The loneliness of life without weak ties

Can I just tell you how excited I was to run errands yesterday? I was plan-the-whole-day-around-it excited. Put-it-in-the-calendar-in-red excited. (In my Google calendar, red means fun—in contrast to green: teaching; purple: writing; and blue: “life.”)

What were these fun errands? Getting a flu shot at one pharmacy and picking up a prescription at another pharmacy six blocks down the street. In between, I stopped for coffee filters and tried on a few pairs of glasses at the optometrist. Riveting, I know.

But when I say that this six block walk was probably the highlight of my week, I’m not kidding. Because for six blocks I almost felt like I was living a life that used to be mine: a life of unplanned encounters with acquaintances and strangers. 

When I think of my pre-pandemic life, it appears—in ways I never really noticed—full of human friction. Now, I don’t pass colleagues in the hallway or linger with students after class. I don’t sit next to anyone on the bus or watch strangers at the coffeeshop out of the corner of my eye. Now, I spend my days in my bedroom/office. I share my lunch break with my partner and my dog. It’s not that my pre-pandemic interactions were especially remarkable; it’s simply that they were the substance of my life. 

The other day I was flipping through Charles Montgomery’s book Happy City when I came across this line: “Hunger for time among strangers is so widespread that it seems to contradict the urge to retreat that helped create the dispersed city in the first place.”

Hunger for time among strangers. I wrote the phrase in my notebook because “hunger” seemed like the exact right word for how I’ve been feeling. The line comes from a chapter on the role of shared public spaces in keeping cities vibrant and connected. Montgomery’s conclusion is simple: people like being among other people. 

When the pandemic shut down stores and restaurants, libraries, gyms and cafes, I was too busy worrying about friends and family to notice the loss of time among strangers. I missed my mom, not my pharmacist. But now, seven months into this thing, I miss my mom and my pharmacist and my booksellers and my neighbors. I miss the people who fill growlers at my favorite brewery and the woman at the climbing gym who makes me feel like I’m breaking the rules though I’m never sure why. 

Social scientists call these casual relationships “weak ties.” And, while it’s easy to feel like the loss of these relationships is not a big deal in the scheme of things, there’s actually a ton of interesting research on how they impact our happiness and sense of belonging.

I first learned about the importance of weak ties a few years ago when I was working with my friend Liz on this article for the New York Times. Liz is a social psychologist who’s made a career of studying happiness. And let me just say: if you want to live a good life, having a close friend whose entire job is to figure out what makes people happy is something I can’t recommend highly enough. 

It turns out that the people we don’t really know actually have a real impact on our day-to-day well-being. One study found that people who paused to have a genuine interaction with the barista left Starbucks feeling happier and more connected than those who rushed in and out. (As a former barista, I can add that a sincere “how’s it going?” goes a long way for service workers too.) Another found that commuters who struck up a conversation with the person sitting next to them on the train enjoyed their commute more than those who kept to themselves. And maybe this shouldn’t be surprising because when we talk to people we don’t know well, we’re likely to behave more cheerfully—cheering ourselves up in the process. 

The benefits of casual social interactions hold true for both introverts and extroverts. And people tend to be happier and report a stronger sense of belonging on days when they have more weak tie interactions. Weak ties bring novelty into our lives, connect us to new people, and provide support as we age.

I know that 2020 has already taught us all a thousand lessons, but here’s lesson one thousand one: no matter how great they are, the people who live in your household are simply not enough to satisfy your basic needs for connection and belonging.

My pharmacist, Geoff, is like the best possible version of a weak tie relationship. He’s energetic and chatty and good at remembering the details of people’s lives. His dark hair has grown shaggy these past few months and now he keeps it off his forehead with a wide black headband. When he also has his black mask on, only his eyes are showing. It’s like getting a flu shot from a ninja in a lab coat who always remembers to ask about your dog by name. I cannot overstate how delightful our five-minute interaction was.

I know people talk about the “fabric of a community” but, before this week, I’d never stopped to consider the metaphor. It feels right. Weak ties give our lives texture. Texture, which is etymologically related to textile from the Latin texere, “to weave.” The network of weak ties in our lives help us feel woven into our communities. It’s no wonder there is joy in these small moments of connection, of being seen and remembered, of being part of something intangible but also durable and real.

When I was a kid, I hated going to the grocery store with my dad. Because we’d inevitably run into someone he knew and he’d stand in the middle of the produce section chatting for twenty minutes while I examined the broccoli and regretted not bringing a book. Now I think of my dad as the King of Weak Ties—the kind of person who makes people feel seen and liked, who gives them a sense of belonging. I think about how important these ties are to a community and how tenuous life can feel without the seemingly-trivial small talk that binds us together.

I don’t want to end this newsletter by saying that I’m worried about the lack of weak tie interactions in our lives these days. (Because, my god, we have enough to worry about as is.) But I’ve been thinking a lot about how to savor the weak tie interactions I still have: chatting up my neighbors in the hallway or at the dog park, pausing to ask students how they’re doing when we talk on the phone. I’ve always been a little bit shy—I’m not a naturally chatty person—so this requires some practice on my part. But the evidence is pretty convincing that, while we often worry about talking to people we don’t know well, the conversations typically go better than we think they will.

I’m not the only person thinking about how to maintain weak ties during a pandemic. You can read more here and here. If there’s something you’re doing to make the slow slide into pandemic winter feel a little less lonely, I’d love to hear about it.

Your loneliness content for the month is a line I scrambled to get down while listening to this wide-ranging interview with Marilynne Robinson. I’ll give her the last word:

 “I think that a lot of people ruin loneliness by worrying about it, when in fact it can be the scene of revelation—in senses great and small.”

Yours,

Mandy