What do these trends mean for friendship, connection and community? I wonder how today’s young people develop the skills for connecting with each other in real-life? Boys face particular challenges, even when targeted policy interventions are attempted. For example, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Reeves found that free college tuition for all greatly improved girls’ performance but had no effect on boys.

And the situation is grave. Reeves describes how young men in Japan, whose monk-life existence in self-chosen isolation has led to the term “hikikomori” (or shut-ins) to describe a population that may now reach half a million. Some families have paid young women, so-called “rental sisters,” to write to their sons in need of some human connection.

Here in the U.S., we now have “MGTOW” which stands for “Men Going Their Own Way.” These men have given up on the possibility of connection in real life and some have found welcome corners of the internet where they are ripe for manipulation and grievance politics. Mirroring a video game, according to Reeves, Level One is foregoing all long-term relationships; Level Two involves disavowing any sexual relationships with women; Level Three is disconnecting from the economy making only enough to survive; and Level Four is withdrawing from society altogether or “going ghost.” It occurred to me that if and when the rightward shift in our politics reverses, these trends are likely to continue on their dangerous course.

When I talk about my book, both men and women tell me how timely the topic is, given the loneliness crisis, with particular concern about their male spouses, family members and friends. Married friends wonder what their husbands will do in retirement with the few friends they have, with the men who rarely manage the couple’s social calendar. Parents worry about their sons who spend endless hours alone in their room gaming or watching videos on Tik Tok, YouTube or visiting porn sites.

Part of the answer undoubtedly relates to brain science and the later development of parts of boys’ brains involving impulse control and decision-making which develop later in boys. Reeves advocates for boys getting an extra year of kindergarten, allowing boys time to better navigate puberty and young adulthood. He also pushed men to “HEAL,” that is, employment in health, education, administration and literacy, paralleling the ongoing efforts to recruit women in STEM. Not only are these the sectors where the jobs are, much of the work is often public-facing and calls for human interaction, emotional inelligence and empathy. Reeves also promotes more options for technical/vocational education rather than a rigid college track for all students.

Coming from a different angle, in his book “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt describes how we moved from a society of “play-based” childhood to “screen-based childhood” when in 2010, cell phones with internet access became widely available to adults and children. The non-stop commentary on world events, culture, trends, in short -- everything, filtered through emotionally charged social media led to the rewiring of the brains of a generation. His review of the research revealed a significant increase in reports of anxiety and depression among teens, with a higher rate among girls.

Haidt recommends phone-free schools, delaying social media use until age 16, and raising the age of cellphone adulthood to 16 (It is now 13 but lacks a reliable system of verification). He advocates for more play-based activities, with less intermediation by adults. This would teach kids to pick-up social cues in real life, resolve conflict, and devise their own strategies for making and keeping friends. While the days of parents telling their kids to “go play” and listening to the screen door slam behind them may be over, we don’t have a 21st century replacement.

Haidt has more to say about how we might open a path to our children’s spiritual development through activities that build community, expose kids to nature, stillness, meditation and embodiment. This may strike some as too soft or squishy to be workable. Maybe not. Summer camps, team sports and travel have many of these elements, allowing kids the chance to make their own way, finding ways to entertain themselves, alone and in groups. This is the space where “friending skills” are introduced, tested and strengthened, yielding lifelong results.

The policy challenge would be to make these experiences affordable and widely available to all. If it sounds expensive, consider the alternative of failing to change course, allowing epidemic loneliness and deteriorating mental health of our children to continue unchecked.

I estimate it was some time after I committed to reading no more than three news articles each day dealing with the Administration’s latest crimes against democracy and decency. I also noted increasing incidence of mindless scrolling through reels, magically served up by Meta’s algorithm to drown me with Seinfeld scenes, dad jokes, music trivia and baseball highlights.

“Where did that half hour go?” I asked myself.

