loneliness… 🚶🏻♂️ [revisited]
a fresh take — on an old — emotion
this post
is an updated
version
of a post
from last April
entitled
loneliness
Loneliness… is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man [woman].
Thomas Clayton Wolfe, (1900 – 1938), American novelist…
there’s a difference
between solitude
and loneliness
a difference
between being
alone
and being
lonely
loneliness
is a state
of emotional
distress
a feeling
of isolation
disconnection
and perceived
invisibility
it’s a sense
of not being
seen
for the person
you-truly-are
it’s a sign
that healthy
social
connections
are missing
solitude
is a state
of being
alone
a feeling
of freedom
and focus
it’s a private
personal
practice
a solo
meditation
it’s a salve
used by artists
writers
& musicians
for millennia
loneliness
is a silent
invisible
plague
a painful
despair
at the heart
of the human
condition
it’s a struggle
for me
and almost everyone
i know
it’s a public
health
epidemic
according-to-Vivek
Murthy
solitude
is a quiet
magical
space
a room
with a view
and a lamp
a piano
a guitar
and an amp
it’s a garden
of seeds
& sound
of equanimities
found
if you have friends
who might enjoy
open to change
in their box
please share it
i found the following
words
from Alain de Botton
to be insightful
For most of our time on this planet (by which one really means, for 99% of homo sapiens’ evolutionary existence) we lived in communities — that is groups of 20 or 30 people… who worked together, cooked communal meals, and lived & died around each other.
For most of history… we’d watch the sun going down… with the same people we knew deeply, trusted, sometimes bickered with… but overall felt overwhelmingly connected to.
We’d shoot the breeze… we’d comfort each other when we were sad… we’d drop in, unannounced, on one another’s quarters… we’d chat over our pains and stresses… and at special moments we’d dance together, and occasionally fall into ritual, ecstatic states… where the normal barriers between egos… would dissolve.
It’s only very late on in history… that we’ve started living in condominiums… commuting to work in offices… with people whose values we don’t share… and eating for one in cities of ten million strangers.
we all long
to be part
of a tribe
to be nourished
by close
safe
loving
relationships
to be seen
to be connected
to a trusted
community
calling all writers
do you write
about the human
condition
do you play well
with artists
& other writers
do you geek
at the chance
to be an open to change
guest poet
send your poems
to thc@opentochange.com
thank you
for supporting
open to change
a reader-supported
publication
🙏🏼
Darren, your description of loneliness is painfully right-on, and got me thinking (as you always do): are we not ALL to blame for this? Sure, the perfect storm of COVID’s isolationism and social media has been devastating , but are we not also to blame, for holding our phones closer than we hold our own children (universal term here)? Are we not to blame for our failure to teach the children how to properly use this (phone) amazing tool created by the human mind? Do we share the blame for the violence resulting from such despair and desperation? You bet. Now the question is…what do we do about it?
de Bottom's observation is immovably true, it informs an awful lot of personal struggles, even for the objectively thriving, in modern life. Maybe this isn't how humans were meant to live.
Of course, there would be many people who have unknowingly created and maintained their own group of 20 or 30, and would no doubt be better off, physically, emotionally, psychologically.