FREE ENTRY / Be Still Media Foundation - Isolation and Loneliness in America

For our 23rd Prompt, we’re calling on artists to help cure the Epidemic of Isolation and Loneliness in America

We all experience aloneness. Our sense of sound identity and health of relationships depends on how we enter into it.

As artists, our most welcome creative companion is often the company of our own solitude. Like a good friend it nurtures us and expands our creativity; it calms the criticism within and strengthens our empathy toward others. Our solitude connects us to the multitude, with purpose.

Yet America - and the world - is awash in an aloneness that is dangerously isolating and life-threatening. The US Surgeon General has declared it a public health crisis.

Loneliness can be put upon us by the loss of a loved one or health and financial problems, while isolation can be self-imposed as we addictively plug into technology, scrolling and emoting, then retreating to our corners – divided and depressed.

Dr. Vivek Murthy says the cure is in the medicine of human social connection. “Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hiding in plain sight. We are hardwired to connect with one another.”