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Do you have people in your life who would notice if you dropped dead, disappeared, or left without notice (other than people at work, and family)? I mean they would notice within a few days or less.
If so, who are they?
If not, is that your preference?
What inspired this question is that I lived overseas for a long time and recently came back to the US to try living here and see how it goes. Compared to some places I've lived, it seems that the trend here is for people to be more isolated. I found a book online called "Bowling Alone" that has some interesting commentary on that. Yes, there's Meetup, which is a good thing, but it's rare for people to be in touch outside of scheduled meetings. Also, a lot of them meet only once a month, and you might not even see the same people next time.
PLEASE NOTE: I'm not asking for advice! I'm just interested to know what people are experiencing. Because it's weird!
The trend here is not so much isolating oneself as it is making choices to not extend yourself towards others in friendship. Fortunately, I enjoy having lots of friends and there are times when I don't have a single free day because I am visiting with or going places with friends. I also have my son and his wife and of course my husband. I also think that in any friendship, there is always one who works harder than the other to keep the friendship going. All of what you wrote just simply depends on how many people you want in your life..you either let them in and have friends forever or you decide to spend your life "isolated".
My animals would notice they didnt get fed. Hard to say within a few days, probably a week tho. My Friends often come by but not every day. Im pretty much isolated and dont make an effort to talk to friends on a daily basis.
Probably only 2 friends and my ex gf would notice I'm dead. That doesn't really bother me, when I'm dead I have no reason to care. I kind of think of it as a good thing, if a lot of people liked me, they'd be really sad that I was dead but now only a few people will be sad lol
Being so far away from family, and being that they don't call anymore and email instead, I always keep a roommate or 2 around, and being that I'm a loner with no one I can label a true friend in this transient city.
When I moved to Phoenix, after my partner died, I was alone in my house and I had a near fatal accident (bumping my head on a spinning ceiling fan with blood spurting out) and after that I made a firm decision that I would never live alone again, with no family in sight for 1600 miles, not that they'd notice anything amiss, given how busy everyone is today trying making a living.
I now have 2 roommates and I fear not, one has been with me 13 years, and he knows my habits thru and thru.
Some of my older friends, we only talk once every couple weeks, they'd have no idea!
Oh people would notice when I am not around!! I am VERY active in church and I am one of the people that plans activities for our women's ministry. If I don't show up to one of the meetings or to church they are at my front porch or calling me within minutes LOL
I guess that's good, huh?
Do you have people in your life who would notice if you dropped dead, disappeared, or left without notice (other than people at work, and family)? I mean they would notice within a few days or less.
I'm so sorry you probably didn't mean this to be funny but this really made me giggle. I think you are right though, so far I've found people here are very insulated in their lives.
I used to wonder about this question back home, but then we had a leaving party and more than 300 people turned up to see us off, so I was pleased to think that actually people did care a lot about us.
Its probably going to take years to build up those kind of friendships again. I think that's the question isn't it? - having good friends around you. Very important in life I think, but it takes time.
Other than family, the neighbors would notice I was missing since I regularly walk my dogs through the neighborhood. If they don't see us out and about, they would check to see what happened. We are older and so are the neighbors and the town is on the small side. It is a good thing to get to know your neighbors these days.
I agree. We are moving house next week and have invited all our neighbours. I think that's really important.
People would notice but they wouldn't be concerned right away. It might take more than a week for someone other than family to be concerned enough to check up, unless we had plans. I never miss anything so it would be a huge red flag.
The trend here is not so much isolating oneself as it is making choices to not extend yourself towards others in friendship.
I'd say that's partly true. There's a need to extend oneself, but there are also different trends depending on where you are (for example, someone in a previous post referred to Las Vegas as being a transient city). I can make the choice to reach out to others -- sometimes they reach back, and sometimes they don't. It can be a due to a variety of factors, and I've found that location is one of them (to a degree).
I moved from No.Cal. to China many years ago, and found a very big cultural difference. In China (not so much in Beijing or Shanghai, but out in the provinces) I noticed people just calling each other up spontaneously to meet for tea (and it's not because I was a foreigner -- the locals do that with each other). They prefer that over setting something up days in advance. And when you meet friends there, it's fairly common that you meet their friends as well ("hey, I'm going with some friends this evening for tea/dinner/karaoke/whatever, why don't you come along?"). I'm not saying these things never happened in No.Cal., it was just far less common, in my experience and observation.
Perhaps it's a difference of developed areas vs. developing. Beijing and Shanghai, being more developed, are a bit more "rat race" "I don't have time to hang out" kinds of places, but nowhere near the extreme I experienced in No.Cal. Hong Kong was also at an extreme. Getting people to come out for coffee was like pulling teeth. People go to coffee shops, but, like California, you see lots of people going to Starbucks alone, perhaps the majority. It's a contrast to the tea houses in China where people are always with friends. (Of course, this could change, as China develops more of a "rat race" culture. See also the article "Singapore Vs Thailand" on the stickmanbangkok blog for an interesting comparison between these two countries.)
What I found funny in China was that local people would not believe me that I felt relatively isolated in the U.S., because they watch TV shows like "Friends" and "Sex in the City" and think that those shows are what everyone's life is like in the U.S. I had to explain to them that TV is a business, and they are showing things that many people want in their lives but don't have.
Not that everyone in the U.S. is frustrated. Some people do have friends. And some people don't want to hang out with friends so much. Fair enough, to each his own. My point is that U.S. culture is better at supporting a more individualistic lifestyle, while some other places are better at supporting a more "tribal" lifestyle. Perhaps if you have a family, and a lot of interaction at work, then you won't feel isolated. But if you don't have a family, and your work isn't people-oriented (e.g., freelance writer, day trader, etc.), then you might have a greater need for social opportunities beyond just the superficial. I do, anyway.
What inspired me to take this poll was that I moved to L.A. by myself last year, and have found it an uphill battle to make social connections. I'm already doing the "standard" things, like attending Meetup groups (even starting one of my own), or different kinds of spiritual or support groups, and I still notice that, on most days, if I were to drop dead, nobody would notice for probably a week or more. Of course I understand that it takes time to develop such connections, but I met some people in these groups who said that they face a similar situation, and they've been in L.A. for over a decade! So as I decide whether to live in L.A. or somewhere else, I started googling things like "sense of community", "social fabric", and "social cohesion." What I did not find are rankings of cities or countries by "sense of community" or "social fabric/cohesion" or whatever (I suspect L.A. would rank near the bottom). But I did find some interesting anecdotes (like the stickmanbangkok blog I mentioned) and other studies (like the "Bowling Alone" book I mentioned).
Bottom line: I've lived in a lot of places, and L.A. is probably the hardest I've found so far, in terms of starting from scratch and trying to find one's social circle or "support system" as it were. Your mileage may vary, but I would not recommend it as a place to start over, unless you have a strong connection to something/someone here. While I'm willing to give it a chance and be optimistic and proactive, I don't see myself being here much longer, as I'm not one to prefer to live in what is probably a paradise for individualists or isolationists, but more of a desert for "tribal" types like myself.
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