“To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.” However, he writes that while relatedness is often physical, it need not always be. “Relatedness to others is not identical with physical contact. An individual may be alone in a physical sense for many years and yet he may be related

longing to connect with others who can help hold the pain, a need to share what we’ve learned in the trenches, and a desire to give, even when we ourselves have barely caught our breath.

One of the most important discoveries I made in the process of being ill is that solitary striving, my American habit of self-focus, was in some fundamental way a degradation of the most powerful aspects of our lives, which now seem to me to be our interconnectedness and need of others.