Summerland Buzz

Summerland Buzz Here’s the surprising thing: If anything, it has gotten easier. I still love my time by Leslie A. Westbrook alone. I’m less worried that I will change my mind about that.

A third-generation Californian, Leslie, currently resides in Carpinteria but called Summerland home for 30 years. The award-winning writer assists clients sell fine Living alone is different from being isolated. It is especially different when art, antiques and collectibles at auction houses around the globe. She can be we are not all being urged to stay home. reached at LeslieAWestbrook@gmail.com or www.auctionliaison.com But even now, there are so many ways to Bella DePaulo on Living Single be connected to other people. They don’t need to be in the same home with you. (and Together) in the time of COVID-19 I have spent the last several decades of my professional life using research important to you? What have you always wanted to do with your life? serious issues often brewing. to challenge myths about people who are single. One of those myths is that they are isolated or alone or unatBella DePaulo on the deck of her tached. Often the opposite is true. Lots of research shows that single people, on the average, are actually more connected Summerland to other people. They have more friends home than married people do. They do more to stay connected with their parents, sibSummerland resident Bella DePaulo’s first book, Singled Out: How Singles Are lings, friends, neighbors and colleagues Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still than married people do. In contrast, Live Happily Ever After, debunks myths about when couples move in together or get singlehood and marriage married, they typically become more insular. They start focusing mostly on each other. Calls to their parents decrease. They spend less time with their friends. That often happens even with couples who do not have kids. Not all single people live alone, but those who do are some of the most socially connected adults. And, counterintuitively, they can be among the least lonely people. My favorite study about this included more than 16,000 adults,

Bella DePaulo is an author, speaker, columnist, and authority on being single ranging in age from 18 to 103. The researchers found that when the people who who has lived in Summerland for 20 years. She coined the word “singlism” live alone were compared to people of comparable means who were living with which is “the stereotyping and stigmatizing of single people” and is the author other people, it was the people living alone who were less lonely. They are used of several books on single people, including The Best of Single Life and Singled Out: to making the effort to reach out to other people and stay connected, rather than How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily just assuming that their social needs will be met by the person next to them on Ever After. Bella’s true passion is for the practice and study of single life. Her TEDx the couch. talk on the subject has been viewed over a million times and she has been quoted on the For me personally, there’s another important reason why I have been doing subject in national media ranging from The New York Times to CBS News. What reasonably well during this pandemic: I live in one of the most spectacularly better person to check in with during the pandemic? beautiful places on earth. My home has a peek of the ocean. I go out, nearly

Q. So many people are suddenly thrust into singledom. Have you taken a look at that more careful now – I really do try to maintain the six feet of distance, I always and do you have any advice for those not accustomed to living alone? have a mask, and I try to find times and places to walk where there are hardly

A. Here’s what I would say to the people who are unaccustomed to living any other people around. I can usually manage to do that. The stretch of beach alone: You’ve got this. that I can get to from Hammond’s Trail is one of my favorites. I also love the

Solitude is a profound opportunity. We’ve all read or heard the advice that we boardwalk in Carp. Or, when there are too many people on the beaches, I try can use this time for projects we’ve been wanting to get to, or to write books, the trail facing the ocean on Ortega Ridge Road. That offers a great view, too. or just watch Netflix guiltlessly for hours on end. All that is fine. But solitude is Summerland never gets old. I wake up every single day and marvel at my also an invitation to step away from the ordinary preoccupations and distracgreat good luck at getting to live here and to be on my own. Happily, the pantions of everyday life and think about what really matters to you. What is most demic hasn’t changed that.

The hardest thing to do in answering that question is to set aside all the Do you think there will be more people embracing single life after living 24/7 with shoulds – the messages that you have been pelted with relentlessly your entire their husbands/wives/partners, other family members, roommates or others? life. I love this question! Thank you for asking it. I have been interviewed by lots

Don’t just reach for the answers that come pre-packaged and are dangled in of reporters and far too many of them start with the assumption that it is single front of you relentlessly, messages insisting that, of course, you want to be part people who will be bound and determined to change their status once this is of a couple. Lots of people who are coupled are now pulling their hair out, stuck over. In fact, though, I think you are right that the reverse is likely to be true. inside with someone who is not the knight or the princess they imagined. There are going to be many people who are living with other people during this

Maybe living in lockdown on your own, for all this time, is making you doubt pandemic who just cannot wait to escape into their own space. Maybe it took yourself or your single life. It is fine to have doubts. But remember two things. an extended spell of enforced togetherness for them to realize how much they

First, many couples are having doubts, too. Togetherness may be fine when appreciate being single or having a place of their own. all is well and you can walk out the door anytime to go to work or do some I’ve been thinking about the day-to-day getting on each other’s nerves that errands or do anything else you want, but it may be a whole different story happens when people are stuck together in the same place for too long. But when you are cooped up with that person for months on end. Those quirks, that much more serious issues can arise, too, including intimate partner violence once seemed endearing, may now be annoying. Not to even mention the more and child abuse. every day, to walk one of the beaches or one of the many enchanting trails. I’m

Second, this will not last forever. We are living through a world-historic event. Governor Newsom recently noted that there are 1.2 million seniors living alone in Remember how you felt before all this started. If you loved being single then, California. What about our single seniors? you will probably love it again when this is over. There are many seniors who really are isolated and many who are living in poverty. It is so important for the Governor and everyone else to be attuned

What has personally surprised you most about living in isolation imposed by a virus to their needs. But it would also be wise to keep in mind that there are other and not one by choice? seniors who are happy and healthy and doing fine. Some of them already loved

A few weeks into this experience, I was worried. I am 66 and I have lived living alone before the pandemic and they are probably coping even better than alone my entire adult life – by choice. I love living alone. But I wondered, would most other people during it. Ask how they are doing – that’s a nice gesture. But I still be as happy with my solitude as the weeks of enforced lockdown went do not mindlessly serve your gesture with a dollop of pity – some of them are on and on? not feeling sorry for themselves in the least. •MJ 36 MONTECITO JOURNAL “Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.” – Oscar Levant 25 June – 2 July 2020