Full Video Transcript

Presenters: Ginger Williams, Improved Health Specialist, Colorado State University Extension, and Jane Barton, Aging Expert and Founder of Cardinal, LLC.

Video link: https://youtu.be/RdZ6lgCPgOs

Ginger Williams speaks:
Good morning everyone, and welcome to the first of an eight part series for our Advancing Healthy Aging webinar series. It’s a pleasure to spend time together this morning. As many of you know, we are all aging and the aging population in our communities is growing. With that growth comes unique challenges and opportunities. It’s essential that we as extension professionals, healthcare professionals, community leaders, and community members feel prepared to support and engage alongside older adults no matter what our background or expertise. This series is designed with you in mind to provide valuable insights and tools that can empower you to navigate age related conversations and support healthy aging within your local context. Over the next eight sessions, we’ll explore practical strategies, research information, and real world examples to help build your confidence in addressing topics around aging. Whether you’re involved in programming, outreach, municipal challenges, or just like to be involved in your community, these workshops will give you the tools and understanding to engage with these critical topics in meaningful and impactful ways.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for your dedication to fostering healthy communities across Colorado and the nation. I also want to share a special thank you to all of my CSU extension colleagues, as well as other extension colleagues in Missouri, Wisconsin, and Illinois who are joining us today. Welcome. We’re excited to embark on this learning journey together and to see how each of you’ll bring this knowledge to life in the communities that you serve. With that, I want to share a few things to note before we start. We’re grateful for the support of the USDA Rural Health and Safety Education grant, which has made this series possible. At the end of this webinar, we’ll share a link to our evaluation forum in both English and Spanish. It’s brief and will help us gather valuable, confidential feedback and data to send to the USDA, as well as help us to continue to provide high quality healthy aging programming driven by your needs. We work with faculty and students at CSU to process this feedback as prime learning opportunities to engage undergraduate and graduate students in the field of aging. We are recording this webinar in both English and Spanish, and once the recordings are ready, we’ll email them to you along with any additional resources. If you’ve signed up for other webinars this year but can’t make it, no worries. Those are recorded as well and emailed to you.

Without further ado, I would like to introduce our presenter, Jane Barton. Jane Barton is an incredible storyteller and partner to CSU extension and was featured with us last year with the caregiver workshop series. Welcome, Jane Barton.

Jane Barton speaks:
Thank you, Ginger. Let me share my screen and away we will go. So I’m delighted to be part of the educational series, Advancing Healthy Aging, and as Ginger noted, we are all aging right here and right now, and so knowledge is power. The more we know about it, the more likely we are to be, well live well and ultimately to age well. And today my focal point is this whole topic of longing to belong, the importance of social connectedness as we live and as we age. And I hope you will find it engaging, maybe thought provoking and hopefully motivating. So I certainly want to send you a warm welcome. Although we’re not physically together, thank goodness, we have technology that can bridge the gap. And we have a space and a time and a place to come together to talk about important subjects, and that’s afforded to us by sponsorships with CSU Extension and also a client of mine, AARP Colorado.

They’re underwriting my speaking efforts today and they are committed to community education as well. I’ve worked with them for well over a decade and they have a wealth of information online about aging as well as caregiving if you care to poke around when time permits. Now, if you’re new to me, if you’ve not attended one of my programs before, just a quick little thumbnail sketch as to who I am and what I’m about. Obviously my name is Jane Barton. My company is Cardinal, LLC, and I serve as an educational consultant, which means I get to do what I love each and every day. I serve as a speaker, a writer, and or a listener, and I focus on the topics that I’m passionate about, aging, end of life, care and caregiving. I have a history and hospice and palliative care. I served as a chaplain for a short period of time, and then I moved into the directorship of education for a palliative care institute here in Denver, Colorado for many years.

Now, before that I was in finance. Before that, I was in the oil business working as a geologist, so a rather curious path indeed. But in all those realms, I’ve always been a lifelong student. I’ve always believed that knowledge is power and that if we have the information that we need at a particular moment in time, we can make informed decisions instead of merely reacting out of fear when challenged. And I know aging is frightening for a lot of folks. And so this series of programs will help to fill in some of your gaps of knowledge related to aging so you can be well and ultimately age well. And that certainly is my mission today to share with you some beneficial information related to social wellbeing. So that’s where we’re going to start. We’ll do a little bit of definitional work, then we’ll recognize our inherent longing to belong, which is just part of being human.

We’ll look at some of the research related to the social nature of human beings, and then I’m going to share with you and highlight what I refer to as the five of belonging, something I think you can take away from this presentation and utilize in your own lived experience. And I will conclude by offering some questions for your consideration that hopefully will generate some ideas on how you can nurture belonging in your own life, in your own community, in the days, weeks, and years to come. So with that said, it’s time to chat about social wellbeing. What is this concept? Well, it’s defined in this way. Social wellbeing can be defined as the sharing, developing and sustaining of meaningful relationships with others. This allows you to feel authentic and valued and provides a sense of connectedness and belonging. So connection and community at any age and at any stage is an essential facet of life.

