On a summer Sunday evening, Highway 400 southbound slows north of Barrie and stays slow for much of the drive into Toronto. Many of the people in those cars spent the weekend swimming, paddling, hiking, and sitting by a lake with no plan. Most will spend the coming week indoors, at desks and in cars.
Two recent books argue that people need the time outdoors, physical effort, and quiet those weekends provide on a regular basis, and that modern comfort makes all of it easy to go without. Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis (2021) and Arthur C. Brooks’s The Meaning of Your Life (2026) are not about cities, but much of what they recommend can be done in Toronto, starting this week.
Brooks, a Harvard social scientist, defines meaning as coherence, purpose, and significance: a sense that what happens to you is not random, a clear direction for your life, and the sense that you make a positive difference for others. He argues that since roughly 2008, more of life has moved online, pushing people toward analytical, task-focused thinking and weakening the experiences that produce meaning. His remedies include limiting phone use, investing in close relationships, looking for a calling in your work, spending time with beauty, and transcendence, which he describes as moving yourself out of focus through service, awe, spiritual practice, or volunteering.
Easter, a journalist and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, argues that easy access to comfort has removed challenges our ancestors benefited from, such as exercising to earn food, enduring hunger, and spending time in nature alone with their thoughts. As those challenges disappear, our tolerance for discomfort drops and rising comfort leaves us less content. He cites figures showing that Americans spend about 93 percent of their time indoors, and that the share of jobs requiring heavy manual labour has fallen from around 85 percent to about 10 percent. He also links high population density and noise to chronic mental health problems, and his nature prescription is written for city dwellers: 20 minutes in green space three times a week, five hours a month in semi-wild areas, and three days a year off-grid.
Together, the books point to four needs: time in nature and quiet, physical effort, close relationships, and a commitment to something larger than yourself. In a city, it is easy to go without each of them.
The ravine system covers 11,000 hectares, or 17 percent of the city’s land area, and about 30 percent of residents live within 500 metres of a ravine. Access closer to home varies. The 3-30-300 rule, proposed by urban forester Cecil Konijnendijk, sets a neighbourhood standard: at least three trees in view from every home, school, and workplace, at least 30 percent tree canopy in every neighbourhood, and no more than 300 metres to the nearest public green space. Toronto’s 2018 Tree Canopy Study put citywide canopy at 28.4 to 31 percent, but earlier City work found tree cover unevenly distributed across wards. A 2024 study of 2.5 million buildings in eight cities, including New York and Amsterdam, found most buildings fail the rule because of inadequate canopy.
Physical effort depends on how a neighbourhood was built. In older, walkable areas, daily life includes walking to the subway and carrying groceries home. In much of the inner suburbs, the car is the practical choice for almost every trip.
Connection and civic life have both declined. In the Toronto Foundation’s 2023 Vital Signs report, 37 percent of Torontonians said they felt lonely at least three or four days in the previous week, and the share with six or more close friends fell from 37 percent in 2018 to 28 percent in 2022. Toronto’s volunteer rate fell from 37 percent to 25 percent between 2018 and 2022.
Density itself does not explain these results. The same survey found Montreal, also a large and dense city, lowest among major metropolitan areas at 17 percent. Many of the solutions, including transit to green space, public programming, and local groups, depend on having enough people nearby.
Time in nature and quiet. Spend 20 minutes in a park or ravine at least three times a week. Check your own street against 3-30-300: count the trees you can see from your window and find the nearest park or ravine entrance. Once a month, spend a few hours somewhere wilder, such as Rouge National Urban Park, the Toronto Islands, or the Humber and Don valleys, all reachable by transit or ferry. Leave your earbuds at home on some of those walks; Easter argues that boredom and silence give the mind room to wander and recover. Keep your phone out of the bedroom and off for the last hour before sleep, as Brooks recommends. If you want structure, ask your doctor or nurse practitioner about PaRx, Canada’s nature prescription program, led by family physician Dr. Melissa Lem. Any licensed health care professional in Ontario can prescribe it, and it recommends at least two hours a week in nature, in blocks of at least 20 minutes.
Physical effort. Walk or cycle one leg of a trip you make every week. Carry your groceries home instead of driving to the store, and take the stairs at the station. Easter recommends carrying weight, so add a loaded backpack to some of your walks. Once a year, pick one challenge that feels slightly out of reach, such as walking a long stretch of the ravine trails in a single day.
Connection. Join one activity that meets weekly with the same people, such as a choir, a league, a running group, or a class. Seeing the same faces regularly is how acquaintances become friends. Learn the names of a few neighbours. Brooks argues that close relationships are the main source of significance, so put regular time with close friends and family on your calendar instead of waiting for it to happen.
Meaning. Brooks suggests asking yourself three questions: why things happen the way they do in your life, where you are heading, and why your life matters. Whichever answer feels weakest points to where to start. Volunteering is the most direct route to significance, and residents associations, parent councils, faith communities, community gardens, and local charities all need help. Easter recommends brief daily reminders of your own mortality, and cites research finding that people asked to think about death became more willing to give money, time, and blood.
Neighbourhood groups and institutions can run the same events every year, such as a street party, a park cleanup, or a seasonal festival, so residents know when to show up. Libraries, schools, and places of worship can open space for these uses. Health care providers can expand nature and social prescribing; Ontario’s Rx: Community pilot tested social prescribing at eleven community health centres, including Rexdale Community Health Centre in Toronto, from 2018 to 2019.
The City can adopt 3-30-300 as a neighbourhood benchmark alongside its existing canopy targets and direct planting and park investment to the areas that fall short. The researchers behind the eight-city study recommend better planting conditions so trees grow to full size, and fewer premature removals. Clear ravine entrances and wayfinding, simple and inexpensive permits for street parties and small park events, and permissions for shops and services within walking distance of home would make the individual steps above easier. The Bentway’s Rx for Social Connection report, prepared with Gehl and the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, treats public space as part of the city’s health system.
The province funds primary care, and the Rx: Community evaluation found that investment in primary care and social supports helps social prescribing work. Housing supply, which Vital Signs links to the financial strain behind poor mental health in Toronto, is largely a provincial responsibility. Weekend transit to conservation areas and provincial parks would help residents without a car get the monthly time in wilder places that Easter recommends.
Most of what the two books recommend is within your control: regular walks in a park or ravine, limits on your phone, more physical effort in ordinary trips, a weekly commitment with the same people, and time given to something beyond yourself. The collective steps take longer. They include measuring neighbourhoods against 3-30-300 and investing where they fall short, making walking practical in the inner suburbs, supporting the local groups that give people a place to contribute, and provincial support for primary care, housing, and transit.
Love the “count the trees outside your window” advice for sure. Coincidentally, I’ve been doing this all week, from windows in many locations. It’s cheered me every time. Magic! :)