How to Talk to People - How to Not Go It Alone

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

The values of individualism that encourage us to go it alone are in constant tension with the desire for community that many people crave. But when attempting to do things on our own, we may miss out on the joys of coming together. This season’s finale conversation features writer Mia Birdsong, who highlights the cultural and philosophical roots of Americans’ struggle to build community. In a culture pushing us to put our own oxygen mask on first, Mia argues for the quiet radicalness of asking for help and showing up for others. This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smerciak. Special thanks to A.C. Valdez. The executive producer of Audio is Claudine Ebeid; the managing editor of Audio is Andrea Valdez. Be part of How to Talk to People. Write to us at [e-mail]. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber. Music by Arthur Benson (“Organized Chaos,” “Charmed Encounter”), Alexandra Woodward (“A Little Tip,” “Just Manners”), Bomull (“Latte”), Tellsonic (“The Whistle Funk”), and Yonder Dale (“Simple Gestures”).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Murphy, Tony Colette, and Jane Fonda. See Ruby Gilman Teenage Crackin in theaters June 30th rated PG. Julie, do you remember the first time I approached you in the office? Because I remember it very clearly and I sent you a message from behind your desk saying, hi, can I come to your desk while staring at you, sitting at your desk? From let's be clear, less than 10 feet away. Yes. I was like, yes, you can. I remember you being like really tentative when you kind of crept up and I was like you

don't have to ask permission to come say hi to me. And then I was wondering whether I looked like really unapproachable or something, but I was really excited to meet you because we've been working together on Zoom for a while, but it was the first time we'd met in person. And I promise that is not my usual approach. I think I just forgot how to human a little bit and what it felt like to work with people in an office. So I think I thought I was being polite but I maybe just made it a bit weird.

Hi, I'm Julie Beck, a senior editor at The Atlantic. And I'm Becca Rashid, producer of the How-To series. This is How to Talk to People. When Julie and I first got together to develop the series after my awkward desk approach, we talked a lot about how we wanted the show to explore how small everyday conversations can become the deeper connections that we want more of in our lives. Knowing how to talk to people isn't simply for the sake of starting conversation or fighting through the awkwardness of small talk. The point is to ultimately reach a deeper

understanding of the people around us. What I've always wanted and what I think so many people long for is this sense that you are part of a rich, interconnected community, that you have an extended network of support and love full of many different kinds of relationships that serve many different purposes. And the types of conversations we've explored in the podcast so far are the stepping stones that lead up to that. And now we've arrived at our finale episode, and this is a big one. We're going to talk about how you build a community, and that can be a really complex concept. The barriers that can make that rich sense of community feel hard to find are not just psychological within our own minds, but there are cultural barriers too. The American narrative about freedom, which is deeply individualistic, which is that depending on or counting on other people makes you less free and you're more free if you only have to count

on yourself. Reaching out may be exactly what we need to do to find the community support we need. I'm just like, oh, I can't figure this out. And I'm like, duh, like ask for help. Like, talk to somebody about it. Mia Birdsong is the author of a book called, How We Show Up, Reclaming Family, Friendship, and Community. In our conversation, she explores how the injustices baked into our country's history have limited people's ability to connect with one another and how we understand the definition of community. Part of how like somebody who was a slave,

right, was considered unfree, was not just because they were in bondage, but because they'd been separated from their people. And to be free was to be in connected community. Mia argues that today too many people equate freedom with independence. And that can lead us to go at a loan when we don't need to. And I think we've been told, right, that like the people who are strong, the people who are achieving and successful

are doing it on their own. They're figuring out how to do it on their own. And that there is actually some like, little badge of honor that we get from suffering. I think we definitely tell ourselves a lot of stories about how other people must have it more together than we do. And that is like so antifetical to what it means to be a person. Mia gets into all of it. She shares real advice about how to ask people for support

without feeling bad about it, and how that can actually bring us together. Mia, there's been a lot of research on how lonely Americans are, how disconnected many people are from their neighbors, and a lot of people feeling like they don't have anybody to confide in even. What do you think is behind that? There's a Harvard study, there's been a couple of sigma studies. The BBC did a loneliness experiment, which was a global study. And you know, Americans are lonely. Loneliness has been increasing and unsurprisingly, the pandemic made it worse.