Now, this is the premise of a lot of the work that our current US Surgeon General is doing. If you’re not familiar with Dr. Vivek Murthy, allow me to introduce you to him. He is a wonderful presence in the world, and he’s on a mission to address what has been referred to as the loneliness epidemic, not only in our country but throughout the world. I think it was in 2017, he published a book in entitled Together. Now, all of these resources that I’m noting are included in a bibliography with the associated handout for this program. I believe it was attached to some email that Ginger generated for you, but you again can review that when time permits. But he’s written the book together. He also has published two white papers from the US Surgeon General office. You can access those online through that particular website.

All of these resources highlight the fact that we are relational creatures, and there’s a tremendous concern through sociology, psychology, and our healthcare services that far too many people lack disc connectedness, and it’s compromising the quality as well as the quantity of life. So this is a huge concern. Now in the work that Vivek Murthy has done, he recognizes that social connection can encompass the interactions, relationships, roles, and the sense of connection between individuals, communities, and or society. That’s the experience. So I can connect individually to you. A larger community can connect to another community, societies connect to other societies, nations connect to nations. I think you get the idea. So there are varieties of connections, but they’re all critically important. Again, if we are to be well age well and to live well, and these connections go a long way to assuaging our longing to belong.

Now, what do I mean by the term belong? Well, it literally means to go with now the image that comes to mind when I say that to myself is walking hand in hand with another person experiencing the journey of life together through all the twists and the turns, the ups and the downs, the good times and the bad. And so if we belong to another, we have a reliable support system. We will not fear that we have to face some of the challenges of life alone and this longing to belong seemingly as a basic psychological need. This was described by Balmeister and Leary in 1995 in a seminal publication in which they presented their hypothesis of belongingness. I know that’s a mouthful, but that’s how they described it. And at the conclusion of many years of research, what they realized is that belonging is as essential to sustaining life as food and drink for humanity.

And belonging is comprised of feeling loved, feeling respected, being seen, and being heard. Now, this was really the basic premise that led to additional research and a lot of conversation that echoed many of the findings initially published in 1995. Consider the voice of Solomon Ash, a psychologist of the 20th century. He noted that our desire to be part of a group is among the most powerful forces to be found. And then there’s the voice of Abraham Maslow, another psychologist of the 20th century. You may be familiar with his work related to the hierarchy of needs. Basically, what do we need to achieve and acquire if we are to self-actualize as a human being? And by that I mean to flourish, to thrive, to live life in full bloom. Well, we start with the basics. We address our physiological needs. That would be food, water, shelter, clothing.

You kind of get the idea. Once that’s accomplished, then we focus on our safety and security, and then we start to focus on love and belonging, friendships, family, intimacy, a sense of connection, and we must achieve that before we move on and self-actualize. Now, Jeffrey Cohen is a more contemporary researcher. He’s out of Stanford. He published a book in entitled, belonging in 2022, and he describes it in this way. Belonging is the feeling that we’re part of a larger group that values respects and cares for us and to which we feel we have something to contribute. So he highlights a very important aspect of belonging and community. There’s an expectation of reciprocity, and by that I mean an exchange of gifts. I have something to offer to the group, but I also have needs to receive something back. And so it’s this lovely back and forth, give and take.

So it means it’s mutually beneficial now, recognizing that we have this inherent longing to belong, it’s disconcerting to also recognize there is a global crisis of belonging, the loneliness epidemic that I referred to previously. When we look to the future, how are we going to resolve this? Or will we just have to learn how to live with it? Well, I hope not because it is life draining. It is not life sustaining. If we are disconnected from one another, not belonging, feeling excluded, we suffer social pain. And social pain is equally as significant as physical pain. It’s when we feel insignificant, when we feel less than and we are disconnected. So we are at greater risk of suffering what is referred to as diseases of despair, anxiety, clinical depression, things of that nature. Now, in stark contrast to feeling disconnected and not belonging is having this overwhelming life sustaining sense of belonging to another or to a community.
That’s when life opens up. That’s when we feel confident and self-assured. That’s when we become more humane. This according to Jeffrey Cohen again. Now, why is that a consequence of belonging? Well, if we’re in relationship with each other, if we make that connection, then we get to know each other. And once we know each other, a natural outgrowth of that is that we care about each other and care for each other, and we are less inclined to be diminishing of another person of belittling them, of disrespecting them. Instead, we treat them humanely with kindness and compassion. So throughout the journey of life, I think personally and professionally, we are successful when we have that overwhelming sense of belonging. Now, if you want to dive in more deeply to the decades of research that are available to you, I have listed a lot of these seminal publications and research projects in the bibliography, and I would recommend that you would start with the work of Ainsworth and Bowlby.