I was also increasingly irritated by the insistent message alerts – from “breaking news” or incoming text messages to the more benign ping noting that Kate had played her turn at SCRABBLE. But by far, it was the amount of time spent checking my social media platforms for the latest on what friends and others were up to that made me look up and say, “It’s time to stop the madness.”

Undertaking a “digital detox” started with a conversation with my friend, Tom, at our bi-monthly lunch, always followed by a pop-in to a nearby bookstore. I was saying I should write a book on breaking up with my phone, when I found that, not surprisingly, someone had already done so.

I picked up Unplug: How to break up with your phone and reclaim your life by Richard Simon.

I guess I was the last person to learn about how our brain chemistry produces dopamine each time we pick up our cellphone and see a text response, a Facebook “like” or can immediately Google the answer to a question posed in a conversation. In the old days, we were happy being momentarily ignorant. It really didn’t matter if we knew how long Star Trek was on network television. (Stay. 1966-69).

Simon gives straightforward guidance on how to detox, recommending using a smartphone much like a computer, keeping it with your other electronics and using it for tasks that, once completed, allow you to rejoin the real world with your digital tool back in its place. Even better, trade down to a “dumb phone” that allows you to stay connected with other humans and not so much, the internet.

After a couple of weeks of ruminating on ridding myself of platforms, and lots of posting of travel pics, my first move was to remove my social media accounts from my phone. I can still check them by going to my computer but I now do this one or two times a day. I found this move particularly liberating as I was no longer being seduced into the gauzy, mindnumbing trap of endless scrolling, manipulated by highly refined algorithms designed to play on my interests and supply me with trace evidence of my digital footprints – what shopping needs I have or books I might be interested in reading.

Building on the aphorism, “if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product,” I said to myself if you don’t use your phone as a tool, then you’re the tool.

Don’t get me wrong. I still use my phone a lot. I would be lost in greater Boston without my navigation app. (And BTW, why does every town have a Tremont Street?). Ditto parking apps, on-line banking and ticket purchases. These are all task-based applications. I just got more aggressive in limiting the notifications, advertising and associated spam involved in their use.

Technology undoubtedly makes for more frictionless transactions, saving time and money. A friend shared the quote “it isn’t so much the time you spend on your phone. It’s the time you could’ve spent doing something else,” which I tracked to James Williams and his book, Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. James wrote, “The dynamic is less about the time we spend on our devices and more about the lives we don’t live because of them.”

It was like I was on the Millennium Falcon, hearing Obi Wan Kenobi say, “That’s good. You’ve taken your first step into a much larger world.” Let’s just say I have “Lost Verizon.”

It’s early days, but I have already noticed a change. The Scylla of Facebook no longer draws me near. I can live without LinkedIn and I no longer linger there, using it only to track down a friend or make a contact in the absence of an email address or phone number. I have always resisted texting so the distraction of a text thread or an urgent notification has less allure. Rather than shop for books on-line, I go to my local indy bookstore or library to browse titles and make selections.

I meditate and read more. And when I do find myself scrolling – usually while waiting in line, or sometimes late at night, I am much more aware of my screen time. I get judgy. “Am I relaxing or wasting time?” Screen time has begun to unsettle me.

It’s time to put away the tool and get on task. I remembered that I am the boss. Technology works for me. And the job is living.

How do you use technology and what are you noticing about how you use it?

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When I read Nine Black Robes the first time, I was still seething. Senator Mitch McConnell had made the heinous decision to prevent consideration of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Justice Brett Kavanaugh had just landed on the Supreme Court after a tumultuous confirmation hearing by promising key Republican Senators that he would respect long held precedents, like Roe v. Wade. We know how that turned out. I neither forgive nor forget.

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At this moment, with major cases involving birthright citizenship, voting rights and healthcare pending before the Supreme Court, I re-read Joan Biskupic’s Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences. This time through, I was looking to learn how we might expect the SCOTUS to rule when fundamental questions of law and policy are at play.

