Why Social Connection is Vital to Our Happiness [Florence]

“What matters most in life is love and human connection. We connect beauty to love, and beauty is a promise of happiness. ”

— Together, by Vivek Murthy and The Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton

When we decided to go to Florence in December, I knew I had to revisit San Miniato al Monte across the Arno River from the center of the city. My professor, David Mayernik, took our class here in 2011 to see the delightful monastery but also to observe Florence's skyline as seen from the surrounding hills. Looking down into the city's center we see a fabric of kind, beautiful buildings all of more or less the same height. At three and four stories, you can walk comfortably down to the street, and from a window you feel part of the street scene. We can see and hear details of the scene - the people, their faces, their voices, foliage, and shops. From here, you can yell out and catch the attention of someone below. These buildings reflect the proper connection between building height and the health of people.

The tides of colorful, stucco buildings also define the background from which emerges the beautiful Santa Maria del Fiore. In Timeless Cities, Professor Mayernik states that, Florence emits a kind of elegance, one aimed toward the point between extremes. Austere but without severity, romantic but not too much, deeply religious but with an eye on commerce, ordered (thanks to the Romans) but with the medieval moments of irregular, seemingly organic planning. The form of the city is shaped by a gentle harmony designed to form an equally harmonious society. Renaissance humanists had a definition of harmony that could accommodate ‘imperfection,' accepting the joyful imperfection of real cities and real people. We are drawn to balance in architecture, and we characterize this balance as beautiful. This beauty alludes to a balanced inner self that we describe as happy. Like buildings, we have an internal dialogue of opposites that we are constantly working with to find a middle ground. As humans, we seek to inwardly resemble the buildings and places that touch us with their beauty.

“These three and four-story buildings reflect the proper connection between building height and the health of people.”

— A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander

From the street life and fabric buildings, our story continues upward to the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. A superbly massive and delicate dome defining the city’s skyline. The building was begun in 1296 without a clear idea of how a roof would be constructed over the octagonal drum. The first model of the dome depicted a massive inner dome that was open at the top to admit light. The inner dome was shown to be enclosed in a thinner outer shell to keep out the weather. The dome would need an internal defense against spreading, but this had yet to be invented. Filippo Brunelleschi exceeded the first model by employing a double shell made of sandstone and marble. This eliminated the need for construction support, since there was not enough timber in Tuscany for the height and breath of this dome. Brunelleschi built the dome out of brick with nothing under it during construction. The spreading issue was resolved with hoops embedded in the inner dome. The outer dome is dependent on its connection to the inner dome and has no embedded hoops. The outer dome is also not thick enough to contain hoops with the base being 2 feet thick and the top being 1 foot thick. The dome illustrates how closely a certain kind of beauty, described in The Architecture of Happiness, is bound to our admiration for strength and for man-made objects which can withstand forces of heat, cold, gravity and wind. The dome possesses the added virtue of making this achievement look effortless. Since we sense it was difficult to achieve, we admire it even more. This is a subcategory to beauty Alain de Botton defines as elegance. We witness elegance in the hard won simplicity of the dome and in the delicately fashioned, polychromatic facade. When we view these elements as elegant, we acknowledge the unusual care behind their creation. They stand as markers of patience and generosity, and of a kind of sweetness and love.

http://www.museumsinflorence.com/

“A certain kind of beauty is bound to our admiration for strength and for man-made objects which can withstand forces of heat, cold, gravity, and wind. The dome possesses the added virtue of making this achievement look effortless. Since it was difficult to achieve, we admire it even more.”

— The Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton

I recently read Together and felt so many parallels to Florence, Timeless Cities, The Architecture of Happiness, Aristotle, and The Original Green. I sincerely love and related to Vivek Muthy’s assessment of humanity’s need for social interaction. In Together, Vivek summarizes that what matters most in life is love and human connection. The timeless elements of our buildings and places are the aspects that we love and form attachments to. These attachments can be in the form of emotional responses and memories of social connection. All humans have a vital need for social connection. Relationships are as essential to our well-being as food and water. Hunger and thirst are our bodies' way to tell us what to eat and drink. Similarly, loneliness is a natural signal that reminds us when we need to connect with people. Loneliness is distinct from depression and anxiety, yet they are closely linked. And further, loneliness is also different from solitude. I felt solitude when choosing to walk through the empty streets of Florence in the early mornings and late at night. Solitude is a peaceful isolation where we can connect with our inner selves enhancing our personal growth, creativity and emotional well-being. Loneliness is feeling alone, without a community, and abandoned. When we feel lonely, we want to escape from this emotional pain and are burdened with shame. We feel as if there is something wrong with us and we question our self worth. Our strength as a species is our ability to connect with others through social groups, the circulation of ideas, storytelling, coordinating goals, dispersing information, distributing emotions, and sharing public spaces. We have the ability to communicate and work together. This is an innate instinct. Social groups became valuable when our bodies enabled us to throw. All of the sudden, we had the ability to throw stones and kill at a distance incentivizing the need to work together. Evolution favored collaboration because of the benefits it provided. Our social evolution is deeply intertwined with our physical evolution.

Within our lives there are three dimensions of social interaction defined in Together: a deep mutual bond of emotion and trust (a partner), quality relationships and social companionship (family and friends), and a network or community of people that share your interests (chance interactions and third-places). Our brain rewards us by releasing happy chemicals when we form meaningful connections. Oxytocin is released when we feel at “home” with our partner reducing fear and stress while making strong bonds stronger. Dopamine is a powerful motivator for connection and surges when we seek and find companionship with family and friends. And, endorphins are released when we physically touch someone and when we move in synchrony with others within our public spaces.

I leave you with two key thoughts. What matters most in life is love and human connection. We connect beauty to love, and beauty is a promise of happiness.