They established the theory of attachment. They looked at the relationship between mothers and new infants, and how important that sense of belonging and connection proves to be for the human development of that baby. You can move into the work again of Vivek Murthy, Julianne Holt Lund out of Brigham Young University. You can look at the work of John Cacioppo who published loneliness in 2008, and then move into the contemporary realm of the work of Vivek Murthy and Jeffrey Cohen. So if you want a little homework, there’s no lack of information to examine and to explore. Now, with that said, I do want to address one revelation that I discovered in Cohen’s work in his book Belonging. And this was a concept I had not heard of before. It’s called Belonging Uncertainty. He describes it as the state of mind in which one’s suffers from doubts about one is fully accepted in a particular environment or ever could be.
So it’s a time in which we feel detached, unmoored, unanchored, not connected to anyone in particular. Now, Cohen also recognizes that this experience, this sensation occurs after significant change and the subsequent transition, the transitional time in which we’re trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between what was before the change happened and what will be moving into the future. This is when belonging uncertainty bubbles up. Now, this was kind of an aha moment for me because change is very common in the latter part of life. And significant change can occur in a very compressed period of time, all varieties of change. So think about this. Let’s consider the time after 55 or 61 significant change is retirement. Even if you long to retire, that’s a big transition. Then perhaps you suffer the death of your spouse or partner. Huge transition, the death of friends in your peer group.

Another huge transition, what about a diagnosis of a significant progressive condition, a change in health, a turning point in your life? And maybe you start to doubt whether you have a significant life at all without a job. If you’ve retired, you have a loss of meaning, another challenging transition, and all of this can occur within a matter of months or perhaps years. So this is when we can really start to struggle with who we are and who we belong with. How do we reconnect or we have to figure that out if we are to be well and age well. Now, you may be unfamiliar with the term and the concept of belonging uncertainty, but I know you felt it. We all have. We did it collectively a few years ago when a noteworthy change in transition occurred. The global pandemic. Just think about it. Consider looking back on our experience.
We received the universal message that was so clear. We are better together. When Covid landed on our shores and we were forced to separate, we longed to reconnect. We wanted what we were not able to have. We missed the physicality of being together, hugging on each other, caring for each other. And so we recognized we had a longing to belong. And although we tried to bridge the gap technologically by zooming and texting and emailing and calling and FaceTiming, it just wasn’t the same, was it? I don’t think so. We needed and wanted each other in the flesh at a time when things were so uncertain, when we had no idea what the future held. And there was so much fear and anxiety in the air. So we know what belonging uncertainty feels like, and it reinforced our appreciation of how important social connectedness truly is.

We remembered as human beings at the genetic level. We are social creatures. We need each other and we want each other. Now, John Cacioppo in his book, loneliness, published in 2008, recognized this, and I love his phrase, humans are an obligatory, gregarious species. Basically, there’s this gravitational pull that brings us together. We can’t help ourselves. We want to be connected, we want to be together. We want to go with each other. And that is a good thing indeed, because that characteristic, that trait of human beings actually ensured the survival of our species. So think about it. When we first started roaming the earth as hunters and gatherers, we recognized fairly quickly that there was safety in numbers. And so we band it together so we would not individually become the main course for predators at that time. So we banded together for safety for a common cause.

And after being together for a while, we started thinking, well, this isn’t all bad. I kind of like hanging out with these other people. And a natural outgrowth of that was that we started to care about each other. And so we continued being socially connected and evolving. Now, I recognize that living, working and playing in community sometimes can be frustrating. We think there has to be a more efficient way of moving through life. Sometimes we never get everybody on the same page moving in the same direction, feels like we’re trying to herd cats, right? But think about the wisdom that is expressed in this African proverb. If you want to go fast, go alone. It’s efficient. Absolutely it is. But if you want to go far and if you want to have a life-giving experience of life, go together, it’s worth the time. It’s worth the effort. It’s worth your attention.

So if you buy into that premise, it begs the question, does the typical American stereotype serve us well today? That being that we should be independent, autonomous, and self-reliant. I don’t know about you, but I was raised to achieve these characteristics, these traits. My parents wanted me to be self-sustaining. Now, I’m not disparaging that these are qualities to actually try to achieve. However, just like any other strength, if we overplay our hand, a strength can become a weakness. So if I’m too independent, if I’m too autonomous, if I am too self-reliant, I will keep everyone at arm’s length. I will not connect other than in a superficial way because I can do it all right. I can achieve anything I want to. It all becomes about me instead of we. Now, if you’re interested in pursuing this line of thought a little more intentionally, I refer you to the work of David Brooks in his book, The Second Mountain.