Author Joan Biskupic, a highly respected Supreme Court watcher and senior CNN correspondent, lays out how legal scholars, practitioners and advocates on the right have, with great discipline, organized themselves to identify and advance candidates through the ranks until they reach its apex of the judiciary, the U.S. Supreme Court. At the center of this operation is what Biskupic calls “The Triumvirate” of White House Counsel Don McGahn, Federalist Society Chair Leonard Leo, and Senator McConnell, whose close coordination resulted in speedy installation of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanagh, and Coney Barrett in quick succession.

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The result is a 6-3 supermajority that has lurched the Court to the right and promises to undo precedents with widespread impact on the lives of American healthcare options, voting rights and safety from gun violence. This supermajority is also likely to be more receptive to the Trump Administration’s “unitary executive” arguments which call for greater deference to Presidential authority at the expense of the Congress. This increases the likelihood that practices such as impoundment of Congressionally appropriated funds and dismissing of heads of independent agencies will hollow out our government’s checking institutions.

And now the SCOTUS is again in the spotlight. Cases now before the court will test the strength of our system of checks and balances and stress test the Court’s independence and transparency. Already, it has relied too heavily on the use of the shadow docket to hear “emergency” appeals (whether or not an emergency exists). This practice foregoes the usual presentation by the parties of briefs and oral arguments and resolves with a ruling without explanation.

Gone are the days of the 9-0 or 7-2 opinions. This Roberts’ court looks to be badly split at 6-3 and 5-4 for years to come. Biskupic goes beyond the headlines to describe the Justices’ differing personalities and the efforts of each to collaborate and persuade (or thrust and parry with) their colleagues. This was the most interesting part of the book, with Biskupic offering a fuller portrait of each Justice, displaying their guiding philosophies and their differing styles of personal and written advocacy.

Given the conservative pitch of the Court, the progressive wing, Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, now have to find two more votes to prevail in any case. Biskupic describes how Justice Kagan has emerged as the interlocutor with her conservative colleagues to find common ground where possible – or stands her ground in stern and powerful dissents.

The coming decisions take on a greater significance as Congress has become essentially inert, unable and unwilling to check the actions of the President. Instead, it will be the Supreme Court that will decide whether Congress truly retains the power of the purse, the ability to establish tariffs, or to declare war. It will likely determine the future of voting rights and marriage equality. These decisions are now in the hands of a very conservative Supreme Court asked to check the two other branches now under Republican control. The implications for our country’s governance are likely to be felt for decades to come.

Read: Gyan Yankovich, Friendship First – Shorter review.

Reading: Irish Hunger edited by Tom Hayden, Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

What have you been reading this month? Give me some recommendations in the comments—I’m all ears!

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Glancing casually at the book title, Friendship First, I thought to myself, “If I am serious about writing a book on friendship, this is probably the type of book I need to start reading.” I hadn’t noticed that my daughter, who along with her sister, nearly always accompanies me on visits to our local bookstore for a browse and a buy, had seen me looking the book over. She surreptitiously purchased it for me as a holiday gift.

My research had begun.

As I began the first few chapters, I happily noted the many titles I recognized. (especially Priya Parker’s Why We Gather and Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman’s Big Friendship). I felt I was on the right path in getting in touch with the current zeitgeist and thinking about what kind of book I might write, and the kind of stories I wanted to tell.

Stories, yes. But not a memoir.

Advice book? Not me.

Observer, commentator, connector of dots. That sounds more like it.

The more I researched, the more I found titles that had mapped the territory of friendship. Gyan Yankovich, author and current lifestyle editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, has written a book that comes scarily close to the book I want to write. Friendship First: New Sparks to Chosen Family, How Our Friends Pave the Way for Lifelong Happiness. I was immediately intimidated by the easy style of the storytelling and the author’s ability to make the larger point, anchoring her observations to recent studies or her personal interviews with experts in the field. I started to think that my book had already been written. Worse, I started thinking it was a better book than I could write.

