“Humans don’t mind hardship. In fact, they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end.” –Sebastian Junger
A few years ago, I read the fantastic book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, by Sebastian Junger. With the author’s permission, I’m excerpting the text from the book’s Introduction.
I am sharing this wonderful excerpt from Junger’s book now because by all indications, the time for taking responsibility for one another has arrived in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The great opportunity for all of us during the hardship and uncertainty of the pandemic is that we are being called to care for and take responsibility for one another.
In the fall of 1986, just out of college, I set out to hitchhike across the northwestern part of the United States. I’d hardly ever been west of the Hudson River, and in my mind what waited for me out in Dakota and Wyoming and Montana was not only the real America but the real me as well.
I’d grown up in a Boston suburb where people’s homes were set behind deep hedges or protected by huge yards and neighbors hardly knew each other. And they didn’t need to: nothing ever happened in my town that required anything close to a collective effort. Anything bad that happened was taken care of by the police or the fire department, or at the very least the town maintenance crews. (I worked for them one summer. I remember shoveling a little too hard one day and the foreman telling me to slow down because, as he said, “Some of us have to get through a lifetime of this.”)
The sheer predictability of life in an American suburb left me hoping—somewhat irresponsibly —for a hurricane or a tornado or something that would require us to all band together to survive. Something that would make us feel like a tribe. What I wanted wasn’t destruction and mayhem but the opposite: solidarity. I wanted the chance to prove my worth to my community and my peers, but I lived in a time and a place where nothing dangerous ever really happened. Surely this was new in the human experience, I thought. How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage?
Those kinds of tests clearly weren’t going to happen in my hometown, but putting myself in a situation where I had very little control—like hitchhiking across the country—seemed like a decent substitute. That’s how I wound up outside Gillette, Wyoming, one morning in late October 1986, with my pack leaned against the guardrail and an interstate map in my back pocket. Semis rattled over the bridge spacers and hurtled on toward the Rockies a hundred miles away. Pickup trucks passed with men in them who turned to stare as they went by. A few unrolled their window and threw beer bottles at me that exploded harmlessly against the asphalt.
In my pack I had a tent and sleeping bag, a set of aluminum cookpots, and a Swedish- made camping stove that ran on gasoline and had to be pressurized with a thumb pump. That and a week’s worth of food was all I had with me outside Gillette, Wyoming, that morning, when I saw a man walking toward me up the on‑ramp from town.
From a distance I could see that he wore a quilted old canvas union suit and carried a black lunch box. I took my hands out of my pockets and turned to face him. He walked up and stood there studying me. His hair was wild and matted and his union suit was shiny with filth and grease at the thighs. He didn’t look unkindly but I was young and alone and I watched him like a hawk. He asked me where I was headed. “California,” I said. He nodded.
“How much food do you got?” he asked.
I thought about this. I had plenty of food—along with all the rest of my gear—and he obviously didn’t have much. I’d give food to anyone who said he was hungry, but I didn’t want to get robbed, and that’s what seemed was about to happen.
“Oh, I just got a little cheese,” I lied. I stood there, ready, but he just shook his head.
“You can’t get to California on just a little cheese,” he said. “You need more than that.”
The man said that he lived in a broken-down car and that every morning he walked three miles to a coal mine outside of town to see if they needed fill‑in work. Some days they did, some days they didn’t, and this was one of the days that they didn’t. “So I won’t be needing this,” he said, opening his black lunch box. “I saw you from town and just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
The lunch box contained a bologna sandwich, an apple, and a bag of potato chips. The food had probably come from a local church. I had no choice but to take it. I thanked him and put the food in my pack for later and wished him luck. Then he turned and made his way back down the on‑ramp toward Gillette.
I thought about that man for the rest of my trip. I thought about him for the rest of my life.
He’d been generous, yes, but lots of people are generous; what made him different was the fact that he’d taken responsibility for me. He’d spotted me from town and walked half a mile out a highway to make sure I was okay. Robert Frost famously wrote that home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. The word “tribe” is far harder to define, but a start might be the people you feel compelled to share the last of your food with. For reasons I’ll never know, the man in Gillette decided to treat me like a member of his tribe.
This book is about why that sentiment is such a rare and precious thing in modern society, and how the lack of it has affected us all. It’s about what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty and belonging and the eternal human quest for meaning.
It’s about why—for many people—war feels better than peace and hardship can turn out to be a great blessing and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact, they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.
She waved me over. I didn’t recognize her. I don’t think I had ever seen her before. Which always sort of amazes me since our town is so small, and I was raised here, and have lived here for a combined 38 years. I know many people here, if not by name, by face.
Howdy!
I walked over to her. One of her boots had a hole in the toe, and her clothes were oversized, hanging on her. She gave me a gentle smile, as she held her hand out to me and passed something into my hand.
I looked inside my hand, and it was a $100 bill. Then our eyes met. You know how when you really look at someone and you can get a glimpse of what we think is their life or their backstory, how you can sense pain and heartbreak? We connected for a brief moment, and heartbreak of some kind was palpable.
“Please give it to someone who’s hungry,” she said, softly, in barely more than a whisper.
I thanked her, and asked her what her name was. She didn’t give it to me, instead just politely shaking her head, and turning and walking away.
It was Wednesday in November of 2013, and I was in Ace Hardware. I was “fasting to feed the hungry,” and I had stopped in to collect a donation from the business.
I had started fasting once a week in 2013. Originally, I did it for health reasons. I had read of the health and anti aging benefits of fasting at least once a week. Apparently, fasting, or reducing calorie intake to 500-600 calories a day, once a week, has enormous health benefits. I am oversimplifying, but in layman’s terms, fasting sends your cells into repair. I also am an experimenter, especially when it comes to anything health and diet-related, and I wanted to see if I could lose 5 pounds in the process of experimenting with intermittent fasting.