The BBC study was interesting because it found that loneliness is highest among young people, men, and those who are in an individualistic society, aka America. What is the role that you think individualism plays in all this? Yeah. And when I think about individualism in America, I connect that very strongly to capitalism. How America defines what success looks like and what it means to be like a good person.

And part of what capitalism has done is it has inserted the exchange of money. I didn't get together with a bunch of my friends and build my house. I paid for it. You pay a person to watch your children. What's interesting is that among people who don't have money, right, don't have as much access to money,

you see a lot more relational childcare, right? Like where your neighbor or your best friend or your sister or your dad take care of your kids. Then that social fabric gets built in that because it's not a transaction. It is like what family does. And then I think the other piece is that the definition of success is so much about, you know, the idea that one can be a self-made man, right, or pull yourself up by your own

bootstraps. So there's this idea that like as an individual you're going to work hard and you're going to make it on your own, which invisibleizes, of course, all of the help the people do get, either from the systems that exist, and the privileges and advantages you have, depending on your relationship with that system. So I think about people who are born wealthy tend to stay wealthy.

If you're white, if you're male, if you're able-bodied, if you're straight, like there are all of these advantages that you end up having. And there's a sense to acknowledging any help that you did get, makes your success seem less impressive somehow. And we think that asking for help is a form of weakness. The more attached you are to this version of what it means to be successful

and happy and good, the less you are connected to other humans because you're out there trying to make it on your own. Part of how like somebody who was a slave, right, was considered unfree, was not just because they were in bondage, but because they'd been separated from their people. And to be free was to be in connected community. Wow. And it added a whole other layer to how I think about like the Black experience in America from being kidnapped and trafficked from home. And if we think about like our black experience in America from being kidnapped and trafficked from home. And if we think about like our people as being not just the human beings around us,

but also like the land we're from our ancestors, right? Through to an intrinsic part of the way that America practice slavery was about the threat or experience of being sold away from your family to the prison industrial complex, right? And through all of that, there's also been black people's resistance to it from people jumping overboard slave ships

because they're like, you know, I'm going home one way or another. Obviously, people are running away from plantations. After emancipation, there's this archive, you can look at these online. There were all of these advertisements that we placed in newspapers trying to find loved ones that we hadn't seen for like decades. Sometimes it was one of our children,

sometimes it was apparent, sometimes it was like a best friend, sometimes it was a spouse. They're beautiful and heartbreaking because they're all very short. You know, but they're like people talking about how they're looking for somebody and they were sold to this person. So like their name might have changed the limit on the kind of information they had about

this loved one, but the determination that they had to find them was just like rejection, right, of the ways in which slavery was making black people unfree. It was a insistence, right? And the freedom to reconnect. Totally. You know, when I think about how many black folks I know who find out, you know, when they're an adult, that Uncle Bobby is not actually their dad's brother,

but is their dad's like best friend from elementary school. Like, I mean, I have a friend who told me about her and her siblings looking at these family photos and realizing they didn't know who was chosen family and who was like blood or a legal family. And then also ultimately that it didn't matter. And all of that stands in such stark contrast to the American narrative about freedom, which is deeply individualistic,

which is that depending on or counting on other people makes you less free and you're more free if you only have to count on yourself, which means that you need to hoard resources so that you have everything that you need. You get everything through transaction so that like, you need, you get everything through transaction, so that you don't owe anybody. It means you don't ask for help. It means you're not responsible for or accountable to anybody, the idea of freedom being like,

you can do whatever the hell you want and nobody can tell you otherwise, right? And that is so antithetical to what it means to be a person, That is so antithetical to what it means to be a person because we are fundamentally social animals. We're not lizards that hatch out of an egg and then go about our business and be able to fend for our son and yourself. Like, fun or rock, buy yourself.

