What enriches you? Empowers you too? What questions are you also asking yourself, for yourself first and no one else? Some issues are etched in my mind as priorities these days. The numbness with senseless murders for one, from people who resort to guns rather than love or even words. Even the thought of Enough isn’t helpful when another violence is around the corner and we keep doing nothing or staying numb to death. The state of health of all people, young, old, and how to ensure they live well sustainably, another urgent priority. Yet for these priority issues, I am beginning to see that there is yet another epidemic on the horizon. The idea of being alone and having no one to run to.

The US surgeon general recently shared a report on this, including the scary fact that loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively. This is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, something that many of us will never do, knowing its consequences. Yet why is our world a lonely place for so many and how can we ensure that we build social connections that have structure (i.e number of relationships), function ( i.e reliance on others for needs) and quality (i.e positive, helpful or satisfying relationships)? It for these reasons and many more that I loved attending the opening of Korede House yesterday.

Known as a third place, Korede House is a home away from home and a space where communities can be formed for example, to provide vital insight and energies necessary in our common battles against loneliness. It doesn’t force itself into any mold that exists. Rather on its own, Korede House celebrates the possibilities of becoming when minds are rested, reopened and renewed to consider all the connections that make us whole. You will connect deeply in this house. The walls alone, require and insist on your attention. You will listen deeply too. Not just for the purposes of hearing someone speak, but for the clarity such speaking can usher as a mirror into your own. Of course you will rest deeply too. The house is designed first for rest. Not on a superficial level, but the kind that makes you whole, re-centers you to your essence, while ushering joy as you recover yourself for yourself. When you walk through the house, moments of sweetness will engulf you, for the thought and care each space provides. Korede House is on the cutting edge of real social change, solving the core problem of loneliness and social isolation, one room at a time.

Thus, a third place such as Korede House, is one way of participating in the future we want where the burden of loneliness is eliminated. It’s provides a cohesive vision of what we hope such a future can look like, one where our abilities to imagine such a future will be stretched beyond what we think is possible. Yet, in understanding, in seeing common elements, in trusting our perceptions too, Korede House functions as an exemplary antidote of what the US surgeon general is advocating that our society wants and deserves today, tomorrow. Keep Korede House and their bring goodness vision in mind, with any attempts at achieving a future where loneliness is no more. See more here: Korede House