It’s cold. It’s dark. Are we seasonally depressed? Yeah. Tense over exams and work? Yeah. Difficult times for our country and our world? Double yeah.
If you’re passionately celebrating a religious holiday right now, great.
But if you’re not particularly religious, come and join atheists, agnostics and allies in the greater MIT community as we meet in the MIT Chapel (ironically enough!) on Thursday December 13th at 5:30 pm.
We’re going to create some cheer of our own, together. Emphasis on the together.
In the United States, some people cherish the idea that heroism is the ability to go it alone. But the American College Health Association’s 2017 annual survey of college students reports that 63% have felt lonely, with higher than average rates of loneliness in elite educational institutions. Self-care “solutions” are marketed as if loneliness is an individual problem divorced from the context of our lives, and anxiety is something that can be cured by spending money.
The notion of individual success or failure doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Life is first and foremost a collaborative endeavor. You’re not born alone, you don’t get educated alone, and what you accomplish you do by leveraging the contributions of others. You may not come to know all these people personally, but that doesn’t erase their contribution to your wellbeing. You don’t experience your full humanity alone.
The experience of loneliness depends significantly on how you’re embodied, and where. Many have difficulty because, at a macro level, our culture shames some, glorifies others, and that encourages tribalism.
We thrive places like MIT when we find ourselves among people who nurture us. The MIT community, with our inventive, compassionate people, is rich with opportunities for generative interdependence. The dark days of winter are a time to strengthen our friendships, build new links of connection, and relish the possibilities of our life together here on campus. This kind of togetherness is worth celebrating.
—Nina Lytton
Suggested Reading: Self-Care Won’t Save Us