We can't go and just immediately, but we're not born and then we just like go get feed ourselves. Like we need care, right? That is like part of what we need certainly as babies, right? No baby can do anything for itself as children and as adults. And this American idea of freedom is so separated from that.

So when you say the American dream narrative is antithetical to freedom, what do you specifically mean by the American Dream narrative is antithetical to freedom? What do you specifically mean by the American Dream narrative? So when I think about the kind of fundamental ideals that were written into the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and who was articulating that. Right? So we had white, straight as far as we know, right? Landoning men, who represented a minority of the American population.

Women were not considered at all, that's like half right there. No black people, no poor people. So when I think about that, and I think about what the American dream is, that's the ideal, right? And that you do that through working hard, not asking for help.

And you're amassing like your kingdom. That is not being a person. That is not about being in community. It's not about caring for others. There's nothing in there about love. Like it's such an Nothing in there about love. Like, it's such an existentially central part of the human experience are like pursuit of and desire for and need for love. Can you tell me about a time your community really showed up for you? Oh, yes.

In July of 2021, I got diagnosed with colon cancer and stage three colon cancer. And I was gonna have to have surgery and ultimately went through three months of really intensive chemotherapy, very aggressive chemo. Yeah, it was no fun. But so 20 minutes after I got the news, I had a phone call with my friend Aisha, we were working on a project together.

And I was like all anxious, not because I've been told I had cancer, but because I didn't know when I was gonna be able to like continue the project. So I totally got on the phone with her and I was like, girl, I'm so sorry, but I just found out I have cancer and I have to have surgery.

So I'm gonna have to like postpone my work on this project. She was like Mia. She was like, let's take a breath. And in that breath, I moved from kind of like my hiding from what was scary about this behind like, I have to get this work done. Yeah. So being in this place of being able to like,

one, feel how afraid I was, but also like not alone. Before we got off the phone, she had the meal train set up. Oh. That would ultimately make sure that my family got fed when I was in the hospital recovering from surgery and then for the three months that I was going through chemo. She then circled up with three other friends of ours

and this group of black women who called themselves Mia's Care Squad, then basically coordinated like all of the things with all the rest of my community, like my larger community that I would need. They made spreadsheets, like they had email chains, a squad of people who would run errands for me. They collected everybody's advice, so I wasn't getting bombarded with all kinds of advice, but I totally wanted advice because I was like, I never had cancer before.

I want the advice. Like, I feel like there was this way in which they tended to my physical wellbeing, but they also were tending to my spirit and my heart. They created a joy fund for me. Oh my gosh, what does that mean? Which was a pile of money for me to spend only on things that would bring me joy. Oh, I bought a lot of art supplies. When I was having surgery, there was a group of people

outside on the hospital lawn singing for me. The way that this group of people came together, and I remember having this moment in the beginning of being like, I am absolutely going to tell my community what's going on with me. I'm not gonna be one of those people who like secretly goes through chemo. I'm like, everybody's gonna know. And I am absolutely asking for their help.

I do not want to do this thing by myself. What did it feel like to hear your friends singing outside your hospital room? Well, I couldn't hear them because I was in the basement of the hospital having my part of my colon taken out. But I knew that they were there. And like, I remember as I was getting the like

anesthesia, like holding, because I saw them when I was coming into the hospital, I remember just like holding them in my head. And oh my god, like it was so, because I was, you know, I was terrified. I was so comforting to know that they were out there singing for me. comforting to know that they were out there singing for me. So I've now been cancer-free for more than a year. And when I look back on that experience, I mean, it sucked. It was terrible. Like, cancer sucks, chemo sucks. But there's a way in which it like wove the fabric of community together tighter for them. I mean, we have shared the spreadsheets with so many other people.

And I know that what my community did has been a model for other people who have also gone through cancer or just like, you know, something terrible. I feel so grateful that I got to have that level of love and care and that I didn't have any shame about receiving it. Uber won't save you. Uber won't save you. Uber won't save you. Uber won't save you. Uber won't save you. Uber won't save you. Uber won't save you.

