Drifting Alone in a Connected World: The Power of Community to Anchor Us

Yasmine is eleven years old. She was found floating in the Mediterranean Sea, clutching a life vest. For three days, she had been alone in the water after the overcrowded boat carrying her and 44 others capsized in a storm. She was the only survivor. Her father stayed behind in Tunisia. Her brother, who had traveled with her, is dead.

When she was pulled from the water, her hands were empty—no family, no home, no future. But in that moment, rescuers wrapped her in warmth, gave her gave her crayons, dry clothes, a blanket, and a coloring book, and reminded her she was still human.

She is safe now. But what does safety even mean for a child who has lost everything? Where can someone like Yasmine go to find a future, a community, a sense of belonging?

Her starting line is miles behind others her age. Without love, without a community to hold her, how will she thrive? What can we, as a society, offer her—and others like her—to ensure that she feels she belongs, that she matters?

Why Is It So Hard to Care?

Stories like Yasmine’s flood our newsfeeds every day. We shake our heads, whisper, “How tragic,” and then move on. These stories briefly catch our attention, spark a moment of sympathy, and are quickly forgotten.

It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that caring feels overwhelming, distant, and ultimately futile.

But why is it so hard to truly feel? Why do we often fail to respond with the care and action these stories demand?

This isn’t accidental. The world we’ve built—centered on individualism and personal ambition—has left us detached from one another. We’ve built walls—around our homes, our lives, and our hearts. We’ve traded collective care for individual achievement, and in doing so, we’ve numbed ourselves to the suffering of others.

We live in a world where we are more connected than ever before, yet more alone than any generation in history. Every tweet, every like, every carefully curated post screams, “Look at me.” But in this vast sea of virtual voices, most of us feel unseen.

How did we get here? To a place where our screams for connection are drowned out by the echo of individualism?

The Birth of the “I” Society

This journey begins not with technology, but with the rise of the “I.” Capitalism, globalization, and the relentless push for individual achievement have made us believe that success is a solo act. We’ve been taught to celebrate independence, to chase self-made dreams. But independence came at a cost. Empathy—the very glue of human connection—was collateral damage.

Empathy demands vulnerability, but in a world obsessed with self-sufficiency, vulnerability feels like failure. And so, we built walls around ourselves, traded collective care for personal gain, and became islands in an ocean of strangers.

Drowning in a Sea of Noise

As the walls grew higher, so did the noise. Social media didn’t create the chaos, but it amplified it to deafening levels. Everyone has a stage, a microphone, and an audience now. But when every voice shouts at once, who listens? The barrage of information makes us skeptical, mistrustful, and exhausted.

And in this sea of endless noise, the deepest irony emerges: the more we speak, the less we truly communicate.

The Family We Left Behind

Once, we turned to families for sanctuary. Multigenerational households were the original communities—woven together by shared struggles, traditions, and care. Your grandmother helped raise you; your father’s hands built the house you grew up in. But as society evolved, we outsourced this care. Welfare policies became a safety net, but they also untethered us from each other.

Elderly parents went to nursing homes. Children were raised by daycare workers. The communal rituals of life—the Sunday dinners, the late-night conversations—faded. What replaced them? A growing epidemic of loneliness.

The Ache of Loneliness

Loneliness is not just a feeling; it’s a health crisis. It eats at the soul, leaving people isolated in crowded cities, scrolling through feeds that never feed their hunger for connection. It’s the mother texting her grown children who never call back. It’s the man who smiles at his coworkers but cries in the silence of his apartment. It’s the migrant child, clutching a coloring book, wondering if anyone in this strange land will ever know her name.

The Awakening: Finding Belonging

For me, the awakening came in the form of a community—LANGE ENG: a cohousing village in Denmark, far from the places I once called home. Here, I learned what it means to belong. Belonging is not about fitting in; it’s about being welcomed just as you are.

In Lange Eng, 54 families share more than walls; we share lives. Borrowed tools, shared meals, spontaneous conversations—it’s the little things that transform neighbors into family. And in those moments, I felt a profound truth: we are not meant to live alone.

Building the Future, Together

The power of community is not just a feel-good ideal—it’s a necessity. We are hardwired for connection, and without it, we break. Belonging should not be a privilege; it must be a birthright. Imagine a world where our cities, systems, and lives are designed around the idea of “us” instead of “me.”

This vision is not impossible. I’ve seen it come to life in my cohousing community, where neighbors became friends, and strangers became family. Here, I learned how profoundly transformative it is to care and to be cared for. It’s not grand gestures but small, intentional acts of kindness and solidarity that weave the fabric of community back together.

Because in the end, the only way to silence the noise is to truly hear each other.

In the face of today’s crises—migration, inequality, environmental collapse—community is not a luxury. It is our greatest strength and our most enduring hope. Let us remember Yasmine and the countless others who drift in search of a place to belong.

Together, we can build a world where no one is left to drift alone.