He’s very concerned. He said, I now think that rampant individualism of our current culture is a catastrophe. The emphasis on self is a catastrophe, and that’s because we are intensely social creatures, deeply interconnected with one another. And the idea of the lone individual rationally and willfully steering his or her own life course is often an illusion, and it’s a very lonely existence if we try to fly solo. So the bottom line is this, my friends, I think we’re all in this together and we are definitely better together. We need and want meaningful human connections because when disconnected, that’s when the social wheels start to fall off. When disconnected, we are more susceptible to the diseases of despair. We feel anxious, fearful, and we feel rejected by others, again, not worthy of the time and attention of others. And we start to feel lonely. Now, I know loneliness.

It’s just part of our human existence. If we were in a room today and I asked you, have you ever felt lonely? Every hand would go up in the room. It’s part of being human. And in fact, the sensation serves as kind of a red flag warning. That sensation actually serves the same purpose as hunger and thirst. It indicates we need something. So when I’m hungry, I need food. When I’m thirsty, I need water. When I’m lonely, I need you. I need to connect to someone else. Now, it doesn’t become a problem until it becomes persistent. This was recognized by John Cacioppo. Again, loneliness becomes an issue of serious concern only when it settles in long enough to create a persistent self-enforcing loop of negative thoughts, sensations, and behaviors. And when that happens, when that’s your day-to-day existence, it becomes a downward spiral feeding on itself.

So just think about it. If you’re lonely, if you feel rejected, if you are depressed, you are less inclined to reach out for that which you need because you’re not going to risk additional rejection. If you ask someone, Hey, you want to go get a cup of coffee? And they say, no, don’t have time. You just head down that spiral, right? You just keep spinning. And as that continues on becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, it becomes a chronic condition. And sadly, what experts like Dr. Vivek Murthy have recognized chronic loneliness is on the rise. And that is very disconcerting for those in medical care because chronic loneliness is now seen as a rival to other major health risk factors that was recognized way back in 1988. So it’s equal in its significance to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, having high cholesterol that goes untreated, having high blood pressure, being obese and being lethargic.

So chronic loneliness not only compromises the quality of your life, it is now proven through longitudinal studies, it can slice off seven and a half years of longevity. That’s a lot of living to compromise because of a lack of social connectedness. So short and sweet loneliness hurts deeply, profoundly, and we ignore this at our own peril. So how do we assuage loneliness? How do we mitigate that sensation? Well, it’s not just about having random human contact. So today, if you’re feeling lonely, it’s not about running to the nearest mall and kind of hanging out with three or 400 people that are shopping. In fact, that will intensify your sense of loneliness because you’re not connected to any of those people. So assuaging loneliness, it’s about the quality of that contact and who you’re having contact with. So you only assuage your loneliness if you hang out with people you connect to that care about you, that you.

Now, it’s also important to recognize when lonely, there’s a spectrum of loneliness or different varieties or shades or hues of loneliness, and you need to understand which kind of loneliness you’re experiencing, so you know how to mitigate it, how to get to the root of it. So I think more often than not, we think emotional loneliness, a lack of intimacy with other people. So you may have a lot of acquaintances, people you bump into every day, perhaps some folks you work with, maybe you go to the grocery store, the checkers and the stalkers, but they don’t know your heart. You haven’t revealed your soul to them. So it’s kind of a relationship that resides on the surface, but you haven’t allowed people to dive deeply with you. So there’s a lack of intimacy. It’s not a satisfying relationship, so you can remain lonely. A second variety of loneliness is social loneliness.

This is what we all experienced during Covid, a lack of human contact. Now, I know some of you that are listening today may live in a geographic area that is somewhat remote. This could be a challenge for you. I know west of Denver in the foothills and up in the mountains, there are many people that love that experience. But in the winter it becomes a little bit oppressive When the snow starts flying and they are not able to move around as easily, they start to become socially lonely because they miss that social interaction with people on a day-to-day basis. So it’s the lack of contact. There’s existential loneliness, and this is related to a connection with our sense of the sacred or the divine, which leads to a lack of meaning and purpose and significance, oftentimes resulting in an existential crisis, spiritual angst. And then the fourth variety is collective loneliness.

Now, this is an interesting variety. This is rooted in our lack of belonging, even when surrounded by other people. I have had the privilege to talk to many people who have shared honestly with me this kind of loneliness. And more often than not, it is in the aftermath of a recent relocation, moving from a home perhaps of 30 or 40 years transitioning into a long-term care community. And the community may have all the bells and whistles, all the amenities, a gorgeous setting, but the person has not had the time or has not been able to set down deep roots and to connect to the other residents. And they feel so incredibly alone. Oftentimes, they don’t even understand what they’re feeling, and it’s not recognized by others. So this is an important variety of loneliness to be very attentive, to understand and learn how to recognize, and then hopefully be able to assist another person in making the connections needed to mitigate that sensation.

