Customer Communities

1An Introduction to the World of Communities: Creating a Sense of Belonging

In the popular TED Talk “How to live to be 100+” (2009), author and speaker Dan Buettner attempts to tackle a question that most of us have pondered: How do we live a long and healthy life?

His Blue Zones Project is an effort to understand the parts of the world where people live unusually well and determine what we can learn and apply to our own lifestyles. Most of his conclusions about diet and exercise are reassuring but not surprising.

But his claim about the Japanese archipelago of Okinawa definitely got us thinking. Okinawa, per Buettner, has the oldest living female population in the world, the longest disability-free life expectancy, and trounces other regions on many measures, including the rates of colon cancer, breast cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

So what's in the water in Okinawa? It turns out it's the Okinawans themselves. Buettner shares the Japanese concept of ikigai, which translates to “life's worth” or, as the speaker suggests, “the reason you wake up in the morning.” Many Okinawans have their meaning tied up in a group of others called a moai. This cohort is often the same collection of people you live with and laugh with from childhood to careers to centenarian days.

In short, the communities the Okinawans live in seem to literally save their lives.

Buettner isn't alone in his thought process. In Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World (2020), ...