of his techniques to boost your social health and wellbeing (and dialling down the thoughts and feelings of a loneliness experience by default)?
Some of Minh’s techniques were:
Choosing connection over busyness.
Practice speaking with a stranger (the benefits of this simple practice have been studied and shared by Dr Gillian Sandstrom at the University of Sussex).
Prioritising his social connections as he worked and exercised (ie: not having to devote ‘specialised’ time for social health, but added it into things he was already doing).
Dropping in on someone to catch up (not every social interaction requires weeks of planning).
My wish for both you and me is that we reach Minh’s level of social wellbeing. And you better believe that I’m still that person who talks to Uber drivers (much to the embarrassment of our teenage sons). I need to work on my social wellbeing, too.
That’s it for this post
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~ Phil
*not his real name
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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