So for all these different varieties, I love the sentiment offered by Fromm Reichman, a psychologist that escaped Nazi Germany in the 1950s. She was actually the first scientist to publish an article on loneliness. She described it as the want of intimacy. And I think that is a good summation. So loneliness, it is that sensation. It’s a sign that something is missing and it’s something we need to pay attention to. And what’s missing when we’re lonely? Well, it’s a sense of belonging, of going with another. It’s feeling at home. We’re missing that we don’t feel connected. What else is missing? Being seen and heard, being known by others, feeling socially connected, sharing the journey, having that companion that we can lean on, being part of a caring community, believing that we matter, that we would be missed if we didn’t show up. When all of that is missing or even just one of those attributes are missing from our lives, that’s when we long. That’s when we pine to belong to another.

We pine and we long because it counteracts the toxic experience of chronic loneliness. So what’s to be done? Well, I want you to remember the five seas of belonging. This can right the ship. This can enhance your social wellbeing. So I want to run through the five Cs of belonging with you briefly. We’re going to talk about the importance of community. We’ll look at connection then, commitment, care, and communion. So let’s begin with community. What is it? Well, it’s those with whom we hang. It’s our people. It’s the people we resonate with that we see maybe on a daily basis, but we have a connection that even if we don’t see them daily, we just kind of pick up where we left off. The story continues to unfold. Now, if you want a more academic definition of community, here’s what David Brooks thinks. A community is healthy when relationships are felt deeply, when there are histories of trust, a shared sense of mutual belonging, norms of mutual commitment, habits of mutual assistance, and real affection from one heart and soul to another.

So it’s not superficial acquaintances, you connect at the heartfelt level and count the number of times he used the term mutual. It’s mutually beneficial for everyone in that community. There’s reciprocity, a give and take, an exchange of gifts. Now, a wonderful model of community comes from the Okinawa when tradition, it’s referred to as moi. And maybe you’ve heard of this before. I read about this years ago and I try to emulate this. It may be a little late, but it’s still serving me well. But it’s basically about having traveling companions that will travel with you from start to finish. And the tradition goes somewhat like this. In Okinawa, kiddos of the age of around four to five years of age are introduced to each other in groups of maybe five to seven. And that Moai is expected to stay together until everyone dies at the end of life.

And recognize Okinawa is one of the blue zones where most community members live to a hundred plus. So think about this. If you’re introduced to your moi, you’ll be traveling with these individuals for 95 plus years. They’re going to know you inside and out because the majority of people in Okinawa stay in Okinawa. And so these people meet at least once a week, maybe twice a week. And so these are lifelong friends, sharing activities, ideas, feelings, values, history. They support each other physically, emotionally, financially, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually. You talk about a healthy community, this is a thick system of relationships, something that we can choose to emulate. Now, I can’t go back to being four years old, but I have been trying to reconnect with some friends in elementary school, people who knew me way back when, stories and experiences that I did not share with my friends here in Denver.

I came here as an adult. So we can reconstruct our own moi, and many people are using social media and social platforms to achieve just that, going out on Facebook or Instagram and tracking people down and reconnecting. So something you might consider. So the first C is community. Vitally important if we are to belong. Now, once you have a community, how you stay in relationship is through connections. Belonging requires connections. So what do I mean by that? Well, let’s look at the definition offered by Brene Brown. She is a out of the University of Houston, an expert in vulnerability and shame. And she says, I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued. People can give and receive without judgment and derive sustenance and strength from the relationship. I’m sure you’ve felt this with some of your family or friends. There’s just that spark. There’s that energy that just you long to feel when you’re around them. It’s that gravitational pull, that’s connection. And when connected, we have an enhanced sense of self and purpose. We feel safe and secure with the person to whom we’re connected. And it goes to the point that this is what life is all about. I love the sentiment of Martin Buber, a theologian of the 20th century. He says, all real living is meeting. And I would add to that quote and connecting.

Now the third sea is commitment. So if we have our community, our people that we hang with, and we have connected to them, how do we stay connected? It requires commitment, and that is making a promise to someone or something without an expectation of reward. This again, according to David Brooks committed to another, we invest our entire being in the other person in the community, and the return on that investment, the time and attention and effort to commit to another. It’s beyond measure. It leads to a meaningful life rooted in relationships. It’s all about the relationships. And that is born out by the work of Robert Waldinger. In 2023, he published a book, the Good Life, in which he reported his conclusions to an 83 year long study conducted by Harvard. And the premise of this study was to follow a group of adolescents through the entirety of their life to interview them periodically. And they were trying to tease out what constitutes a good life? Is it money? Is it prestige? Is it power? Is it a certain profession? Is it the acquisition of stuff? What constituted a good life? Well, after reviewing all the findings, Waldinger concluded that good relationships keep us healthier and happier.

