At the very end of my sabbatical, I listened to a short story on the New Yorker‘s Writer’s Voice podcast. “The Silence” by Zadie Smith. I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open while I listened. I loved it so much. The next day, I drove to Barnes & Noble and bought the July 7 & 14 issue, paid the full $9.99 cover price, because I wanted a hard copy of this story in my possession. The story is itself wonderful, but what I wanted to be able to access was a specific passage that stopped me in my tracks:

Beautiful girls were passing by her right now, as she sat on this bench, and she thought that she’d been totally right all those years ago: she had been precious, and so were these girls. Everyone talks about the beauty of nature, but people are far more beautiful. So Sharon felt, even if she no longer had the words to express it. Nature is only a backdrop, like scenery at the theatre, and all the man-made objects only props. People are the beauty and the light and the point and the purpose.

People are the beauty and the light and the point and the purpose. Even if you had the glory of unspoiled nature, even if you had all the art and stories and music of all the humans who came before you, being alone at the end of the world would be devastatingly, crushingly lonely. None of it means anything without other souls to share it with. Even if you don’t know them. Even if they’re different from you.

Last year I made an effort to get out in the world more. I am a creature of habit and I work from home, so it’s easy for me to go days without interacting in physical space with other people. But last year I extended my lap time at the pool and have struck up small friendships with other regulars there. I shop at our local book store and try to have coffee at a local coffee shop once a week. With my family and alone, we quietly built habits of going book stores, art museums, and jazz shows where we were surrounded by people appreciating the marvelous architecture, literature, paintings, sculptures, and music that fellow humans had created.

This year I want to keep those habits going, the habits of engaging with others in shared physical space. That feels like a weird thing to say. I guess it’s not that weird after COVID, but I’ve been working remotely for 10 years, and all my closest friends live far away. I have deep connections with people who don’t live near me thanks to modern technology, but I want to also share space — the sounds of splashing or of crockery clinking, temperatures that require bundling up or shedding sweaters, scents in the air, three dimensions of sitting beside each other or seeing an animal race across the street, food and drink, all five senses.

I’m joining a book club this year, which is a step in the right direction of building community in my community. Maybe I’ll see if anyone at the pool wants to go out for coffee some time. It might be fun to find a trivia night, too. Whatever I do, I want to connect more with people outside of my computer in 2026.