"A litany in time of plague?"
In keeping with our philosophy, we have decided to offer a number of young "nymphs" a "lilypad" on our Facebook live broadcasts. We aim to provide an enabling environment for our nymphs to air their opinions, bounce ideas around and voice their truths, and thus propel them forward towards developing their own voices, natural talents and abilities. Exciting times ahead for this collaboration!
This piece of writing is an introduction to the first interview with Maria Matias, around the affects of COVID, on an already exisiting social concern, coined by specialists, the Loneliness Epidemic. The full interview can be viewed on DragonFLY's Facebook Page.
On the 7th of August 2017, the online Health Magazine Science Alert published a disturbing article with the headline: Widespread Loneliness Is Killing People And We Need to Start Taking This Seriously.Lonelinessis becoming a greater public health risk than a number of more recent health concerns, like obesity, especially amongst children. Sign of our modern times!
Dr. Caroline Leaf, renowned Communication Pathologist and Cognitive Neuroscientist, author of the bestseller "Switch on your brain," has coined loneliness as an Epidemic and one of the leading causes of death in the world today. Isolation is no joke! She goes on to say: "loneliness, increases the risk for premature mortality among all ages." One study indicates that social isolation and loneliness will kill more people than obesity in the coming years. Another study from Brigham Young University covering 70 studies, from 1980 to 2014, found how death rates are affected by loneliness, social isolation and living alone, also associated with increasing mental health issues, suicides and cardiovascular disease. We are in essence talking about mental health, morbidity and mortality!
Sounds crazy doesn't it? Loneliness actually kills! If it can kill, it is lethal and thus acts as a weapon against humanity. A violation of the inalienable right to life. That is striking to me! Loneliness that causes death is a violation of the right to life.
This weapon has a target. It doesn't target everyone in our modern societies in the same way. It targets a specific group of people, with distinct characteristics. It is an invisible weapon that hides behind a clear objective and a visible target. It aims at the most vulnerable: the elderly and the "home-less". I intentionally put homeless in " " and separated home from less. You see, you and I can have a home and still feel or be "home-less".
"...the poor are called orphans"
The celebrated author and Mozambican environmental biologist Mia Couto, referring to poverty or the isolation poverty can create, says in the vernacular Mozambican language, those who are poor are called orphans. Loneliness is thus not only a space occupied by people who were once "someone"and sadly lost the identity they once had- people whose hearts long for a home. It is a kind of poverty. It's a condition whereby people have become abandoned; orphaned by the rest of us...hearts who have a home.
The question is: who will, who can protect us from this plague? Who can and who will shield us from the claws of a preeminent disaster, more and more scientists and others are alerting us to? What does our ignorance and apparent passivity or insensitivity say about us, who seem unyielding amidst these alerts? You see, today it's "them", tomorrow it can be anyone. You or me!
My greatest concern is why aren't we talking more about this? What should our litany be? How do we go about it? Why are we not taking precautions or action to push back this plague, especially in countries like Portugal, Italy, UK, USA and India with an unprecedented growing elderly population living alone? What about young people who live alone or single moms and dads that are feeling or have felt the sharp pierce of loneliness. Do they count? What about this new kid on the block: COVID? If loneliness was an epidemic before COVID, with COVID has loneliness gained more speed; has it taken more "victims"? What's COVID's soliloquy about loneliness through the restrictions being imposed on millions of people around the globe? The questions are many? How many are willing to stop and think and find possible answers? How many will implement long lasting solutions?
There is a well known saying: "all you need is just one". Just one can make a world of a difference. And this one, ladies and gentlemen, is Maria Matias...