So his answer is the good life equals good relationships. The good life equals social connectedness. The good life means you belong. Now, the fourth C is care. I already alluded to this, but if you have a community that you are connected to and you are committed to, then you naturally care about the people in your community. When we care, we ensure the health and the wellbeing of another and the community. So it’s not all about me. When I am part of this five C proposition, it’s about we. I am focused on the greater good. And if my community is well, if my community is healthy, then that dials into my own health and wellbeing. So it ultimately, I guess, is self-serving. When caring for and when cared for, that reinforces our sense of belonging. Now, the final C is communion. Or you may remember this as cooking.

You can do either one, but basically the premise is this, cooking and communing create community. So think about your own life, your own family. Where do you hang out in your house? Well, if you’re like me, we always gravitate toward the kitchen. And when we’re chopping and dicing and sauteing at the end of the day, making dinner, we’re chatting about life. We’re solving all the problems of the world. We will relate our stresses of the day, our joys, our sorrows. And through this process, we de-stress connect at a deeper level. We reinforce those connections and those bonds and our commitment to be in community. So I encourage all of us to gather around the table, to reignite the tradition of the family meal instead of everybody just dashing in and dashing out. There’s so many benefits of coming together, being together, and communing. So share a meal and share yourself coming together, you as a community can celebrate the five Cs of belonging, community, connection, commitment, care, and communion.

Now, are you wondering if this approach actually works while I happen to have a real life example for you? Let’s consider the research conducted by Dan Ner. Now, you may be familiar with his name. He’s been involved in 20 plus years of research of the Blue Zones. He’s worked for National Geographic, and the Blue Zones are geographic areas where people typically live longer and they live better. And this is documented in a Netflix documentary published in 2023, entitled Live to a hundred, the Secrets of the Blue Zones. Now, the five geographic areas identified with greater quality and quantity of life include the following, I, Greece, Loma Linda, California, Sardinia, Italy, Okinawa, Japan, and Nicola Costa Rica. Now in this documentary, Butner traveled to each location to chat with community members. And as he described it, he wanted to tease out the secrets to a long life and a good life.

So basically how to be well, age well and live well. And after years of exploration and conversations he has proclaimed to the world that he has to discovered the four secrets to doing so, the first is to move naturally. Now, it’s interesting, he uses this phrase instead of daily exercise. Moving naturally is a way of being in the world, not relying on conveniences that we tap into each and every day in the United States. So in the Blue Zones, people walk everywhere. They engage in manual labor, they have gardens, they harvest their food. If they bake bread, they need it. They don’t put it in a bread machine. It’s the simplest of things, but it is a physical effort that pays off in the long run. Their physical wellbeing is incredibly good. The second secret is attitude and worldview. How do we see the world? And more importantly, how do we manage stress?

When I was watching the documentary, I recognized that in the United States, we don’t even realize that we are chronically stressed in the blue zones because they practice the five Cs of belonging. Every evening is like a therapy session. They de-stress with family, they solve the problems of the day, and then they move on with life. Hence, they don’t have some of the medical concerns that we do related to cancer and cardiac issues. A third secret is to eat wisely a plant-based diet. The Mediterranean diet basically, and then relevant to our discussion today is the secret sauce that’s connections and community. Remember, I shared with you the model of community from Okinawa. Well, in all the other Blue Zones, connections with family, with friends who are like family, that’s of primary importance, knowing that have a reliable support system, that they belong to others that made all the difference in the world, enhancing their longevity as well as the quality of life.

So I encourage you, if you want to view this on Netflix again, I watched this about a year ago. It may have made its way to some other streaming services, but just search for live to 100. And I encourage you to watch the four-part series with family and friends. I actually watched this one afternoon on a winter’s day with one of my best friends. We binged it because the weather was horrid. And at the end of it, it ignited a conversation that was so interesting and fascinating. I learned things about my friend I’d never heard before, and we were talking about the possibilities of perhaps making some changes in our own respective lives and communities. So live to a hundred, it’s engaging, it’s inspiring, it’s potentially life-changing.

So to conclude our conversation today, I want to pose some questions to you on how do we nurture belonging? And before we can start thinking about how to improve our sense of belonging, maybe to mitigate some loneliness, we need to know where we’re starting from. And I want you to be honest with yourself. Consider your current social network, your sense of social connectedness, your sense of belonging. And this is not about blaming or shaming or being right or wrong, it’s just a reality check. Are there some gaps in your network? So ask yourself, do you feel home today? Do you feel confident and comfortable where you reside, where you work and where you play? Do you have that sense of belonging in those spaces and places feeling at home? Why or why not? Is there something missing or are you doing fairly well in that regard?

