I work by myself most of the time. As many of us are, I’m on calls and Zooms and what not, I get the emails, texts, rings and pings we’re all accustomed to in this digital age of ours, but there’s not a whole lot of face-to-IRL-face interaction going on. Sometimes I’m totally cool with that, but sometimes I miss people. I get lonely sometimes.

Of course it’s easy to feel isolated even in a crowd of people, or in a workplace, or in a family. Because the kind of interaction that I want and need, and what I’m talking about, is more than proximity or small talk, it’s real connection, and lots of it. Preferably with a big helping of community served up on the side.

And that’s why I started the Soul Jams.

In the beginning, I didn’t have a clear idea of what a Soul Jam was, I just followed my instincts and tried to tune in to what my Soul was desiring.

I wrote a series of questions designed to open up new avenues beyond your same-old go-to conversational topics. I created a small pile of cards with pretty simple questions along these lines:

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH 3 MONTHS OF TOTALLY FREE TIME?

YOU ARE THE PATRON SAINT OF….?

WHAT’S A CHERISHED CHILDHOOD MEMORY OF YOURS?

WHAT’S A TALENT OR GIFT OF YOURS THAT YOU HAVEN’T YET FULLY OWNED?

WHAT MAKES YOU DELIRIOUSLY HAPPY?

While the details have varied from one gathering to the next—there have been 3 so far, and Soul Jam IV is coming up soon!—the basic game of the Soul Jam is this: 

1.    You’re going to draw the name of another Soul Jammer at the party, and it’s gonna be your job to make sure that before they leave, they have the experience of having been “gotten.” As in, oh wow, you really get me.

2.    That’s going to be super easy and fun. Why? Because everybody is playing the same game, and everybody is using one of the question cards to spark conversation that goes somewhere new.

3.    At some point in the evening, you’re going to share that special human being with the rest of us. You’re introducing them, sure, but more to the point, you are sharing who they ARE, what lights them up or touches their heart or makes their neurons zing. It’s not their whole life story, it’s a delicious taste for us to savor and appreciate.

4.    Oh, and someone else will draw YOUR name. And that individual will have the honor and pleasure of getting to know who you are as they’re entrusted with some of that good stuff that usually stays tucked away and out of sight.

WHAT I EXPECTED WOULD BE A SERIES OF BRIEF-ISH CONVERSATIONS TURNED INTO MINI LOVE FESTS.

In a lot of cases, the two people didn’t know each other at all at first.

Yet within minutes, people were so generously and unreservedly shining the warm glow of their attention on another, that the recipients of all that curiosity and care blossomed like those crazy time-lapse videos of flowers going from bud to full, glorious bloom in 10 seconds.

At the last Soul Jam gathering I hosted, one of the guests came into the kitchen with a directive: “Deb. Look out there, look what’s happening,” he said, pointing toward the main room.

I set down the newly replenished salsa bowl and poked my head around the corner to see a bunch of people looking all animated and shiny and engaged. It was loud. It was alive.

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS IS, EXACTLY, BUT IT’S SPECIAL,” MY GUEST SAID. “THERE’S SOMETHING MAGICAL ABOUT IT.”

And it did feel pretty magical.

When you’re in the presence of humans at their best, things get beyond predictable, and you are in the magic zone.  

Interestingly, the highest frequency or energy level, called Synchronicity in the neuroscience + consciousness model I use, shows up as love and harmony. It’s characterized by focusing on creating a positive experience for all, and the ability to see the gift and possibility in anything.

IT’S CONSIDERED THE REALM OF “MAGICAL COINCIDENCE.”

I’ve heard a lot of people say they’re just not good at meeting people or making friends, and I’ve put myself in that category on occasion as well. It can be hard to develop a real sense of community as an adult.

I don’t think it’s a personal failing, I think it’s more a function of the environments we’re in not being designed to cause that kind of true connection.

And I’m going to take this a step further:

What if that beautiful feeling of connection weren’t a matter of meeting the “right” people, but instead a matter of meeting people in the right way?

I had dinner with a friend who attended one of the Soul Jams, and she said the fact that someone she didn’t know very well opened up and shared some heartfelt stuff was, well, pretty spectacular:

“IT FEELS LIKE THE KIND OF SPACE WHERE YOU COULD MEET YOUR NEXT BEST FRIEND. OR YOUR NEW BOSS. OR YOUR SOULMATE.”

Will that happen at a Soul Jam? Who knows. Probably, actually. Because they’re light and fun and all about spontaneous, serendipitous, real conversation, which is pretty awesome. I had to perform a Soul Jam intervention and remind the group that they couldn’t spend the whole night talking to that one special human in front of them, that there were other people needing their attention.

That’s what happens when you serve up some real-deal, healthy, home-cooked conversation in a fast-food world.

And God knows the world could use some more of that. I mean, have you been watching the news?

Go ahead, Google “the loneliness epidemic” and take a gander at the news.

WE’VE GOT A FULL-BLOWN PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS EMERGING OUT OF SILENT SUFFERING:

• One of every 3 Americans over the age of 45 suffers from chronic loneliness.

• Research links loneliness to higher risks for a variety of physical conditions, among them high blood pressure, heart disease, dementia, and even death.

• In fact, loneliness causes early death the same way smoking 15 cigarettes a day does, making it even more dangerous than obesity.

There’s an 8-page feature story in the current (November 2019) issue of O Magazine about loneliness, and in it, psychologist Shira Nayman says, “Perhaps modern life brings death by a thousand cuts; the busier and the more stressed we are, the more we may withdraw, never realizing how our self-imposed exile is draining our vitality.”

Yikes. Guilty as charged.

I’ve been thinking about the Soul Jam phenomenon, and how it’s a simple way for us to give ourselves the gift of conversation that has no axe or agenda, just a desire to unearth small treasures and enjoy them together.

In an extraordinary book I’m reading, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, author Sherry Turkle points to what’s possible, even as she warns us of the growing sense of isolation in our supposedly very connected world:

I’m not totally clear where I’m going with the Soul Jam thing, but what I do know is that they feel good. And even hard-core introverts have gleefully come up to me at the end and said how glad they were to be part of it. It’s a bit of an ongoing, co-created experiment.

What I’d like to do is create a movement.

Will you join me?

I LOVE WHAT SHERRY TURKLE SAYS ABOUT THE VERY WORD CONVERSATION:

Let’s see what we can do to bring some warmth and humanity and connection into our lives, one serendipitous conversation at a time, shall we?

Let’s tend to each other. Let’s lean toward each other.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.