The Lonely American

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First, let’s look at the frenetic busyness of our lives. Americans may be the only people in the world who believe that each individual has the right and the capacity to fit whatever he or she wants into one small life. America is the original “You can be anything you want if you really try, and it’s never too late to start trying!” country.

A good friend described the impact of busyness on our neighborhoods brilliantly: “Being neighborly used to mean visiting people. Now being nice to your neighbors means not bothering them.” People’s lives are shaped by how busy they are. Lives also are shaped by the respect and deference that is given to busyness—especially when it is valued above connection and community. If people are considerate, they assume that their neighbors are very busy and so try not to intrude on them. Dropping by is no longer neighborly. It is simply rude.

We treat socializing as if it’s a frivolous diversion from the tasks at hand rather than an activity that is essential to our well-being as individuals and as a community. Soon our not bothering to call people (or even e-mail them) gets read by others as a sign that we are too caught up in the busy sweep of our own lives to have time for them. Our friends are not surprised. Our relatives may be indignant, but even they know how hard it is. An unspoken understanding develops. It’s too bad that we’ve lost touch, but that’s just the way it is.

The pace of everyday life may push us toward isolation, but there is a pull, as well: a very seductive picture of standing apart as a victory, not a retreat. Ever since Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his famous essay and Henry David Thoreau set out to embody the concept in his cabin on Walden Pond, a long series of American icons have idealized the concept of self-reliance.

A culture’s attitude toward the ties that bind pervasively shapes how its members interact with the world. These cultural blinders are made clear by a favorite question in cross-cultural research. People are asked to complete the sentence “I love my mother but . . .” In Western countries, the usual response is critical and distancing, something along the lines of “I love my mother but . . . she’s just so difficult.” In Southeast Asia, the usual response is “I love my mother but . . . I can never repay all that she has done for me.” What makes the exercise so powerful is that most people cannot imagine the other response until they are presented with it. As self-reliant Americans, we are automatically prepared to question the value of our strongest bonds and to step away from them when necessary, relying instead on ourselves.

And when we do find ourselves isolated, by standing tall in our own minds, side by side with self-reliant heroes, each of us is suddenly no longer alone but part of a group—a great American tradition of lonesome cowboys and go-it-alone entrepreneurs. That psychological magic becomes the spoonful of sugar that makes painful experiences of finding ourselves left out easier to swallow. We may have isolated ourselves without entirely meaning to, but we also have ended up in a place that looks a lot like where we always knew that we were supposed to stand. On the outside, proud to be there.

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