Oge Young is a retired OB-GYN who practiced in Concord for more than 30 years. He was the president of New Hampshire Medical Society and a member of the general council representing New Hampshire obstetricians.

Retiring Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has left us with a “Parting Prescription for America” he hopes will help people everywhere live healthier, more fulfilled lives. He believes that community is the primary source of health and that “without community it is hard to feel whole.” His father’s family in India was poor, but they made up for it in a community where families looked out for each other.

Murthy pointed out that some of the most enduring lessons about community are found in faith and cultural traditions. Christianity encourages us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Hindu scriptures advise caring for guests as we would care for the Divine. Jewish traditions emphasize Hesed, or loving kindness, and the Muslim pillar of Zakat requests that we uplift one another. The South African philosophy Ubuntu translates to “I am because we are.” These teachings call on us to cultivate community for our individual and collective well-being.

Our sense of community has eroded in America. Disheartened, many people do not have anyone to count on. They carry their burdens in life alone. Technology has trapped many in silos with less face-to-face contact. Sharing in conversation and careful listening are skills we’ve lost. Outrage drives online conversations and much of the media we consume.

The decline of civic and faith institutions has made finding community harder. Needing others is often seen as weakness, leading to isolation and stress. Currently, a third of adults and half of young people experience loneliness. Feeling lonely markedly increases our risk of illness and premature death.

Murthy defines community as living with people who allow you to be unabashedly yourself, offering the opportunity to find fulfillment. He believes fulfillment is found in the triad of relationships, service and purpose. Contrast this to the modern triad of ‘success’: fame, wealth and power. Success focuses on the individual. The triad of fulfillment connects us with something bigger than ourselves. Murthy asks: “What is the point of success if it doesn’t bring fulfillment?”

He writes that these three core elements of fulfillment are driven by one core value: love. Together they create an environment of meaning and belonging. Building relationships requires the courage to be vulnerable and real with each other. A family friend keeps a list of 100 people with whom he intentionally makes contact at least once a year, some once a month and a few every week.

Service is an act that benefits others, but it can also have a profound effect on the person rendering the service. Rabbi Josh Stampfer said “the secret of joy? Every day, try and make life a little easier for someone else.” Our purpose is not what we do. It is why we do it. A sense of purpose prioritizes how we spend our time on this earth, how we express our love. Remarkably, the Harvard School of Graduate Education reports that 58% of people between the ages of 18 and 25 say they have no sense of purpose.

Murthy believes that communities provide health when they are founded on love. Communities built around fear and animosity may “provide a sense of affiliation and support through shared grievance, but they ultimately have a corrosive effect, deepening our division, turning us against one another.” Love enables reconciliation, as Nelson Mandela demonstrated in South Africa. As Mother Theresa said, “it is not for many of us to do great things, but it is for all of us to do small things with great love.”

We are at our best not when we fear but when we love, not when we turn away but when we turn toward one another. At the end of our lives, what matters most is not our achievements, not our wealth or our power. It is our relationships, those we have served and the lives we have touched.

In medicine, relationships, including the opportunity to connect deeply with others from all walks of life, are what keep caregivers going. In his ‘Parting Prescription for America,’ our surgeon general calls for a new generation to build communities with a fierce commitment to each other.

At the end, he shares a poignant quote from the late civil rights leader and U.S. congressman John Lewis: “As a nation, if we care for the Beloved Community, we must move our feet, our hands, our hearts, our resources to build and not tear down, to reconcile and not divide, to love and not hate, to heal and not kill. We are one people, one family.”