Eight Healthy NewsWorks student reporters recently interviewed Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, a former U.S. surgeon general, about the health dangers of loneliness and what people can do to deal with loneliness.
In this article, the second of three Q&As based on the interview, Dr. Murthy discusses the importance of communities. His answers have been shortened and lightly edited.
Question: How do you define community?
Dr. Murthy: The way I think about community is it’s a place where we know each other, we help each other, and where we find purpose in lifting each other up. When you have all these elements, a community becomes a place where you feel you belong.
Question: How can belonging to a community help with feelings of loneliness?
Dr. Murthy: When I was younger, there were a few communities that really helped me out. My parents are from India and we got to know other families from India on Sundays when we went for religious services at our temple. That became a really important community for me. I became really good friends with the other kids there. When I was with them, I felt a sense of ease. I could be myself. I felt like we helped each other a lot as well. They are close friends of mine to this day.
In high school, I developed a small but tight group of friends. We helped each other during hard times. We hung out at each other’s houses after school and on weekends.
After my sophomore year in high school, there was a big hurricane—Hurricane Andrew—that came through Miami, Florida, where I lived. It devastated the entire community. Many people lost their homes, and we didn’t have electricity for three weeks. We didn’t have phone service for six weeks. This was before cell phones. It was hard sometimes to even know where to get water. My friends ended up checking in on each other and helping each other out.
We don’t live in the same place today, but the bonds that we built back then in high school are just as strong today as they were back then.
Question: What can kids do to meet new people and build strong connections?
Dr. Murthy: It’s not always how much time you spend with somebody; it’s the quality of the time you have that can really matter. If you can spend five minutes being truly present in a conversation with somebody, that’s often more impactful for both of you than a half hour of distracted conversation.
If you think for a moment about a time when you’ve just been with a family member or a friend and both of you are working on something, maybe you’re working on your homework together. You know that feels different than studying on your own, right? Sometimes even if you’re not saying something to another person, their physical presence makes a difference.
As we think about how to build a more connected world, it’s partially about the conversations we have with each other. It’s also about how we share—even if words aren’t exchanged. We need more high-quality time with other people where we’re present, where we’re helping others, and where we’re having honest, real conversation with each other.
Question: What role does service play in community?
Dr. Murthy: It turns out one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness is service. We have to think about service to enable service to be a part of our lives more and how we cultivate purpose. There are a lot of times messages coming at us telling us what success should be and what we should be striving for.
The real question is what gives you a deep sense of purpose and meaning in your life? What we often find is that some of the most powerful sources of purpose are when we connect to something bigger than ourselves, like when we do something for someone else, for a cause that we care about, for a mission that really speaks to us. And when we are engaged in that kind of work, we often find that it does something to improve people’s lives.
I want to be very clear that finding your purpose isn’t about scale. You can feel just as much purpose raising two incredible children as you can feel running an organization that’s helping two million people. One is not greater than the other.
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Healthy NewsWorks student reporters who interviewed Dr. Murthy are Benjamin and Juniper (Alexander Adaire Fit Fish), Yisliany (Yorkship Family Healthy Lion), and Amelia, Cassandra, Christian, Nelania, and Xzavier (Catholic Partnership Schools Healthy Courier). The interview was conducted at the Philadelphia law offices of Troutman, Pepper, Locke.
Explore more from our conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy: Watch the student-led interview and read student reflections about loneliness, connection, and what they learned from Dr. Murthy.