Yankovich shares her view of friendship and what it involves: “listening, sharing, helping, advocating and love…Both vulnerability and action are key ingredients of the friendship recipe.” The recipe metaphor worked well for me, thinking that all friendships may have different ingredients that make them special, memorable or long-lasting. I also endorsed her adoption of a quest to “befriend and attend” when we are in trouble – asserting that rallying friends is a way to respond to the “fight or flight” response we so often feel, particularly now, when the world seems so heavy and fraught with anger, conflict and loneliness.

As I dove into Yankovich’s conclusions, I quickly realized that modern friendships are changing in a new context of rapidly changing technology. Social media and cellphones both complicate and multiply our friendships, alongside the associated challenges that ensue. For me to write with relevance beyond my generation, I needed to understand how the world of instant messaging, Instagram and virtual relationships comprise a whole new sandbox for friendship. I appreciated Yankovich’s call for relying on “kindness” and “connection” as pillars to guide our care of each other, particularly in virtual spaces.

In addition to expert research and interviews, the author draws deeply on her own diverse network of friends, including and beyond the three continents where she has lived, and importantly drawing on the experience of the LGBTQIA+ community as well as those whose experiences place them in a social minority. She makes the case for valuing and placing our closest friends in places usually saved for our romantic partners. As we move away from traditional notions of family and norms regarding romantic love, partnering and commitment, Yankovich calls for casting our friendships in a new light and challenges us to get curious about what it means to love someone as a friend.

In reading, I was most engaged by the ways my take on friendship converged and diverged from Yankovich’s experience and observations. Her observation of how actions are the common denominator that makes friendships happen, and her recognition of how these actions spill forth in the smallest of gestures struck a chord. What we undertake for our friends, and they for us, can have the deepest impact. The random call or the simple text “thinking of you” are sometimes all the tending a friendship requires at the right moment.

I am indebted to Gyan Yankovich for showing me how one can bring memoir, research, observations, and commentary to bear in arguing for a new appreciation of friendships and its practices. Perhaps there’s a book in me as well.

Do you have a time where a small outreach made a big impact, or a friendship that’s maintained in small acts of care? Let me know in the comments!

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As someone who knew me quite well, I thought of her on her birthday as I finished reading How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks. Brooks lays out his reasons for taking on the challenge of how we engage others — pragmatically, to make better decisions by better understanding others; and spiritually, as “seeing someone is a powerfully creative act,” and “…there is something in being seen that brings forth growth. If you beam the light of your attention on me, I blossom.”

These are the skills of what Brooks calls “an illuminator.” The illuminator combines tenderness, receptivity, active curiosity, affection, generosity and a holistic attitude in what philosopher Iris Murdoch, according to Brooks, called the essential moral act of casting “just and loving attention” upon another.

My mom was an illuminator. She had the quality of putting others at ease, through tenderness, humor, hospitality and deep attention. People seemed to open up to her easily — in a first encounter or in decades-long friendships. It made her a great social worker and a fierce and loyal friend. And she had a special eye for young people, those coming of age, owing to what I always assumed was a difficult period in her own life. She seemed on watch for those navigating those uncertain years.

Years ago, I hosted a party for my work colleagues where she befriended the date of one of my co-workers. In deep conversation for a couple of hours, they discussed my guest’s interest in having kids, how she appreciated my colleague’s amiable and fun-loving demeanor but was unsure if he was the one. My mom listened deeply, bringing her presence and attention to the conversation, as if there was no other guest with whom she’d rather be. They left with a giant hug and a warm wish for the future.

I met a colleague of my mom who told me of a visit my mom made to her just after her new baby had arrived. She described being in a sleep-deprived frazzle, unsure of everything she was doing or not doing. The colleague told her how my mom reassured her, and left her by saying, “You’re just perfect.” Through all the anxiety, my mom had made her feel seen and supported. I felt the hair on my neck tingle and a lump form in my throat as she shared this story with me years later.

“Feeling seen” is how my friends describe the kind of illuminator effect my mom had. (I also suspect it had to do with how her unexpected visit to our dimly lit family room during a teenage party sent a group of preoccupied couples scrambling).

