Being in positive, healthy, reciprocal relationship is the most powerful predictor of mental and emotional wellbeing. Friendships, love partnerships, neighborhoods, community groups.

This fact is increasingly worth considering given the evidence that loneliness in the United States is on the increase. Perhaps the most profound symptom – suicide.

Last week, we learned of the suicide of a young man we know from a rural Montana town. Montana has the highest suicide rate of any state, and by an alarming rate. No one really understands why.

Montana also has the healthiest people, the most high school graduates attending college and the highest level of support for public lands. That’s all good stuff, so what’s up.

I don’t know that the answer can ever be found. Some experts point to the long, dark winters and the low population (implying an attendant limitation to social contact). Others consider the relatively high rate of problematic use of substances – alcohol mostly.

What defines loneliness? What makes it so people at every age are more likely these days to end their lives than ever before? What is missing?

Over the past decade, two groups get tagged generation lonely. Older people, the classic group researchers have associated with loneliness, have been joined by millennials. And the trend doesn’t seem to be stopping with the next younger ones.

One informative correlation showing up in the data is between isolation and loneliness. While it’s unclear whether one causes the other, it is increasingly evident that people who are socially isolated – which is the pretty objective situation of not being with other people – are way more likely to report the more subjective feeling of loneliness. And, both isolation and loneliness are frighteningly associated with mortality.

The antidote to loneliness is relationship. But it’s not so easy to apply just do it to making friends, finding community, or falling in love. And each of us is different when it comes to what friendship means. Some of us survive by taking time to ourselves. Being alone doesn’t always mean being lonely. Others do best with loads of social connection, but can get to a place of feeling lonely even in the  middle of massive parties full of friends.

The first group – the introverts (and I for sure tend in this direction) – are more at risk of over-isolating, choosing again and again not to be part of social gatherings and ending up losing the courage to even try. The extroverts – well I have to speculate and really lean on literature here – come to know isolation in a far more paradoxical way when they begin feeling emotionally, intellectually, spiritually lonely in the middle of energized social situations. Eventually, even people who tend toward extroversion may isolate themselves.

As far back as the late 1940’s, in the wake of WWII, Hannah Arendt, a Jewish refgee from Nazi Germany, and a profoundly insightful political scientist and philosopher identified loneliness as a primary symptom of a society in trouble.

Arendt revealed a powerful predictor of people in communities reporting loneliness: Rampant “us vs. them” narratives. She clarified this condition as not simply the isolation of being alone, but an intensification with “isolation against each other.”

This is exactly where we are right now – every day – every single news hour – every mediated minute.

So it’s time to get on this! To stove up our collective Mama Bear impulses (no matter your gender identity) and start taking very active care.

I’m committing to keep exploring this challenge here in this blog – for one thing. Especially since I can’t write if I’m not living what I’m writing – I’ll be out there in the world and in here with my habits of thought, fears and all, learning more about what it means to bring individual and collective loneliness out of the critical danger zone where it’s lingering now.

Here’s a start. A story.

Long ago there was a village – a long-time community located on the fertile banks of a river. There came an extreme and frightening time when one of the villagers drawing water from the river looked up to see a baby flailing as she tumbled downstream. Rainfall had been unseasonably high so the river was fierce.

The alarm spread quickly. Young and old came to the river bank to see not just one, but dozens of very small children being swept downstream in the roiling current. Of course, many jumped in to save all the little ones they could. But panic and chaos limited success.

A very old grandmother made her way into the throng. Stooped, her eyes clouded with cateracts, she looked past them to the crisis. Her voice was not as strong as in her youth, but she spoke nonetheless.

Please continue here. Save as many as you can. But a team of you must travel quickly upriver. You must stop whoever is throwing these children in.

Isolation. Loneliness.

What is throwing us in? What circumstances can we stop or change to address Arendt’s warning of “isolation against each other?” What social circumstances can we change? What can we change in our own tendencies to isolate? And, perhaps most immediate, what can we do inside ourselves? To consider the choices we are making. To watch the reflexive ways we make sense of the world that may be keeping us separate from other people out of fear or even a kind of aggression. How do we listen in here so we can get stronger – more at ease – with listening to people who know the world differently than we do?

Maybe a first thing for our inner Mama Bears to check out is right here – most local. Inside the ways we talk with ourselves. Do you even know what you think about being in social settings? Have you listened to what you have to say about that to yourself?

Doesn’t matter how weird it sounds. Give it a try. See if you’re surprised. See if you like what you hear.

It just makes sense doesn’t it? If we’re isolated from ourselves on the inside, if we’re not listening there, how can we really listen to anyone else? It’s easy to get anxious in the face of the huge range of experiences, concerns and insights other people have. Each person is different. But, is that difference always dangerous?

Can’t know if I can’t listen. And it’s lots harder to be lonely when I’m listening to the rich amazing stories other lives tell.