Thinking, even too much, even about nonsense is arguably a good in and of itself. Right? Even if you are a person of action, you cannot argue that thinking (even overthinking) is unique to the human experience—perhaps even essential to it. It roots us in the inner life. Its the lifeblood of creativity. It is the, at times, idle chatter that is us, insofar as there is an us to reference as distinct from the world of our perceptions. In any case, I have been idly thinking about loneliness, these anecdotes and news reports that feel more common today that we remember them being previously—which may only be a trick of the here and now, a result of focusing on a thing or, in this case topic, previously unimportant and therefore beyond our (I should say my) attention. But before going on and offering my half-baked thoughts on what seems to be a contemporary epidemic of loneliness, lets distinguish it, for whichever writer is reading this, from solitude.
Solitude is a necessary part of the creative experience. A self-imposed exile. A receding into self for the purposes of creating. A quiet “bliss,” to quote Wordsworth, in which we remember what we find most moving. I think of Kafka writing in solitude, of Milton’s Il Penseroso, and, indeed, every other person bitten by the writing bug who tells his/her pals “Not tonight, I have to catch up on some stuff.” Maybe solitude is part of a balance, a time when we are too busy in the world of our designing to feel isolated, unimportant, lost…truly lonely.
Excerpt from Milton’s Il Penseroso
Or let my lamp at midnight hour, Be seen in some high lonely tow'r, Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds, or what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
Then there is loneliness—the unproductive “Not tonight,” if there is even an invitation. I remember pausing at a stat when I heard that, according to certain surveys, 60% of people feel lonely a substantial part of their day to day lives. Was this a result of the pandemic? A part of stoically minded men and women trying their best not to complain? A symptom of an out of whack work life balance? A result of technology? A disappearance of third-space gathering places? I don’t know.
It seems easy enough to make friends when you are a child. You jump into games and sports, join clubs, try new things, adopt new hobbies, start a band. But then, as you age, ever guarded, perhaps with skeletons in the closet or swamped with the tasks of day to day life, interpersonal intimacy becomes a thing of the past. Friends move away and become too busy for pickleball and game night. The things that anchor us to the past, the freer times we still feel nostalgic for, erode, disappear. Maybe we spend too many cocktail parties artfully planning what joke we will use to really dive into a conversation, cut past the pleasantries, and get to know another person. Maybe we don’t even go.
Maybe our modern mating rituals keep a would-be-lover at arm’s length until we are sure we can be vulnerable. Maybe intimacy or letting the mask drop is not what we are looking for any longer. Maybe our lives online have something to do with it. Maybe we are so wrapped up in curating a neat and presentable version of self through social media that we cannot get past the superficial into what is meaningful. Perhaps, in becoming our own publicists for the internet, we have lost focus or forgotten what being authentic looks like. Maybe internet trolls and our own nearsightedness blinds us to the point that we are unable to empathize: “I paid off my student loans, why should Biden pay for yours? Get a better job, beta!” I don’t know.
All I know for sure is that you are not alone, at least not here. You have me and anyone who realizes that their words have an impact on others’ lives. Sticks and stones might break you, but our words shouldn’t. We are, maybe more than ever, at a place in time where we can reach across the world and raise others up. Write your heart out, share it, and know that even if you are not the person, the writer, the creative, you wished you had been, it is better to consider yourself a work in progress than a lost cause. Your words, wherever you are on your journey to where you want to be, might still touch someone, brighten their day, make them think, remind them to be grateful that there is still time to improve, change, and become. Never stop.
Thank you. Your words have come at the right time. I’m trying to consider myself a work in progress rather than a lost cause but it is a struggle, particularly at the moment.
Loneliness sucks. It felt a lot more simpler connecting with people when being in school and college, but we end up drifting apart and it’s harder to gain connections. Even during work due to the limited hours and people getting in relationships and families.