Adam Smiley Poswolsky - Friendship in the Age of Loneliness: An Optimists Guide to Connection

Friendship sustains us through the most trying of times. As I was writing this book, the COVID-19 virus swept across the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people, putting millions out of work, and forever changing the way we gather. Suddenly, so many of the things we take for grantedlike meeting up with a friend at a coffee shop, visiting a family member, going to the gym, or even shaking someones handbecame forbidden activities.

While the pandemic threatened to make us even more lonely, it also gave us a window into whats possible when we come together and put our shared humanity first. We raised money for PPE for nurses and doctors; sewed masks for friends and family members; cooked food for essential workers; fund-raised to keep our favorite restaurants, independent bookshops, and music venues open; and delivered groceries to the elderly.

Three restaurant employees started the Service Workers Coalition, raising more than eighty thousand dollars for sick or quarantined workers in New York City. The Minnestota COVIDSitters, with their tagline Caring for your family while you care for ours, matched hundreds of volunteers with hospital workersincluding custodians, cooks, and other essential employeesin need of help babysitting, pet-sitting, and running errands. Every night at seven oclock, entire neighborhoods erupted in cheers to honor, celebrate, and thank hospital staff and frontline workers.

With social distancing regulations in place, people had to get creative in order to spend time with each other. Inspired by videos coming out of Italy, people sang with each other from their apartment balconies and front stoops. Quarantined Berklee College of Music students gave a virtual performance of What the World Needs Now Is Love, which was viewed more than two million times on YouTube.

In Bernal Heights, my partners neighborhood in San Francisco and where I spent much of the lockdown, a small newspaper was created for children, bookshelves became sidewalk food banks, and garages turned into medical-supply distribution centers. There were socially distanced dance parties, elaborate garden scavenger hunts for kids, a pop-up bakery, and stoop cocktail parties.

To surprise my friend Seth on his birthday, ten of us showed up outside his house in Oakland wearing pictures of Seths face on our masks and danced the Macarena while staying six feet apart from each other. We each recorded a birthday video message for Seth that his brother, Zev, edited into a forty-five-minute montage, complete with a soundtrack and childhood home videos.

For their three-year-old sons birthday party, my friends invited folks to drive by their house and honk their horns; even the local fire department showed up with their sirens on and lights flashing to celebrate.

Being forced into isolation has made it abundantly clear how much we mean to each other, and how much we need each other, observed Kat Vellos, friendship expert and author of