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The network that covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone. And when you're on the side of the road, with a flat tire or their dreaded check engine light, know that help will be there soon. Because AAA also chose T-Mobile to be their exclusive wireless partner, connecting their AAA own fleet of vehicles across the country. See why the companies you trust depend on T-Mobile and learn more about our network at T-Mobile.com slash coverage. I want to talk more about asking for help and offering help because I feel like that's very loaded.

Why are so many of us hesitant to ask for help? I think that one we often don't see people asking for help, so we think everybody else is doing it on their own, which is a lie. Not only is everybody else doing it on their own, but it's easy, right? When in fact, all of us are just a hot mess if we're doing it on our own. We're suffering. It's all smoke and mirrors, totally. So there's that piece.

And I think we've been told, right, that like the people who are strong, who are achieving and successful are doing it on their own, they're figuring out how to do it on their own. And that there is actually some like little badge of honor that we get from suffering. When I was in my 20s and 30s, especially, the way that people would say like like how they got no sleep and were

really tired as like something they were proud of. I worked so much, I'm so busy, my calendar's so full, I'm so tired. Exactly, like congratulations. Yes, exactly. Like that thing, that is like I have suffered in order to be productive. I have suffered in order to achieve so that there is some way in which we have tied together suffering and pain

with being a good person and achievement. I feel like I'm at this place where I'm like, no, I want ease just because I can do something myself doesn't mean that I should. I absolutely have to remind myself of this. Like I often find myself struggling. Usually it's something that I'm thinking,

not so much like a task I need to do, but I'm just like, oh, I can't figure this out. And I'm like, duh, like ask for help. Like talk to somebody about it. Right. And inevitably, somebody about it. Right. And inevitably, even if it's just sharing the like anxiety or stress or hardness of the thing, like I automatically feel better

just because I'm being witnessed. Is there a right way to ask for help? Well, I'm gonna tell you what works for me. I often find generally that casting a wide net is better. Asking one person and them saying no, means you have to go do it again. You know, when I text my neighbors for a lemon, right? I text all of them.

I'm not texting them one at a time. I think the other thing is to tell on yourself and to say, to tattle on yourself. I need to be like, I need help with something. I'm finding it really challenging to ask for help. I don't want to be a burden. I'm going to do it anyway. And then, ideally, you're able to have conversations with people and they can reassure you that you're not a burden. I don't know anybody who is constantly asking for help that other people are like, oh my god, like stop, right? Like that's not my experience. I feel like mostly we don't ask enough. Maybe practice with things that feel like less of a lift, that don't feel so like

critical to you, but that feel like they would bring you some ease. If you know a friend is going to the store, right? Ask them to pick you up some coffee, because they're gonna be there anyway. And then you can go by and get the coffee. And if they say no to picking up the coffee, that doesn't destroy my confidence in the same way. Totally, I'm not like, oh my God,

like maybe I already have coffee and I'm just gonna pretend I need coffee and see what happens. What are your thoughts on the right way to offer help? Because a piece of advice that I hear a lot is that you shouldn't ask how can I help or what can I do for you because that's more stress on the person to then find something for you to do when maybe they're in crisis or something. So the advice is like, because it's not specific. Yeah, and then the advice is you should just do something without being asked, but then what if that's unwelcome?

Totally. So this is where I'm also like, we need to stop trying to get an A in asking and offering for help. It feels very cold about that. We're gonna mess it up, right? Like we're going to, I know, they're all the like, all the like high achievers are like,

I want to get an A-plus in offering help. I think if we really have no idea what we can offer, we can say to people, I want to offer some help and I don't know what would be useful to you. Do you have an idea about something that would be useful or is there someone who is close to you who does know what might be useful? And can I talk to them?

We don't want to offer help that is not useful, but because it feels risky. And I think this is where we have to like, tap into what we know about our loved ones and come up with here are three things that you could offer and offer those and see if they want any of them, or do a thing and see what happens and bring them food. Yeah, give them food.

