Anonymous urban life has left many of us millennials struggling with loneliness. I went looking for a solution
As a child, I knew that the inner-city, activist community I grew up among in Cleveland, Ohio, was quirky (and as a high schooler who just wanted to be normal, I was even embarrassed by parts of it). People left their doors unlocked, popping in with a knock to announce themselves while out running errands or walking the dog; we spontaneously gathered for potluck dinners in someone’s backyard; loud conversations about counter-cultural movements like pacifism and leftwing Catholic “liberation theology” seemed, to me, just the way of the world.
Now “community” is something my generation, the millennials, are increasingly seeking out. Some of us have long felt we belonged to each other within a virtual village. Others encountered the same reassurance on residential campuses during university. Others still may be drawn to the idea of something unfamiliar precisely because they have felt its lack as they move, too often “alone”, through the unmoored period that psychologist Satya Doyle Byock calls “quarterlife”.
Alexander Hurst is a France-based writer and an adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies
