The other day my husband and I had a great conversation about loneliness and I asked him to share his thoughts. Think you will enjoy. Give it a read.  xx, Caroline

A few days ago I left my phone in my car when I went to the grocery store. Not on purpose. It just slipped out of my pocket I and I didn’t notice til I was in line with that night’s dinner.And for a moment I could feel my blood pressure rising. No idea what to do with my hands. No idea where to look. I became genuinely self-conscious which, if you think about it, is insane. Here I was, standing in a line, doing what humans have done forever, and I felt somehow exposed. Out of my comfort zone.I looked around. I mean what else was I supposed to do? Every single person in that line was on their phone. Every single one. Which of course is not surprising. Sad, yes. Surprising, no.

I've been thinking about loneliness a bit lately. Not in a dramatic or overly deep way. Not the kind that shows up one random morning and won’t let you get out of bed. The quiet, stealth kind that seems to have settled into our daily life so gradually that most of us don't even recognize it anymore. The kind that gets mistaken for being busy. For being connected. For having 847 people who liked your last stupid post.

I was in Toronto recently, filming a tv show. Which meant weekends alone in a very chilly city where I knew almost nobody. Despite the sub-zero temperature, I would walk the city. Sit in coffee shops. Watch people. And what I noticed was that even in rooms full of people, almost nobody was actually there. Eyes down. Thumbs moving. Physically present, but somewhere else entirely. I'm a filmmaker. Creating atmosphere is literally my job. I think about light, sound, rhythm, all the invisible things that tell people where they are and how to feel. And what I've come to believe is that atmosphere is a connector.  It's an invitation. It's the difference between a room people pass through and a room people stay in.

Caroline and I talk about this all the time in the context of what she's building with Caroline Francis. A candle is such a small thing. But lighting the right one does something to a room. It changes the quality of the air, the light, the feeling of the space. And depending the scent you choose, it says, this moment is worth something. Stay here for a minute. Chill the fuck out.

We are in an epidemic of loneliness and we are medicating it with the very thing that's causing it. More screen time. More scrolling. More algorithmically optimized content designed to keep us just engaged enough to never actually feel anything. The antidote isn't complicated. It's dinner. It's showing up. It's putting your phone in the other room and being in the room you're actually in. It's lighting a candle with a scent profile that sets the tone and sitting across from someone and asking them something real. I forgot my phone in the car and for three minutes I was just a person standing in a line. I was uncomfortable. But I wasn’t numb.

That's worth thinking about.

Matt Smukler is a filmmaker, dad and the husband of founder Caroline Francis.