No man or woman is an island

With her kind permission, I’m sharing something here that Margaret Blair Young posted on Facebook this past Saturday.  I think it’s important:

I lost three former students to suicide this past year. It is astounding to me. My sister reported that they had three suicides within two blocks of her home last year. Another sister works at the VA with traumatized veterans who often have suicidal ideation. I discussed what seems to be an epidemic of suicides with Tshoper, our Congolese guest. He said that suicide is rare in the Congo–though their challenges are far greater than those we meet in the USA. I won’t offer any simple answers, but the fact that people in the Congo and throughout Africa are so social, that they sing and dance without inhibition often and easily suggests something we Americans may be missing, something we should pay attention to. 
Tshoper told me that if someone is sad in the Congo, friends instantly rally. I have seen that. I have seen large groups of people sleeping on the floor of a person who just lost a spouse. That kind of support and community is exemplary. We certainly have community in the USA, but we have much to learn from other cultures.
I offer no sure answers here (and I hope that nobody else offers any quick and simple answer–or blame–either), but I am noting something which I think important. I will continue to think about these issues. If we acknowledge that we are truly a global family, each a member of one another, we might learn that a toe can teach something to an ear. We are meant to form families, communities, and to learn from and support each other. We are hard-wired for that.

I’m concerned about the weakening of community, as well, and I see it as pervasive in our society.  It shows up, of course, in the rise of the religious “nones.”  But not only there.  The decline of the rate of affiliation with organized religion must be viewed as part of a larger trend, just as the decline in the rate of Latter-day Saint convert baptisms must be viewed in the context of the overall trend of religious disaffiliation (or failure to affiliate).  Fraternal organizations like the Masons, the Elks, Rotary International, Kiwanis, the Lions Club, and so forth, are declining, and have been doing so for decades.

In 2017, half of American adults — 50% — were married.  That figure is down 9 percentage points over the past quarter century and sharply down from the peak of 72% in 1960.

We are losing community.  We urgently need to rebuild it.  We aren’t constituted to live, let alone to flourish, as social atoms.

I actually believe that the Church has something uniquely powerful to contribute here, if we will only avail ourselves of it.  I’m thinking not only of the potentially wonderful and supportive community of a good ward family and of ministering brothers and sisters, but also of the power of temple sealings and of family history, which can bestow a transformative sense of identity and multigenerational, even eternal, belonging.

I won’t dance, though.