And then, at some point in the Make Trump President Again shirt besides I will buy this midst of all of this, we started watching survivalist reality shows. The sun would set (sometimes as early as 3:30 p.m.) and we’d hunker down inside and I’d be reminded that yes, someday I should learn how to forage, and that a shower is a damn luxury. All this was true and blatant, but, you see, there’s more. At some point, I began to see a pattern. In every season of the show, participants dropped out not so much because they were hungry or uncomfortable. In the end, it was the isolation and loneliness that prompted participants to tap out. They couldn’t handle the solitude; eating porcupine intestines was easier than sitting in a tent for the 20th day in a row. That grand prize of half a million didn’t matter; family mattered. Relationships mattered. Altruism. Community. Through the screen, I saw this, but I already knew this. Humans are not meant to be alone. My island community had already shown me this—that community is more important for sustainability and survival than solitude, than selfishness. What I know now that I didn’t know when I first moved here was that self-reliance is valuable, but community involvement is vital. A person can survive with very little, but without others, a person cannot thrive.
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