The first time I fasted, I thought I was going to die. I was starving! I had a headache and major hunger pains. I remember when it was 11:30am, the time I usually ate lunch, I could barely take it. I was home, and it would be so easy to sneak a handful of nuts, or a spoonful of peanut butter, or whatever. This was my idea and the rules were mine to break. No one was keeping watch over me.
But I was determined. So I went upstairs, out of sight of our kitchen, and laid down in bed. A nap was elusive, what with the chattiness in my head about how hungry I was, and the pains – and loud growling reminders coming from my empty stomach, and all.
It was while lying there that I thought of all of the people in the world, including in my small town, that feel like this regularly, and not by choice. Wow. That put things in perspective for me real fast. I turned my mind to those people. I wondered who I knew, or who I saw throughout my town, in lines at the Post Office or at the grocery store, or on Main Street, or in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, etc., who felt like this often. Everything about my fasting changed for me in that moment.
I decided to make my fasting be for a cause other than my own self-absorbed fitness and weight loss-related goals. I started “fasting to feed the hungry.” Every week I would pick a local cause, and I would fast for 24 hours, and I would post about it on Facebook. Businesses, such as Ace Hardware referenced above, and individuals in my town, would donate $24 (1 dollar for every hour of my fast) or more to whatever cause I was fasting for.
For me, it meant not only going hungry once a week but also getting out and being visible in my community and on Facebook during the days I fasted. It meant “selling”and marketing what I was doing in an effort to generate awareness and money for the particular cause. Many weeks I fasted and raised about $300-$500 a week for causes that included the Lander Care & Share Food Bank, the Friday Backpack Program, the One Stop Shelter, and others.
The Backpack program especially tugs at my heart. This is a program that sends home a backpack of food to kids on Fridays who won’t otherwise see a meal all weekend long. They get breakfast and lunch at school, and often that’s all they get for food. It’s actually a little pathetic that all I have to do to help feed those kids is go hungry for a single day…
It felt good to be fasting to feed the hungry. My fasting felt purposeful. I felt purposeful.
And, I also discovered that when I’m in a fasted state, I’m more present. It is so clichéto say “present,” but it’s true.
When I’m fasting – and hungry – I am more attuned. My senses are heightened, including all of the most important ones. I’m more tender on these days when I’m hungry, and that is a good thing for me. I’m more sensitive and not as selfish as I normally am.
I think it was Annie Dillard who wrote, “How we do one thing is how we do most things.” I think about this a lot. It’s useful. I don’t want to live recklessly and as if everything is in abundance. I want to not eat the house, and I want to taste my food, and to appreciate it. I don’t want to be a pig. I don’t want to be selfish. I don’t want to over-consume. In my eating or in my living. And most importantly, I want to remember people who are less fortunate than I am, who could use a break or a little help.
I am not proud of myself often. But when I fast, I feel better about myself because I’m a more compassionate human being.
Every week when I fasted I was more compassionate because I thought more closely about people who are in need, and I felt closer to my community. The result is I think about my community a lot more now even when I’m not fasting, which has been an unexpected benefit.
Which brings me to the woman at the start of this story.
I think of her often. Anonymous, humble and generous. I’ve never seen her again. She was an angel to give $100 to someone in need. I sometimes wonder if she actually was an angel. Did she, and that transaction, really happen or was she an angel sent to deliver a message to me?
I just returned from the Wisdom 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. What an awesome experience. I am filled with new insights, inspiration, hope, and overwhelming evidence that a “course correction” is in the works. Some 25 percent of corporations are incorporating mindfulness into their organizations.
The increasing, ever-enabling technology has been a gift to us in so many ways. We are able to have more relationships, to do more, and to do it all without restraint of time or geography. Many of us are “on” and plugged in 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The down side is that it’s getting harder to unplug and to be present during areas of our life that are important and meaningful to us. Our phones have become like what Alone Together author Sherry Turkle calls “phantom limbs.” We are so distracted by our devices.
Wisdom 2.0, founded and organized by Soren Gordhamer (author of Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Teachings for the Creative and Constantly Connected, and a mindfulness leader who, as project director for Richard Gere’s public charity, Healing the Divide, organized the Healing through Great Difficulty Conference with his Holiness the Dalai Lama), is an event that brings together thought leaders who, through interviews and presentations and engaging conversations with those in attendance, attempt to answer: “How can we live with greater presence, meaning, and mindfulness in the technology age?”
The conference beckoned me because it converges all of the areas that I’m most interested in, in my life and work: Technology, mindfulness, compassion, entrepreneurship & business, and neuroscience.
In short, Tan provides evidence that we can do very simple exercises to train ourselves to be more compassionate and charismatic. For example, he challenges us to pick two people every hour, look at them, and in our minds, wish them happiness. This takes about 10 seconds, and according to Tan, this simple act makes us energetically give off compassion, which spreads to those around us.
I was so moved by the presentation that I shared the video with my husband and our three sons, who are ages 5, 10 and 12, the first morning after my return. Then, that evening, during dinner, everyone shared that they in fact did that, and that it felt good to do something that might benefit others.
I will be blogging more about the presentations and insights I gained from the conference over the next several weeks, so I hope you’ll check back often.
Thanks for reading my blog, and for stopping by Epic Life.
I love this Ted Talk by Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax. Halifax works with people at the last stage of life (in hospice and on death row). Here, she shares what she’s learned about compassion in the face of death and dying, and a deep insight into the nature of empathy.
Particularly, listen to Halifax at 1.55. It frames the talk. But the message is one about the importance of compassion. As Halifax so beautifully states, compassion is to recognize we are not separate from the suffering around us.
