No Man Is an Island

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne (1572–1631) Meditation #17 from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

-Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Forgive me if this takes on the quality of a stream of consciousness, but that’s essentially what it is. I woke up today with the words, “No man is an island” repeating in my head. I didn’t know why. Imagine my surprise when I got online and recalled that the phrase comes from a famous poem written by John Donne, and that some themes of Donne’s poem were referenced by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “This all means something, right?” I said to myself. So I started writing.

My primary subject here is human relationships, and how shallow most of them are these days, although social media allows them to be dressed up in a facade of closeness. Social media is not the only culprit in this affliction, but I will use it to provide illustrations once in a while. Throw the internet, smartphones, other electronic devices, computers, texting and some other things into the bin of offenders too. My main point is our personal relationships are not what they used to be, and there are myriad reasons for it. But despite the electronic “tools” I list above that did not exist 25 years ago, we individually are primarily responsible for the state of things.

I’m sure I will deviate from my main premise as I go along, exploring some issues collateral to the primary one in an effort to support my main conclusion: We are not as close as we act like and think we are. The irony is the more connected social media makes us feel, the more actually disconnected we are than ever before. The evidence is right there when you just stop long enough to consider it.

John Donne was an English poet and cleric of the Church of England. In his early career, he established himself as a writer with diverse range, and he covered prodigious subject matter, including love, politics, satire, and religion. But as he got older, his writings took on a more somber tone, as he began to explore the larger issues of life, including faith, relationships, and death.

In 1624, he published Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, a 23-part poem that reflected back over a serious recent illness and addressed subjects such as birth, suffering, illness, death, and how everything that happens in life — even dark events — can actually strengthen one’s relationship with God.

In his famous Meditation 17, Donne argues that we live separate lives and get into the negative habit of living apart from our fellow man, physically and emotionally. But we were not designed to live this way; all people are connected through the church so that what happens to one person affects every other person. For instance, when someone dies, we are all affected by their earthly death and their “translation” into heaven. When church bells ring for prayers or for someone who is suffering or who has died, those bells are also ringing for any person who thinks the bells “toll for him.” When a person feels this way, “he is united to God.”

In this poem, Donne also feels loss for every person who dies because he is involved in mankind. One should never ask for whom a church bell tolls because “it tolls for thee,” and for all who are united in the church under God. Taking this view is not “a begging for misery,” which is “an excusable covetousness” because affliction matures and strengthens people. Tribulation is treasure that is not “current money” on earth but rather serves us to “get nearer and nearer to our home, heaven.” People’s tribulations, which were often made known to the community by the ringing of church bells, provide opportunities for others to contemplate their own dedication to God.

For those of you who are not Christians or not “religious,” these precepts apply to you just the same, unless you don’t believe that every life has value and that all people are created equal, or you think you can live your life disconnected from everyone else. If you buy into the last three perspectives, then stop reading this; it’ll be a waste of your time.

John Donne viewed all humanity as inevitably interconnected. The loss of one person affects all of us. The marginalization of any person affects the whole. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

But what do these fundamental tenants mean in the context of individual human relationships? Do we treat everyone else as if we are indeed interconnected? Do we value everyone’s life as much as our own? Are all of our relationships two-way streets, or is it all just about us? Do we try and live our lives cut off from others? Or conversely, do we intentionally or inadvertently push others off to one side? And do we proclaim allegiance to these fundamental laws of the universe, while actually just paying them lip-service?

What am I talking about here? I’ll use a few examples. I will list these examples from the severest situation of a friendship completely broken, then work up toward those relationships that appear healthy on the surface, but when looked at deeply, show signs of being one-sided.

First, suppose a guy who used to be one of your best friends and you never communicate anymore. You were best friends for almost fifteen years. He was the best man at your wedding.

And now, he doesn’t return a single text or phone message. Why? You have no idea. You just know you’ve done nothing to offend him. You never had a falling-out. Sure, he was like this even when you were roommates in college, when he would go through these strange periods of silence. Hot and cold.

You’ve probably had friends like this. You get the idea. But now it’s nothing. Silence. You don’t lose sleep over it. You just can’t explain it. Sometimes in life, we don’t get an explanation. Part of living and maturing is coming to grips with the fact you have no control over anyone but yourself.

Then there’s the guy who you were close friends with for about the same period of time. You met him in college, and you continued to be close friends well into your respective professional careers. And once you started having families, it continued. The two of you had very similar professional career paths, and you routinely came back around to live in the same cities where you would get together and spend time together as families. You attended one another’s weddings. You were close.

Then some years ago, he did something friends do not do; he took advantage of circumstances when your family was in a vulnerable situation. I don’t need to tell the whole boring story to make my point, but he severely damaged your friendship.

With years of perspective now, perhaps you overreacted. Perhaps you didn’t. The bottom line, however, is you have made several attempts since then to reconnect with him to smooth the incident over, but he is apparently not interested in doing so.

And that’s fine. Maybe you’re not meant to be friends anymore. When you really consider it, maybe you weren’t really friends to begin with.

