If You Feel Lonely or Isolated, You Need a Third Place in Your Life

<p>Not your house. Not your work. A third place where you can exist just for fun and bump into people you know.</p> <p>Sound unfamiliar? I&rsquo;m not surprised. Common third places like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/22/us-churches-closing-religion-covid-christianity" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">churches are emptying</a>, and coffee chains fire you through like you&rsquo;re being served by a pump action shotgun filled with espresso.</p> <p>But a life without a third place is a life of loneliness and isolation. A life that exists only to work. Go home. Go to work. Go home. Go to work. Where does it end?</p> <p>It ends with a third place.</p> <h1>The Days Before Cell Phones</h1> <p>Journalist Dan Kois regales us with tales of<a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/06/life-before-cell-phones-internet-after-work.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">&nbsp;life before cell phones</a>. Where you knew the three or four places after work your friends would be. If you went there, you&rsquo;d usually bump into someone you know.</p> <p>Think Central Perk from&nbsp;<em>Friends</em>. If Ross gets bored, he can head to Central Perk and just hang out till someone he knows shows up.</p> <p>This isn&rsquo;t a feeling I know. When I lived in Glasgow, I&rsquo;d constantly want to try new places. I didn&rsquo;t even go to the same Starbucks often enough to recognise the staff who were being churned through.</p> <p>At the time, I thought it was great because I had this idea of being a lone wolf in my head. But I was just that.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/better-humans/if-you-feel-lonely-or-isolated-you-need-a-third-place-in-your-life-c365dff47949">Visit Now</a></p>