And do you have a reliable support system? Do you have people you can count on? And by that I mean people that if you called at 3:00 AM and said, get over here, they would show up on your front porch, maybe in a ragged robe, fuzzy slippers and bed hair, holding two cups of coffee saying, what’s going on? Let’s figure this out without question, you could rely on them because you belong with them. They are going with you. Do you have traveling companions, people that enrich your lived experience, that bring joy into the journey? And are there people who are counting on you? Remember belonging community. This is a reciprocal relationship, mutually beneficial. And if there are people counting on you, do you choose to go with them? Are you reliable? Are you walking with them? Are you a solid pillar of support? Well, I hope so, because belonging, it’s a two-way street.

And if we are going to pave the way to successfully age, to age in a healthy manner, to enjoy this lived experience, we have to realize it’s not all about me, and it’s not all about you. It’s about us. And how can we come together and belong to each other so we can go with each other in life-giving ways? That’s a question that we all answer in our own unique way, hopefully in a very successful way. So I always close my programs with what I call a heartfelt ritual. Basically, I just have one more thing to say. So when it comes to longing to belong, the importance of social connectedness, I hope you’ll reflect on the words of Helen Keller. Always remember alone, we can do so little together. We can do so much. This is the heart of belonging. Yes, we truly belong together.

So a few more resources. If I didn’t give you enough homework already, if you care to check out my website, if you’re interested in other events that I’m doing, you can go to cardinal life.com, click on the events tab. Just a heads up, I’m kind of winding down for 2024. I’m taking December off, but I will kickstart the new year, probably in late January or early February. And I would love to see you online again, if you’re looking for a resource on caregiving. I wrote Caregiving for the Genius a few years ago, available in libraries as well as on Amazon. And if you’re a fan of podcast, I have Cardinal Musings with Jane Barton, and they’re about 20 or 25 minutes. You can access those through Spotify, apple, whatever you choose to use. More than anything, I want to thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit of the journey with you.

And if you have some lingering questions that we didn’t address today, no, you can always send me an email. We can continue to chat. And I’m sending you many blessings on your journey. I truly hope that you can advance healthy aging in your own experience and in your respective communities. So here’s my contact information, Cardinal life@msn.com. Know if you drop me an email, I will respond. And so now this is the best part of the program for me, questions and maybe some stories that you want to share about this whole concept of social connectedness. So I’m going to stop sharing my screen so we can see who’s in the room and if anything’s come up in the q and a. Any comments that people would like to offer? I am all ears and Ginger, you are muted.

Ginger Williams speaks:
Gosh, every time. Sorry about that everybody. No, thank you so much. Jane. We do have one question in the Q and a box right now, and I’m fascinated by the MOI concept. Their question is, what if members of your MOI are toxic? Is it recommended to seek a new moi? And how do you find them?

Jane Barton answers:
That is an interesting question and that is something that goes to personal boundaries. I think we recognize when we are around people that fill us up and when we are around people that tend to drain us. And so it’s within our right, I believe individually to set a boundary to say, no, that is not allowed here. And if a person is no longer willing to honor the boundaries that you establish, however they’re being toxic to you, then I think it’s important for you to recognize that and maybe even go to the extreme of severing that relationship. I mean, it can go to the extreme if that’s an abusive relationship, but we need to seek a community in which we feel as if we belong. And part of that belonging, remember, is rooted in trust, a shared history, mutual respect, compassion, love, and treating people humanely. So all that goes to healthy reciprocal relationships. So recognizing that a relationship is not serving you well, that’s an important first step. And then the decision is how to rectify that. How do you choose to resolve that? Not always easy if it has to do with family members or even beloved friends. I know it’s hard.

Ginger Williams speaks:
Awesome. We have a question that’s coming in. I have somebody raise their hand. If you could just type the question into the text box and we will get that from you. In the meantime. I have another question. How can extension professionals or community leaders, I know we talked about this a little bit, but work to address loneliness and increase socialization in their communities that they live and work in. What are some steps people can do to get started?

Jane Barton answers:
That’s an interesting question. And there are a lot of organizations that actually now have whole departments or programs that are designed to serve as a conduit to connect their clients to meaningful connections in the community. So there are some healthcare systems in California that I’m familiar with that basically when you go in for your annual exam, if you’re a member of this healthcare system, they do a social assessment Actually that happens in most healthcare systems today. The next time you go in for your annual exam, be very aware of the questions that are on the intake form. They’re going to ask you, do you live alone? How many people do you see every week? How are you feeling mentally and emotionally? And basically they’re trying to assess if you are chronically lonely. Well, there are some systems that when they recognize they have a socially isolated person, they have a team of professionals that will then contact that person usually via phone.