The death of a loved one is not going to be made worse by the fact that you gave them bread and they're gluten free, right? Right. Right. Small potatoes at that point. Exactly. Like, when I think about something like a joy fund, right? Like there's a kind of imagination

that was required to come up with that. That I think is harder in times where we're all like grinding with work and shepherding children and commuting and like all of that, right? There was something about the slowing down of the pandemic. And in my mind, that was the like slowing down of the wheel of capitalism that gave people room to show up for me in a particular way.

And I'm saying all of that because I want us, especially right now, we're not post pandemic, but the wheel of capitalism has started, is winding along the way that it was before. And like our mental capacity gets sucked up by both our paid and unpaid labor and all, you know, keeping our lives going. So I want us to give ourselves some grace when we find it challenging to make the space that we need for community. Right? Because it's not entirely are doing exactly.

Julie, there was an interesting survey on time use showing that by 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends, which doesn't seem like a whole lot of time to me, and there was an almost 40% decline from five years before that. So it seems like there's so much we're pressured to squeeze into a week or a day that four hours per week is all many people can even manage. Hmm. And that was even before the pandemic too, so I can't imagine it's gotten better since then. But you're right Becca that like time is finite and life is full of demands, which is breaking news I know.

I mean, it would be nice to see those stats go up, but also no matter what, it's never going to be possible to always be a perfect friend or a perfect neighbor. Mia said, you need to stop trying to get a plus in helping people, and I felt very personally roasted by that. Because sometimes I do think about community building as homework. Even though I want to focus on relationships more than personal achievement in my life,

those values of hard work and perfectionism like follow me into my personal life as well. Where if I'm not living up to that ideal of creating a perfect utopian community for me and the people I love, then I'm like subconsciously giving myself a bad grade. What a what I mean? What a nerd. You're not a nerd. You're just, you're trying to stay on top of it. Like, I make a point on Sunday evenings, too, to kind of write out a list of things I maybe

want to do in the next few weeks. And then I try to actually set up social time with my group of friends. I actually started a little neighborhood supper club with my friends where we do like themed dinners every month. So I actually like that it's kind of created this routine for us where I know that we have this thing that we like doing together and we'll do our best to make it happen. I like that you like attend to your correspondences on Sunday night. It's

like a very pride and prejudice video. So Mia, we've been talking a lot about how communities show up for each other in a crisis, and I think most people are really ready to show up in a crisis. But how can we have that kind of interdependence when it's not a crisis? Right. Because all of us are going to experience crisis. That's just like a give. Yeah. I have met so many older white men who their wives die,

and they're in this moment of crisis and they have nobody. They have their therapist as to who they have. They will just start talking to anybody about what's going on with them because they are so lonely. So I think about that as like the opposite of what we want. Yeah. And part of it for them is that they have, like, they've kind of put all of their social connection in the one basket of their wife. And when that person doesn't exist anymore, they're just like set a drift. So community is by its nature, something that has to be built by multiple people, of course. But if you are feeling a lack of community in your life, what can you as an individual do to kickstart that process? Like the advice people get is often to join a thing, and I'm like, that sounds lame in

some way, but I'm like, it's also totally true, especially as adults, right? We don't have that built-in kind of like school situation where we're meeting people who we know we're building friendships with. Right, we have work. Exactly. Which like, I feel like is not actually where you should be centering your social life because despite what your boss might say, your work is not your family and you can get fired. People obviously build genuine relationships there, but I'm like that should just not be your like most important social interaction. So I'm like book clubs, activism, if you have some kind of faith, like a faith community

because you're not going to meet people sitting at home. Like I've tried. It doesn't work. I think the other piece is that sometimes we know people, but we don't allow ourselves to be known by them, right? Like we're not having the kinds of conversations that allow people to like see into the interior of our lives. We're not really telling them what's going on with us.

We stick to small talk, right? Like it is a like recounting of like what happened that was interesting in your life and you say that you're good as opposed to what you're struggling with or how you're actually feeling or something that you're wrestling with that could even be like an intellectual thing. It doesn't have to be like, you know, painful, but we keep things at this surface level and we don't allow things to go deep.

