LONELINESS REPORT FINAL

Though we may long to share the inner circles, too often we seem able only to hover with others around the outer ones, returning home from yet another social gathering with the most sincere parts of us aching for recognition and companionship. Traditionally, religion provided an ideal explanation for and solution to this painful loneliness.

A 2018 survey from Cigna found that a quarter of us don’t have people in our lives who we feel understand us.2 Only half of us have daily meaningful interactions with others. “At least two in five surveyed sometimes or always feel as though they lack companionship (43%), that their relationships are not meaningful (43%), that they are isolated from