Reaching out at Christmas This Wednesday, some five weeks before Christmas, I’m heading out for a Christmas dinner with two university friends. Yes, I know, it’s only November but all three of us work, we all have children or responsibility for children and we’re all involved in our local communities in different ways. And so it was, when we compared diaries in September, this was as close to Christmas as we could get, in finding a date that we were all free. We chuckled with each other about how we had all allowed our lives to become so crazy. We are all, of course, enormously fortunate. Strong bonds with our families who in most cases live very close at hand. Jobs we enjoy. Happy marriages. Kids who are into everything. Buckets of hobbies. Charities to whom we donate our time and through which we are embedded in our communities. And close friendships from our past but also from more recent times in the places we each now call home. People who ground us. Things which give us purpose. Earlier this year, the Government pledged £20m to charities to help reduce isolation and loneliness. It’s not a new problem, of course. Darby and Jones clubs that started during WW2, just up the road in Streatham, intended to help bring lonely, often widowed people together to share good times, in uncertain times. But the current funding is also aimed to tackle loneliness in the young. The generation that have grown up with more ways of connecting and staying in contact with their friends than any other before them, are struggling to feel connected. On some level we can understand loneliness amongst our older populace more easily. Perhaps no longer in work, perhaps widowed, perhaps without family or without family close at hand. But our young? Friends in school, mostly with family around them, at time in their life that is full of opportunity? How do these two disparate groups, end up suffering with the same problem? People. An absence of real people, in real time with whom you have a bond. One group that has lost, or lost contact with the real people in their life; the other that can sometimes choose electronic over real contact. Both in changeable times, struggling to find their new identities or to build new connections. Insufficient people to ground them. Too little to give them purpose. Not for all of them, is Christmas a joyous time to be celebrated. But the solution is in all our hands. So to all whose life is full and fulfilling – take the time to send a card (yes, one of those real folding things with a stamp) to your elderly friends, relatives and neighbours. Feeling important and remembered by another person is a powerful human need. Do some shopping for an elderly neighbour. Support your local food bank. Lend your skills to a local community group in need. Especially seek out those who through want of funds or health prevents them from changing their own worlds in the way that others might. And to those struggling with loneliness, as far as possible, try the same things too – because part of the reason the lives of others are full and fulfilling is because they throw themselves into many different things. Loneliness does tend to breed loneliness. It can be a vicious circle to break. Not going out leads to a lack of confidence in going out. Find your courage and try that new local club. Strike up conversation in the library with someone looking at the same books as you. Give your time to a local charity – because goodness knows many are in want of skills and time. As I say to nervous new parents unsure what they can bring to the PTFA, “Everyone can make the tea”. And those who face their fears and make the tea, end up getting invited for tea elsewhere and along the way find new friends, new purposes and a new sense of belonging. It’s easy to help at Christmas – you will always find someone who would welcome a second pair of hands; and helping someone else is one of the surest paths to feeling warmer and happier inside – even more than mulled wine and mince pies. Although of course, if someone is offering…. Happy Christmas, friends. Dawn Ford Wife to Paul M Ford, who’ll be back in January, when he’s finished celebrating his 60th and proving once and for all that growing older is a privilege but growing up is entirely optional. 8 Log into www.cr5.co.uk your local community website!
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