How do you figure out what you want a community to look like in your life and then bring that into the real world? It seems like a very basic question, but it also seems really hard to actually do it. Yes. And part of it is like to get quiet with yourself. Like notice the part of you that is longing for something. And I think to make some, like to make room for it, and to notice how you're thinking about that part, like if it makes you anxious, or if you wish it didn't exist,

or if it's beautiful in some way to you, but like to really just like sit and find that piece of you. And I think you have to ask it, right? What is it that it wants? You don't make a strategic plan for building community. You don't do it in a day. So then it's really about seeing what that leads you to and seeing who it leads you to.

I think for many of us, we have people in our lives, but we want to bring them closer in some way. I think that we actually have more knowledge and wisdom about how to build relationship than we give ourselves credit for. And I think primarily what gets in our way is not, do we know what to do, but are we willing to do it? There is no way to have close relationship without allowing yourself to be seen in some way. And I think many of us, I am many of us, are terrified of being known.

We want people to see the best version of ourself because we think that that's the version that people will love. That's the version that people will praise. That's the version that people will want to be around. But nobody is that version of themselves. We are all sure we do good and we do well, but we also like mess up and are unsure and insecure and have a hard time. I feel like what I'm hearing you say is that if there's a to community building. It is not hiding. Totally. Yes. You know, one thing I've noticed ever since the pandemic, Julie, is that most of my socializing

is now a lot more homebound. I established a lot of new traditions with my community, like cooking dinner at different people's houses, or movie nights, or things in my life that used to be oriented around going out and meeting at bars, and that still happens too. But I have established a sort of newness in the rituals I have with my circle of people. What about you? I mean, have you learned anything in the making of this podcast that has changed your approach to your existing relationships or helped you build new ones? I wish I had like a big update for you that would illustrate my personal growth,

but I don't think a lot has really changed with my friends or in my community. I'm not best friends with my neighbors yet. I think what I've noticed more is just like patterns in how I think about my relationship to my community. I feel like that's what we've set out to do, right? It's sort of break down these steps of just bringing people closer to us. The initial awkward small talk, the hanging out, the scheduling, the hangouts,

the tough communication with friendships, and ultimately the sort of selfless disposition that you need to have if you want your relationships to feel more mutual and not feel transactional. I mean, I think another hallmark of life in our capitalistic society, right, is the sort of pressure to optimize and self-improve all the time.

And I fall into that trap of thinking, like, oh, things will be better if I change this or if I change that. So it kind of strikes me that a lot of my angst comes from feeling like I need to optimize my community towards some ideal through my own hard work, which is actually a very self-centered way to think about it. The point of community is that it's not just in one individual's control, and as much as it is good to put effort into your relationships, you also have to just let go and be curious and see what's actually there and enjoy what's there.

And I think when you do try to control the situation, you can end up with our messaging behind the desk situation, where before saying hi, I thought it was maybe a better idea to message you first and make sure that you were comfortable with the interaction and all of that. And you know, an imperfect awkward beginning like that can actually lead to something great, because we've really become friends while making this podcast. We have. You've been to my house.

We've had many long, rambly, chatty drinks together. You've met my partner. You met my sister. You've met a bunch of my friends. And some of that was the result of intentional effort and planning and scheduling. But it was also the result of easing up on the overthinking and just being together.

So I think it's a balance, right, of effort and ease or effort, but not to like a neurotic degree. That's all for this season of How to Talk to People. This episode was produced by me, Becca Rashid, and hosted by Julie Beck, editing by Jocelyn Frank, fact check by Anna Alvarado, engineering and sound design by Rob Smersiak, special thanks to AC Veldoz. Thank you to the Atlantic's art team, Gabriella Pasqueda, Caroline Smith, and Jahan Jalani. The executive producer of audio is Claudina Bade. The managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdes.

I just like to the image of you like sitting down at your writing desk. I was like, and dear, dear Judith no, that's actually how I tell you. You are formally invited. That is actually how I tell you. Sunday evening, I take my phone, I sit on my couch, and I'm like, scroll, scroll, scroll. You're such an Austin hero, and I love it. Yeah.

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