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I fish for trout and, unless I’m with close friends, I do it alone. I plan elaborately to avoid the popular spots. I’ll stagger upstream over mossy rocks, grope bushes to flop up on a walkable bank, then skid heels-to-cheeks down gravel to find my own stretch of river. When someone violates my perimeter, a rash of territorial anger simmers my brow.
It’s not them, obviously. It’s me. Seeing another gear-ornamented middle-ager brings disappointing self recognition, breaking the trance of current, bugs, and casting. The trains of self-conscious rumination start to rumble (He’ll ask if I’ve had any luck. I just got here, but that sounds defensive…), and then accelerate (Maybe this is actually his spot and I’m the interloper…even so, I was here first…but I shouldn’t have to be in the position of telling him that…)
So, yes, I’m an introvert. And while I’m sure I’m not judged or pitied for this temperament, I’ve always suspected that if humans were able to self-engineer our genomes we introverts would be extinct in a few generations.
Except, in recent years, something strange has been happening. This agitated social environment in which we’re all tumbling might be changing things. The introversion gene might suddenly be an advantage.
The cliché is that introverts need quiet, but it’s more accurate to say we need to get away from the noise. We’re not seeking. We’re fleeing. And we’re good at it. Introverts need people like everyone else, but we’re better adapted to solitude and higher doses of detachment.
Nowadays, it’s so loud with hysteria that even the extroverts, the people people, are overwhelmed and sheltering in place. High-pitched propaganda, like weeds on depleted topsoil, is the only reliable scrub to grow on our socio-political digiscape. But extroverts are weak survivalists because without steady engagement and relation, they’re quickly deficient in vitamin e for energy. Now, they too are longing to be heard and understood in a noisy and disconnected world.
The word for that is loneliness. We all know about the spread of this plague:
- CDC ’24: about 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. reports feeling lonely, and about 1 in 4 reports lacking social or emotional support.
- Gallup ’24: 52 million U.S. adults experience significant daily loneliness.
- American Psychological Association ’25: about half of Americans report feeling lonely or emotionally disconnected.
- Harvard ‘24: Loneliness can increase stroke risk by up to 56%
- US Surgeon General ‘22: mortality effects of loneliness are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Data aside, it’s just science-fiction terrifying to feel alone amidst so many people with endless takes firing out from a billion little citadels of certainty.
This is the driving reason Louisville Magazine has been morphing over the last few years. We changed what you might call our animating promise from, “Here’s what’s doin’ in Louisville…” to an animating question, “Louisville, how’re we doin’?” That question started a conversation we wanted to have. We suspected others might, too.
We still think everyone wants to know about the best burger and boutique, but also about whether we’re doing our best. We started asking new kinds of questions to our Best of Louisville Voting Academy and sharing answers within a few days. How safe are we feeling? How proud of our town are we these days? Why do we think we have trouble improving roads or relations?
When big things happen in our city like the UPS crash, we all want to know how and why, but also how our neighbors are doing. So we invite people to join a growing and ongoing conversation to share.
Recently, we started asking more directly about belonging. The Magazine has close personal and professional ties to the Festival of Faiths, and “Sacred Belonging” was this year’s theme. From our questions and from the discussions at the festival, we learned a great deal about how our group and others feel about belonging in Louisville.
Do you know your next-door neighbors by name?
How many neighbors do you know by first name?
Within a half-mile radius of your home
What gives Louisville its sense of community?
Select all that apply
In no way have we learned enough to make any sweeping conclusions, but we couldn’t help but form a partially-baked theory that we’ll be so bold as to call a hypothesis. It comes in one of those two-things-true-at-the-same-time couplets:
Louisville is not immune to the loneliness problem AND Louisville is significantly better at belonging than most places.
By better understanding belonging in our city, maybe we can get a bit smarter about building on what we’re good at. What follows in these pages unpacks what we’ve asked and heard and learned from one another. We have healing to do and we have the means to do it.
The plants for the medicine we need grow well here. Gardeners wanted.