Spoon Carving Is The New Way to Bond with Your Bro
Loneliness is bad. Real bad.
Loneliness has studies linking it to diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer's, heart disease and cancer.
While gender seems to have little impact on loneliness, this blog post will be looking at combating the impact loneliness has on men. 86% of my YouTube audience is male. Same for my Instagram followers. 70% of my Facebook followers are male. Even on Pinterest, where 67% of the users are female, my audience is 57% male. So I’m assuming a lot of you reading this right now are blokes.
When women are stressed they release oxytocin which encourages bonding. The ‘Tend and Befriend’ Response. When men are stressed they release testosterone and cortisol. Which triggers ‘Fight or Flight’, making it less likely for men to seek out someone to talk to about their problems. As a result men in the US are 3-5 times more likely to die from suicide than women.
Niobe Way, psychology professor at NYU, writes about how the fear of being perceived as feminine leads to men sacrificing intimacy for casual banter. While women are comfortable talking face-to-face, men tend to talk shoulder to shoulder. In order to bond, men need an activity.
So how do we solve this? Spoon carving. I know, it’s my answer to everything. But hear me out.
According to self-determination theory, humans need three things to be content:
to feel competent at what they do
to feel authentic in their lives
to feel connected to others
Or, put more succinctly by Men's Sheds founder, Dick McGowan:
"Men need somewhere to go, something to do, and someone to talk to."
An activity like spoon carving gives men a chance to bond over a shared goal: carving a spoon. Plus you get to use axes and knives. Which everyone agrees is cool.
While alone, spoon carving gives men the opportunity to feel competent at what they do. Putting a razor-sharp edge on simple hand tools and using them to transform bits of tree into useable utensils is a solid competency.
It’s also a great way to disengage with ever-increasingly digital lives. Reconnecting with your senses to use hand tools is great for being in the moment. Nothing like swinging an axe to focus your attention to the here-and-now.
Finally, and the crux of the argument I’m making on spoon carving helping with loneliness, is the opportunities spoon carving offers to hang out with fellow makers.
More and more spoon carving events and meet ups are cropping up around the world. Here’s a sample of annual events I know about:
If there are others you know and enjoy, let us know in the comments.
If you can’t make it to any of these, Rise Up and Carve gives spoon carvers an opportunity to connect digitally with fellow makes.
If you’re able to find an event close to home, it could lead to some great new friendships. The Driftless Spoon Gathering was how I met my best friend, Derek. He was a reader of my blog and reached out when I got to the US. We ended up traveling to the gathering together.
Since then we’ve traveled to the UK together, gone on many camping and canoe trips, I was Best Man at his wedding and we still meet regularly to carve, turn and make nerdy Lord of the Rings references.
So if you’re feeling a little lonely, start carving a spoon. Who knows what might come of it.