From my perspective as a certified professional coach, Brooks offers great tips, describing the difference between a good talker, a lecturer and a raconteur – none of which requires one to be a good listener. I paid close attention to his tips on how to listen deeply and ask great questions. (Read more about this in “Leadership Lessons from ‘The Bear.’)

I particularly plan to use and share his expert advice for seeing others in conversation, known as SLANT: Sit up; Lean forward, Ask questions; Nod your head; and Track the speaker. Great listeners pair this tactic with the Oprah-inspired practice of “expressive listening” – head nodding, saying things like “yes” and “what else happened” and encouraging the speaker with words and body language indicating you are locked in to their story.

As I continue my deep dive into the literature on friendship and connection, some of Brooks’ observations fired my curiosity. I like the idea of asking “the big questions” (e.g. “What crossroads are you at?” or “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?) and asking people to tell their life stories while understanding how everyone is the sum of everything that brought them to this moment. In words similar to those generative somatics practitioner Staci K. Haines calls sites of shaping, Brooks identifies personality templates, childhood upbringing and culture as things to be aware of as one listens between the lines.

As a coach and aspiring writer interested in what fuels friendship, I locked on to Brooks’ description of “accompaniment.” He explains, “The really good confidantes — the people we go to when we are troubled — are more like coaches than philosopher-kings. Wise people don't tell you what to do; they help you process your own thoughts and emotions. They enter with you into your process of meaning-making and then help you expand it, push it along.”

This quality of presence and the disciplined selflessness it requires is a high mark indeed. It is a worthy goal of the best of coaches and the best of friends.

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From the Bookshelf

Rachel Maddow has a knack for taking a great news story and tethering it to its historic precedent, bringing the audience along to a broader lesson. In Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, she starts with the history of America’s flirtation with fascism in the 1930s, which turns out to be neither new nor a passing fancy. Each day, our political system seems to be stepping closer to authoritarian rule. Maddow introduces us to the prequel.

Using her unmatched ability to bring seemingly disparate story elements together into a political thriller, she describes pre-WWII America, debating its role in the world as the forces of isolationism, populism and fascism found their footing. She expertly narrates how various actors worked to either keep us out of the war entirely or join the German side. Along the way, she describes the activities of the Christian Front, active paramilitary militias, and neo-Nazi organizations, some working directly at the behest of Hitler’s inner circle. Those efforts reached deep into the U.S. Congress, implicating several Senators and nearly two dozen congressmen.

Perhaps Maddow’s greatest contribution is in lifting the stories of relatively unknown scholars, private investigators, congressional staffers and dogged prosecutors who uncovered these secretive networks, documented them and pursued legal action against powerful actors at the time. Their results were decidedly mixed – and as a result offer a chilling message to today’s audience.

You can also find this review and more of my reading notes on Goodreads.

Other Reading: Paul Doiron, Skin and Bones, Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law, Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words.

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Filling My Cup

“That was Zen. This is Now.”

Back during the lockdown days of COVID, I was having an across-the-fence, masked conversation with my neighbor when she invited me to look at her zen garden, complete with stones, a wooden bench and a water element.

“This is awesome,” I exclaimed, as I plopped myself down on the bench, closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the water trickling down the stones into the small pool below.

“You know, I used to teach tai chi at the rec center before we moved. I’d love to teach a class again.”

“Let’s do it!” she said.

We strolled across the grass of her double lot, which gaze upon each night as I do the dishes. Her two dogs always made me wonder who has the better life.

“This will be perfect.”

Our class ran for several months, as we beat back COVID through social distancing, handwashing and high vaccination rates in our community. (Note to RFK Jr: This is back when our government embraced science and offered authoritative advice.)

As with the Levine Brothers Book Club, “Backyard Tai Chi” was a COVID lesson with legs.

We’re starting it up again next month. I look forward to connecting with neighbors, enjoying embodied practice together. I feel the cool grass on my bare feet. I can taste the sea air as the breeze fills my lungs. Hello summer.

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