They will get to know the person, what their interests are, what do they enjoy doing, gather a little bit of history. So if they find out this person loves to read, maybe they can connect them to a book club or if they love to exercise or they like to cycle, maybe they’re a golfer, but they serve as that resource that identifies potential places where that lonely person could connect. And so it depends on the community in which you live and the resources that might be available to some isolated individuals that you serve. But the first thing is to recognize is this person totally disconnected and many people are, and there’s a high risk as we get older. I think the last statistic I saw, maybe 35% of older adults persons over the age of 65 are aging alone. Now, I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad. You can live alone and still be socially connected, but as we get older, it just increases the risk that perhaps social isolation may occur particularly after a significant change in health.

Ginger Williams speaks:
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jane. We’ve got a lot of extension agents on the call. And so how would you suggest that extension professionals across Colorado and the nation engage with older adults? How do they get started with that and why should they engage with older adults?

Jane Barton answers:
Well, since I’m an older adult, my first answer would be because I’m worth your while, but to be serious about it, I think the best way to connect with older adults is just to express a sincere interest. And sometimes it’s just being willing to go in, asking a question and then taking the time, being patient enough to be a listener. I think listening is totally underrated. And if you would come into my home, I as an older adult, you would express an interest in me. That’s an honoring that you would take the time to listen to a little bit of my story. Jane, how did you get to Denver? What did you do as a professional? What was your work? Tell me about your family. What are your hopes for the future? What are your fears? And so it’s getting to know a person, investing yourself in someone else.

I don’t think there is any quick, slick way to speed up that process. It requires an investment of time and attention to have that trusted relationship start, and then you build upon it step by step day by day. But I think one reason to do this, a motivating factor to do it, whether you’re in rural parts of Colorado or you’re in the metro Denver, the older adult population is an untapped resource. Just consider the history and the experiences and the wisdom that has been collectively acquired over the years, but has not necessarily been shared. And it’s not to say that older adults know all. They’re the end all and the be all, but we do have a lot to offer and we can serve as I think vitally important mentors for the next generation in a myriad of ways, whether it’s professionally or personally.

Ginger Williams speaks:
Wonderful. Thank you so much. I have another question. What is your favorite motivational phrase for those who are reluctant to connect anymore, folks who often identify as solo ages and prefer it that way?

Jane Barton answers:
Oh, I don’t know that I have a good tagline for you. Maybe better together, I don’t know. But I think sometimes when people become so isolated, it turns into that downward spiral leading to chronic loneliness. One way I think to break that cycle is to recognize a gift that person could potentially offer to someone else. We gain a tremendous amount of meaning and purpose and significance when we realized I could help somebody else. I could volunteer somewhere. People are counting on me. And so it’s not all about if I’m lonely asking for help, it’s saying, okay, I still have something to do here. I still have a reason to get out of bed. This goes to the concept of in Japan, the Ikigai, that is the sweet spot in life where you discover your reason to be and it’s rooted in your passion, your mission, your vocation, what you can do well, the gift that you have to offer. So I think sometimes for older adults, particularly if they’d worked all their lives, then they retired and things changed, and now they’re alone and they don’t have a reason to be. Sometimes if we can reinforce the fact that you serve a purpose, you are needed and wanted in the world, and this is what I see in you, that can be the illumination that wakes people up and it’s like, wow, I’m not done yet.

Ginger Williams speaks:
That’s wonderful. I think at any age, everyone desires to have a meaningful life and to connect with one another. So I appreciate that. Okay, I just have a quick reminder before any other questions. We are going to send out the evaluation in English and Spanish. My teammate Natalie’s going to put the link for those in, oh, actually the chat is disabled. We’re having troubles with that. So I will send those to you in your emails. Please, please, please. They shouldn’t take too long. We’ll use that data, like I said, to share back with the USDA, but also we’ll use it to decide programming later on. We’ll look at the quality of these programs and make sure we bring you the highest quality that we can. Okay, it looks like that’s what we have today. Thank you again so much, Jane, for all of your support and your kind words, and I think you’ve left us all with a lot to think about after this, especially the next Netflix show and the moi.
So thank you so much for your time. We always enjoy working with you. And I just want to send another reminder for everyone. Our next webinar will be with the Alzheimer’s Association, CSU Extension is a community education partner with Colorado Alzheimer’s Association, and we’ll be featuring their presentation on November 21st from 1130 to 1:00 PM. If you have not registered for that, but you would like to just go back into the same Zoom registration link, that’ll also be in your email and we will send that to you. And if you’re not able to attend that day, we’ll send out the recordings as well. Alright, everyone, have a wonderful day and thank you for attending.

Jane Barton speaks:
Thank you. Bye-bye.