Vivek Murthy

My top priorities are the people I love.

It's my mother, my father, my wife, my sister, my two children, my brother-in-law.

But then the harder question is how am I actually living my life?

Are

Are the decisions I'm making about where I put my time, energy, and attention consistent with those priorities?

And if I'm honest with you, I'd tell you that a lot of times it's not.

So there's a gap between my stated and lived priorities.

And this moment is highlighting for me just how important it is to close that gap.

Because I think for so many of us, we're realizing something we already knew in our hearts, which is that our relationships matter deeply to us, that they're not just nice to have, they're necessary to have.

And the science behind it tells us that they affect our health and they actually affect our workplace performance.

Sehgal Barsade, a professor at Wharton, who along with others has found that loneliness is actually extremely common in the workplace.

And it shows up as greater disengagement, which has downstream effects for their productivity, for their creativity, and even for their retention.

Same is true with kids.

Children who are lonely struggle when it comes to learning.

and their outcomes overall are threatened.

So if we use this as a moment to recognize that, to build lives that are centered around people and to make the case

for creating a people-centered society, one where we do think about human connection as we design workplaces and schools, a world where we think about human connection and we're assessing the impact of policy as well, then I think we'll put ourselves on the path to creating a society that is healthier, stronger, but also more resilient than even before the pandemic began.

Well, yes, because we don't have the ability to be together.

The question is, what can we do to strengthen connection regardless of that limitation?

One of the great points of learning that I took from the extraordinary people that I met across the world in writing this book was a simple lesson that small steps toward connection can make an extraordinary difference.