“The Minister of Loneliness” | Sarah Kay | TED

In the country of Japan, in the month of October 2020, more people died by suicide than had died from COVID-19 in all of 2020 up to that point. In response, the Japanese government instituted a new position of a minister of loneliness. The Minister of Loneliness has abolished email. He is installing tin cans on every windowsill with a piece of string to someone else's window. Not several, just one. Each person, of course, does not need a lot of people to speak to. Just the one. But the one must be reliable, must be available when needed. We are employing a buddy system now. Every day is a field trip to the Adulthood Museum, and we don't go home until everyone has been accounted for. The way you find your buddy is a nationwide game of Guess Who where you sing the song that is always stuck in your head, describe the movie you can't get through without crying, the hardest you've ever laughed, the outfit you wish you could pull off. And the only person who can spot you is the one you are assigned. All of Japan is a ball of string now. The economy has ground to a halt. Productivity is entirely impossible. Sometimes you go to talk into the can on your windowsill, and a knot in the string accidentally gives you someone else's conversation. The fading fabric of someone else's loneliness evaporating into the air between buildings. You are allowed to eavesdrop, but so is everyone else. The Minister of Loneliness has moved all kindergartens to the ground floor of elderly assisted-living centers. There are daily story hours. Animal shelters across the street. The Minister of Loneliness has not abolished Valentine's Day, but has instituted a nationwide "bring enough for the class" regulation and nobody goes home empty handed. The Minister of Loneliness has prescribed therapy for everyone, daily walks through the many gardens, opportunities for meditation by a brook, in the rain, under falling blossoms or along a snowy riverbank, depending on the season. He has commissioned musicians and actors and poets to create concerts and radio plays and poetry readings, to be pumped across the knotted tin-can radio lines every evening. When you order dinner for one, the person who delivers it arrives with an appropriate ability and comfort level dance instruction video and two hours to spare. Grieving is encouraged and art-making is rampant. But because of the knots, sometimes when you are expecting a visit from a grief counselor, the dance partner food delivery arrives instead. Sometimes they are the same person. The Minister of Loneliness isn't tired. He is the most popular man in the country. He has a crush on a middle-school teacher across town, and everyone eavesdrops to hear the way he stumbles when she answers. Everyone is on the edge of their seats. Everyone forgets about dying because they can't wait to find out what happens next. Everyone has opinions. The minister has to start a hotline where people can call in to tell him their thoughts. The tin cans rattle non-stop. The minister is grateful for the advice but is nervous his crush will hear the commotion. He is nervous she prefers quiet, but he does not know for sure yet. He does not know what she is thinking, does not know how she spends her Saturdays, or how she prefers her tea, or whether she likes to walk in the rain. But he likes wondering. When nobody is paying attention, when the window sills are quiet, late at night, awake, he does like to wonder. (Applause)