We Belong
Traveling the world to understand the epidemic of loneliness
By April Hirschman
“We are the real countries. Not boundaries drawn on maps.” -Michael Ondaatji
The Project: Get insight into the epidemic of loneliness, by traveling and interviewing people about community, kinship groups, loneliness and belonging.
How it Began
The other week I was in Morocco.
This was a trip of a lifetime; one I had day-dreamed about for years. Only I wasn’t there. How is that possible? I mean, I was there getting in and out of the car as others took pictures.
But I was having a day of feeling lonely. I hadn’t made a solid plan of where I wanted to go after Morocco. How would I spend time with?
Before coming here, starting in September 2024, I moved out of my place, put my stuff in a storage unit, and got a P.O. Box in Sebastopol, a place I have lived several times in my life.
And drum roll please…. I bought a one-way ticket to Morocco.
To guide this decision I picked a tarot card. The image was staring back at me was the Wise Fool, all clad in green with stars in their eyes, stepping near a cliffs edge into the great unknown, trusting the Universe.
The fool represents unlimited possibility, adventure, following your bliss. And that’s just what I wanted to do. So why, as my travel companions were at a desert shop trying on scarves and head dresses, like ones I have worn as a belly dancer, was I across the street, on dusty step, crying?
I was crying because I didn’t know where to go next and I didn’t want to go there alone. Of course, while planning this trip, I imaged this might happen. But like the fool, I decided to trust that when I stepped off the cliffs, like the ones at Daddas Gorges, the world would offer itself and friends and a lover would appear to join me.
I’ll put it in front of the mystery, I told myself. But now I had 6 days until the tour ended. To my surprise I didn’t want to stay in Morocco longer; something about the crisp air and austerity of the culture didn’t make me feel I could be my full feminist, pagan, wild self.
Later that night I began to imagine a world I wanted to live in. It’s a visualization I have done for over two decades. I imagine a world that has more women in leadership, where there is no military, no rape or molestation, no plastic or pollutants in the water. A world with universal basic income. A world where in an instant the military is stripped of its weapons, gear, uniforms, everything. A world where guns don’t exist. In my vision all the waters of the world are pure again.
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This isn’t everyone’s vision of a bright future. It is mine. Thinking about it in vivid detail gives me hope and solace. I reflected on the epidemic of loneliness, and the loneliness I was feeling right at that moment and just like that this project was born.
Last year, the World Health Organization declared loneliness to be a global health threat. Current global estimates suggest that one in four older adults experience social isolation and between 5 per cent and 15 per cent of adolescents experience loneliness.
I was born in a rag tag commune called The Foundation of Revelation or The Family. And the guru was called, also not in a fit of originality, Father.
It was located in the Lower Haight District of San Francisco. I was literally born into a group living experiment that, like most things, succeeded and failed. The experience had many repercussions, two numerous to delineate in this intro. But it did leave me with a family, kinship, in many parts of the world. I feel sisterhood/brotherhood with all the other children and many of the adults who were a part of this. But we don’t live together now, which is one of the reasons I feel bereft from time to time.
I also have a loving family that now consists of my mom, my two sisters and their families. I have many friends, from various aspects of my life including new friends I met at the Somatica Institute, where I trained to become a sex and relationship coach.
I have had many amazing relationships. I have been in love six times. With four women and two men. I have had long term relationships that spanned over half a decade and short relationships that didn’t crack a year. I have been loved and cherished by partners that would listen to stories from my day as they held me at night.
I’ve survived many breakups that left me sad, isolated and lonely. I even wrote a self-help book called Best Breakup Ever! to understand separations and help others with them.
For many years now, governments have pushed for and supported the family structure. People are easy to control and categorize in these structures. There is, ideally, support in this structure. People cast out of the tribe, living on sidewalks, under freeways, or in industrial wastelands, are rarely from a happy, supportive family,
Many people spend a period from around their twenties to their forties partnering or getting married and having kids or getting pets. I have lived with two of my girlfriends for several years. My first girlfriend and I had a cat. But what is more true is I haven’t been able to participate in the “family years”. And since our world is structured by the needs of husbands and wives and kids and pets and their schooling and their shopping and their care, I have had to forge my own way without those built in structures which give life meaning, obligation, joy and more.
There have been times I knew my couple friends were not inviting me to things. There are evenings where I am always the one reaching out to friends with families to try to get an invite into their family dinners. Otherwise, I would be alone with the meal I made for myself (I love to cook! Especially for others) and my dinner date would be a TV series on my computer.
And so here I am, finally seeing that the purpose of my journey is to talk to people about tribe, loneliness, cultural meaning, and belonging.
After Morocco I decide to go to Bali, the country I first went to on my own, where I first fell in love with Bali and thus life itself. That epiphany to go to Bali came along side this idea of a project about belonging.
I believe so much of what modern human suffering has its root in the lack of the experiences and activities that made up tribal life. Perhaps tribe isn’t the perfect word, it could be dynasty, klan, posse, group or a word that has not yet been invented or needs to be retrieved from some ancient mellowing text in a dusty cave somewhere.
Meanwhile, there is evidence everywhere of our collective love for dancing, music, sport, healing practices like massage, communal dining, fireside storytelling, romantic intimacy, and conversations that feed our soul and makes us feel we are a part of something.
Some of what ails us is a lack of these experiences. And in any given group there are varying interest in the above activities. But I imagine just knowing your tribe has a structure gives a sense of meaning and belonging. For example, if your tribe meditates every morning at eight, has breakfast together at 9 and you know at 9pm everyone will be gathering at the fireside your life has a sense of containment but within a positive, generative containment beauty can grow. If someone says they want to paint the whole world but can’t decide where to start, its better for them to start to paint just one canvas.
My quest is to travel the world and interview people about what tribe means to them.
“We have virtually abandoned living in traditional societies. But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life.” Jared Diamond author of Gun’s Germ’s and Steele
