By Jocelyn Green

It was a crisp September day in Vienna, Austria. Sunlight dazzled on the blue, green and yellow mosaic tiles of the Stephensdom cathedral’s roof, and its spire pointed up to a clear blue sky. Filling the bustling square below, chattering locals and wide-eyed tourists in running shoes strolled past exquisite examples of architecture, stopping for ice cream cones and street performers along the way. The scene was a page out of Fodor’s travel guide.

And for me, it was just as two-dimensional. I watched as a spectator, unable to read, understand or speak German. Craving conversation, a human connection, the silence I was left with instead was deafening.

Seeking post-college adventure, I had come to Vienna to live with a private family and teach their children English for the school year. I knew it would be hard, but in my pride of self-sufficiency, I wanted to prove just how independent I was. But the language barrier was too great, and the inability to connect with people banished me to isolation, and then depression. Humans are wired for community. And without it, I completely short-circuited. I returned home again before the snow fell, but it was months before I recovered my spirit.

As it turns out, people aren’t made to operate independently of each other after all.

“We need each other,” says Dave Goetz, author of Death by Suburb. “Community and friendship counter the loneliness of postmodern life.” But these days, isolation is more often the norm-and you don’t need to leave the country to experience it.

“My first year out of college was the most isolating of my life,” says Lisa Gale, a social worker currently in Philadelphia. “I moved to a small town in Pennsylvania where I lived alone and worked in an office where the youngest employee was at least 10 years my senior. I chose my first job based on my major and my career goals. Whether or not I would have any type of community was not even a factor. How quickly I learned the difficulty of navigating totally unfamiliar challenges without the support of nearby friends or family!”

Especially when friends and family are not close, neighbors could play an important role in our lives. But even these relationships are on the decline, and even more so in suburbia. In Goetz’s neighborhood, being neighborly is becoming a thing of the past. On his street, many of the ranch-styled homes built in the 1950s have been torn down and replaced with $1 million-plus houses, which take up most of the space of the lot. As a result, the kids no longer play outside because there’s not much yard left, and the families who enter and exit through attached garages no longer see their neighbors. The larger homes have changed the nature of the conversation in the neighborhood.

“The problem is not the house, it’s that they drive into their garage, shut the door and never have to engage those of us standing outside or watching our kids,” he says. “The physical way of their life obviates conversation, thus relationship, thus friendship. The higher you go on the economic food chain, the more you tend to think that you need people less. So we really need to be intentional about building lasting relationships.”

As commutes get longer and our circles of friends become spread out over greater distances, it has become more difficult to foster relationships. Capitalizing on this dilemma, Starbucks sells more than coffee-with the soft music and comfortable atmosphere, they serve up community, too.

“Americans are so hungry for a community that some of our customers began gathering in our stores, making appointments with friends, holding meetings, striking up conversations with regulars,” says Howard Schultz, Starbucks’s chairman and CEO. Perhaps this is why people continue to plunk down three to five bucks per cup. We are paying for the sense of community, too.