The Harvard Study of Adult Development is one of the longest-running studies on human well-being, spanning more than 80 years. Its central question has been beautifully simple and profoundly complex: what makes a good life? What does it mean to truly flourish as a human being? Over the decades, the study has gained significant airtime in popular culture, particularly in conversations about the power of social connection. Its researchers – along with many others –  have found that one of the strongest predictors of a long, healthy life is the quality of our relationships.

Many of us have heard the often-quoted research by Julianne Holt-Lunstad suggesting that chronic loneliness and social isolation can be as harmful to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The evidence on social connection is both compelling and clear. Whether we are talking about close, intimate bonds or broader community ties our need for one another is indisputable.

At the same time, we have made tremendous progress in adjacent fields that deepen our understanding of the human experience: perspective-taking, empathy, compassion, social neuroscience, cooperation, and more. The list is long, but the message is simple: we are social creatures. Our survival and progress as a species have been shaped by our ability to communicate, collaborate, and connect.

While much of the Western research world and many of us raised in increasingly westernised societies  might treat these findings as revelatory, I imagine my ancestors responding with something closer to “well, of course.” The Zulu concept of Ubuntu captures what researchers are now articulating in data and peer-reviewed journals. Loosely translated, ubuntu refers to a shared humanity. It is often expressed through the phrase “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”, a person is a person because of other people. Many African traditions have long recognised that our existence is inextricably bound to the existence of others; that we are tethered to one another in ways both visible and invisible.

There is much to celebrate about our strong ties – the relationships we have with friends, family members, and close colleagues. But I find myself thinking more and more about our weak ties: the looser connections we hold with people we may not know intimately. The receptionist at the gym. The barista who remembers your order. The shop owner you wave at when you visit your local shopping centre. These relationships matter, too. Yet they are often the first to disappear as life becomes more “convenient.” When we swap public transport for private cars, or walkable neighbourhoods for drive-through efficiency, we quietly lose the micro-moments of connection that once stitched our days together.

Despite being a cognitive science enthusiast, I have no grand theory to offer here, only my lived experience. Recently, I moved to a gym closer to home so I could walk there each day. An unintended gift of that decision is that I now follow the same path at roughly the same time. I see familiar faces. We exchange nods, smiles, greetings. There is a warmth in that rhythm I hadn’t realised I was missing.

I grew up eMlazi, in a community where everybody knows everybody, where you greet your neighbours on the way to the shops or the bus stop, and where some people (by which I mean my wonderfully extroverted dad) would happily turn a quick greeting into prolonged small talk. I never thought much of those interactions at the time. I didn’t realise how much I valued them until I began passing the same faces each morning and offering those same simple greetings.

The importance of these small exchanges crystallised one day when someone I regularly pass playfully scolded me for ignoring them earlier in the week. My headphones had been too loud; I hadn’t heard their greeting. But the gentle reprimand carried something deeper it meant I had been noticed and also that they had been honoured at past times when they had been noticed too. It meant that the absence of our brief interaction and acknowledgment of the other’s existence had been noted. On mornings when I walk at a different time and/or don’t see the usual faces, I notice the difference.

Connection, I’m reminded, isn’t only about intimacy with our loved ones. It’s also about being seen. Being acknowledged. Having some small evidence that our presence – or absence – matters. Perhaps its one of the reasons many of us turn to social media in an increasingly disconnected world. 

In isiZulu, we greet one another with “Sawubona/Sanibona/Sanibonani”, which translates to “I/we see you.” There is profound joy in being intimately known and deeply loved, but there is also quiet joy in simply being seen.

We often ask if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? In some ways, the growing body of research and what my ancestors have always known suggest that we, too, long for witnesses in our own forests – someone to notice when we grow, to stand near when we fall, and to quietly affirm that we are here at all. 

So that is all to say that I hope that you are known and loved and deeply cared for. But I also hope that you are seen, known, and acknowledged. Sawubona. 

By Ayabonga Sithole