As Christians, we have a duty to make every effort to make things right with those who have wronged us. Matthew 18: 15–17 lays out the procedure we are required to follow when faced with one of these situations. “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.” This also applies if we ourselves are the offender and have wronged someone else. Matthew 5: 23–24 mandates that we are to be reconciled to our brothers and sisters when we have wronged them.

But the facts is — as with my two examples — we have no control over the other person. You make your efforts, and then you put it in God’s hands. And you go on with your life. This applies in any relationship, whatever the type.

The above two examples are extreme. This hopefully is not a common experience, because if it is, you might need to look closely into the mirror. As my wife’s grandmother used to say, “If you look around and everyone else is crazy or they make you mad, then maybe you’re the problem.” But in most cases, it’s something not nearly as bad as these two examples.

With respect to society in early 2018, outside our families, the vast majority of our “relationships” these days essentially fall into two categories: (1) people we actually spend time with (the vast minority); and (2) people we are “connected” with on social media (the majority). The caveat to this is if you don’t spend time on social media, this won’t apply to you. Let’s analyze those two categories to see how they fit with Donne and King’s statements above.

With respect to group one, I would argue the people we probably are closest to are the ones who share our specific station in life as we go through it. For instance, if you are married and you have three kids ages 17, 14, and 11, you are very likely closest to that other married couple who has three kids ages 18, 15, and 10. Why? Because you have more in common with them than anyone else. You are living the same experiences they are living on a daily basis. The more you change these variables, the less you have in common with someone else, and so on. I would argue this also applies to your social media “friends;” you probably spend more time looking at one another’s posts than you do looking at the posts of your other social media “friends” who either do not have kids or do not post about similar subjects. Think about it. If you have children, do you have the same relationship with the couple who don’t have kids as you do with that other couple who does? Probably not. Why? Because you don’t relate to them as well, and they don’t relate as well to you. How could they? And how could you?

On the other hand, group two — our “connections” and “friends” on social media — still a relatively new phenomenon, fall into subcategories of their own. I will make some observations based on my comparatively short time using social media. Unlike most, I did not start using social media until about 2011. And my use has gone through several fits and starts for various reasons. But I immediately noticed two basic things, both of which were a proverbial double-edged sword.

First, I couldn’t believe how many people I was able to re-connect with after what was in many cases decades, for instance, my old high school friends. Unlike many people, I moved away from home right after graduation, attended college in another state, then went into the military for two decades. I never attended any of my high school reunions until just two years ago. I didn’t keep up with my fellow classmates. But when I finally got on Facebook in 2011, I was able to regenerate many of those relationships and catch up with them. The same was true for my old college sports teammates. This has been a mostly positive development, and I would estimate that most of my FB friends are made up of these groups.

But the other thing I immediately noticed was I was getting “friend requests” from people I didn’t even know, or with whom I had never been remotely close. I started calling this the “Linkedin affliction.” You know. Everyone on Linkedin wants to get the goal of having “500-plus” “connections.” So they accept any and all connection requests, mostly from people they’ve never met. I myself am guilty of doing it, but it’s also the reason I spend very little time on Linkedin.

I took a different path with Facebook, and I have intentionally never had more than about 200 “friends,” because honestly, that’s about the most I can try and keep up with without giving short shrift to everyone. Similarly, each one of them is someone I have actually been friends with at some point, and they all generally make an effort to keep the “connection” a two-way street. But even within this group, one starts to notice trends. For example, some people engage, then fall off the radar. Some almost never post, and a few others become “self-promoters,” posting only about themselves, yet never responding to anyone else. And the later group has a blind spot about it. It’s all good, as they say, but it doesn’t alter the fact that the “relationship” is not the proverbial two-way street. Knowing this, I do everything I can to not be one of those kinds of “friends.”

The bottom line is, whether it’s the people you spend time with in your hometown or social media friends who live a world away, we’re all interconnected. We’re just different. But the extent to which we are truly close depends on the effort we make to be real friends. And when one person doesn’t make the same effort as another, the latter is put out on an island.

Not everyone is going to buy into this, and as individuals, we have no control over what someone else does. But we certainly have control over our own thoughts and actions and the effort we each make as individuals to be real friends.

In the end, this subject, like so many other things in life, is a proverbial two-way street. If you find yourself investing more than the other person in any type of relationship, whether its a real one like a marriage or a friend you actually spend time with, or a virtual one on social media, that’s a real problem that requires evaluation and perhaps change. You might find you’re an island through no fault of your own. And when that’s the case, maybe you need to spend your time and emotional energies elsewhere.

As with my friend in the first example, I’m not required to press him by texting him every single day to see what the issue is; it’s not a priority for him, so it’s not for me. Apply this perspective to those “friends” you have on social media who spend all their time posting about themselves, but never acknowledging you or what you’re doing; invest in the people who invest in you. If you do this, you won’t feel like you’re an island as much, and you will have more normal relationships with people who truly value you and what you bring to this “inescapable network of mutuality.”

The take away? Do we acknowledge the fundamental precept that no man is an island and everything that flows from it? Are we the son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, father, mother, co-worker or friend we are capable of being? Are our relationships a “two-way street” from our end? If so, great. Keep doing what you’re doing. If not, be the person you’re capable of being.

Glen Hines is the author of two books, Document and Cloudbreak, available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, and the Human Development Project.