07/09/2025
Social animals need socials. Stop acting like a Bush Baby. Stop treating friends like they should be koalas.
People protest when solitary animals like sloths are made to be social. Yet with humans, we tell them to “take alone time.”
We are the only social species that sends its wounded off alone to heal.
When someone is physically sick, spiraling, unraveling, grieving—or simply inconveniently human—we call it “growth” to step back.
We say:
“You need to find yourself.”
“Take some space.”
“Focus on you right now.”
As if solitude were some ancient rite of passage.
As if emotional exile were a mark of maturity.
It is not.
It is just abandonment, sanctified by self-help language.
This is not how mammals operate.
Co-regulation is not a preference. It is a physiological necessity.
Human beings stabilize through presence—eye contact, tone, skin, scent, familiarity.
Take that away, and we do not find ourselves.
We dissolve.
📉 Living alone raises suPAR—a biomarker of chronic inflammation and early death.
📉 It flattens cortisol rhythms.
📉 It elevates CRP, IL-6, TNF-α, fibrinogen.
📉 It shifts gene expression toward disease and viral vulnerability.
📉 This happens even without depression. Even if you’re “coping.”
This isn’t psychology.
It’s immunology.
And yet, when people are at their weakest, our culture tells them:
“You have to go through this alone.”
We do not say this to elephants. Or wolves. Or chimpanzees.
Only to humans.
And only in the ultra-modernized zones.
Pain does not require solitude.
It requires safety.
It requires someone who stays in the room.
If you are not that person, do not cloak your absence in enlightenment.
Say nothing wise.
Just say you are leaving.
Because the body hears it either way.
Or don’t go. Give hugs. Give kind eyes. Give time. Give presence. Give soul.
