Meaningful connection in a broken system: Why loneliness isn’t your fault
- Phil McAuliffe
- 19 hours ago
- 7 min read
You’re living in a system that overlooks one of your most basic needs.
Meaningful connection helps you reclaim your life and thrive.
It’s time to power up.
Hello my friend
We wanted to start with a simple message for you: Loneliness is not your fault, but connection is your responsibility.
The power to create meaningful connection is yours. At HUMANS:CONNECTING, we want you to step into that power.
Indeed, you choosing meaningful connection is the change the world needs.
There’s a greater understanding of the importance of human connection to our wellbeing and to our communities’ wellbeing. Communities, businesses and politicians are beginning to speak about human connection more. But we’re in the space where the actions aren’t yet following the words.
You can’t wait. It’s time to reclaim meaningful connection for you. Keep reading.
Living in a broken system
You live, work and play in a broken system. A system that steadfastly refuses to admit it’s broken. Rather, it prefers to blame those it breaks.
You live in a society that prioritises
convenience over connection
expedience over authentic expression
appearance over substance
You live in a community that makes it difficult to get anywhere without a car. Walking is difficult: paths are cracked, uneven or poorly lit or possibly don’t even lead anywhere.
You live in a society that prioritises housing as an investment rather than a human right.
You worry about your future and your children’s futures.
Education is no longer seen as the pathway to advancement but a path to crippling debt. Besides, why bother? Unregulated AI threatens many jobs and livelihoods.
Third spaces available to you are unkept, unwelcoming or require you to spend money to enjoy. You can’t even afford to sit and enjoy a coffee – let alone a meal – with friends without financial worry.
It feels impossible to get ahead. Utility prices keep rising. A trip to the supermarket to buy food – essential to life – feels like the supermarket conglomerate is lifting you up, turning you upside down and shaking out all the money in your pockets.
You already hold agency within this broken system. The choice on how you show up, how you respond, and how you create meaningful connection is yours.
HUMANS:CONNECTING is here to provide the scaffolding to translate that agency into meaningful connection.
Economy over community
You live in an economy, rather than a community. You feel that you’re seen more as homo economicus – a rational economic being – than as a beautifully complex human.
When you go to work, you work in a workplace that prioritises profits and efficiency over humanness. While it says that it encourages innovation, creativity and embraces risk, your workplace rewards conformity and safety. It’s hard to feel connected when hot-desking is sold as dynamism, but you know it’s cost-saving.
Work feels like you’re running on a treadmill that never slows down. You’re terrified of what could happen should you ever stop or try to get off.
You’re gaslit by politicians who tell you that they understand, that they’re doing something about it all, that serving you is their highest priority. But too often, political incentives prioritise donors and power over the lived realities of the people they claim to serve.
This is heavy, isn’t it? It’s not surprising that living and working in this system is weighing you down.
Remember, you already hold agency. Your choices - how you spend your attention, your energy, your presence - reshape your world.
But you need a break. It’s good to take a break and seek respite from the broken system when and where you can.
Distracted, drained, and commoditised
Even when you seek a break by scrolling on your phone or watching TV, the systems of outrage, fear, and consumption are competing for your attention. Indeed, they’re algorithmically rewarded.
Life feels like a multi-year opportunity to exploit and commoditise you. You feel that unless you’re living your best life – being financially successful, fit, gorgeous, have the perfect house with the perfect Pinterest-worthy pantry, and holiday in the trendiest locations – you’re failing at life.
Changing all of this is hard. There are special interests – economic, political and social – who benefit from how things are now. They are benefitting from how lost, overwhelmed and alone you feel now.
At the very least, the whole system needs to be questioned and examined.
Loneliness and social disconnection as an inevitable consequence
It’s no surprise that you feel unseen, unheard and that you feel that you don’t belong. And we know that when us humans feel unseen, unheard and feel that we don’t belong, we feel lonely and socially disconnected.
What you’re feeling is an entirely normal response. Unpleasant, for sure. But absolutely normal. In fact, it’d be MORE concerning if you didn’t feel lonely and socially disconnected.
And yet, this isn’t the end of the story. There’s hope. There’s always hope.
I want to offer three rays of it to you:
experiencing loneliness is awful, but it does not mean you're broken. It means you're human;
loneliness’ only job is to tell you that you’re not feeling connection that is meaningful to you. You’re worthy of experiencing meaningful connection; and
we already know that meaningful connection is the antidote to loneliness. No app or special kit required.
While loneliness is not your fault, meaningful connection is your responsibility.
I want to repeat that for those in the back:
While loneliness is not your fault, meaningful connection is your responsibility.
Responsibility here doesn’t mean doing this alone. Nor is it meant to be a burden - something else you need to do in your day.
It means choosing connection where you have agency, however small that choice may feel in the moment.
Remember the three pillars of meaningful connection
Meaningful connection is comprised of three pillars. These three pillars are everything that our work at HUMANS:CONNECTING is built around:
connection to self;
connection to those most important to you; and
connection to community.
We’ve another article on these three pillars here. Each of these three pillars must be as strong as the others for your connection house to stand.
Simply, you must be authentically you in the world for you to feel connected to those people and places beyond yourself and for those people and places to feel connected with you.
Being you in the world is your responsibility – and your power
But being you in the world is what you need. It’s what those who love you need. It’s what your community needs.
It’s certainly what the world needs.
If you’re feeling lost, overwhelmed, used and exploited, be relentlessly you.
Sometimes this is as small as telling the truth with kindness and honesty, asking for help, or refusing to perform for systems that don’t see you.
You being you gives permission for others to be themselves when they’re around you. In turn, they courageously show up in life as more them, who then create spaces where others feel authentically connected with them.
You start demanding better.
You want to be in places and spaces that prioritise people’s needs rather than economic rationalism.
You want to be with people – both in real life and online – who are also real and not performative.
You want your political representatives to represent you, not their donors or their own self-interest.
Where you can, you start spending your money where it benefits the community or aligns with your values.
You simply put your attention and energy towards things that nourish and sustain you, rather than antagonise and demean you.
It turns out that you – you glorious human who’s reading these words and has been feeling overwhelmed, lost, frustrated, alone and disconnected from life – are one of the most powerful people on this planet.
You being bravely, courageously, and relentlessly you is what the world needs. It’s also what you need.
All it takes is one small decision to change the world and make it a place where you and other humans feel meaningfully connected. That they have purpose. That they belong.
We all thrive when you choose meaningful connection.
A question to ponder
What do you decide to do with your awesomeness?
What you can do now: connect and thrive
We want to serve you in a way that supports you best so you can be a connection badass in the world.
Here are two things you can do now:
Share this article with family, friends and work colleagues as a way to start world-changing conversations about meaningful connection.
Learn what meaningful connection is for you – and build your connection plan to experience it – through our Connection Starter Course.
That’s it for this post
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Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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