On (Not) Escaping Loneliness

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Finding the benefits of loneliness in a very lonely world.

Introduction — Ubiquitous Loneliness

I, often, am lonely.

Not alone. Not physically estranged from the world. Lonely. I think there’s a difference between the two.

I live in a small home with my spouse and three children. Yet, sometimes I sit amongst clanging toys and endless spectacles of joyous, animated television, and I feel hopelessly detached from the vigor around me. Occasionally, I will look at my children or my spouse and simply wonder, “Who are these people?”

I live amongst them every day. We share shelter, food, and moments of unmitigated life. Yet, even in the most connected of experiences, there is a palpable disconnection.

Is loneliness an unavoidable reality of being alive?

Is my meager confession more normal than I presume?

I hope so. Feeling lonely is often made out to be that we are excluded; as if our sense of loneliness disbars us from what seems so great. Something must be wrong with us. Already, I may have cast myself into criticism or pity. I’m banking on the premise that the experience of loneliness is common. However, a cultural stigma pervades; one that is difficult to break.

The prevailing assumption appears to be that loneliness is an ailment for introverts. If you are lonely, your poor social skills are to blame for your disconnection. Or, you’re simply lazy. No respectable person should be lonely. And if you are, you must overcome your faults.

Hence, the stigmatized taboo leads to a negative insinuation. The internal conversations with ourselves become that everyone else seems so normal. We must, therefore, work harder and, certainly, not admit to the verdict of loneliness.

Can one’s own introverted tendency or antisocial behavior contribute to their loneliness? Certainly. Can being physically alone exponentially incur the experience? Absolutely. However, please consider how the reality might be more pervasive than our culture admits and how loneliness and physical isolation from other bodies might be different.

Part One — Two Cues: Smallness & Singleness

You are unknown, unthought of, and inextricably meaningless to most human beings.

As a human, you will be next to, around, and surrounded by billions of people and creatures in a massive universe that you share — yet, you will go unnoticed by the vast majority of them. There is an inevitable smallness to your life. And in the almost infinite scope of the world and history, your minuteness is further shrunk by society’s disinterest to the point that we may genuinely wonder whether anyone would notice if we simply disappeared.

Yet, there is another factor; a phenomenological one.

You only have you. The only experience you have is the one that comes through your eyes and your mind. You are your own, singular person. You can be in conversation with numerous beings or surrounded by crowds of people or loved by fellow meager souls, but in the end, you still only have you. You can’t see, experience, or feel the world from any vantage point but your own. You can be with lots of people, but you can’t be any of them. You cannot enter their mind. You cannot hold their being in the same way that you hold yours.

To be human is to be alone because we can’t inhabit the universe from any self but our own.

If we are honest about the simplicity of our meager souls, we may honestly conclude that we are destined to experience loneliness. The nuance is necessary. Loneliness is not just being locked in a room. It’s not just physical isolation. Nor is it a demise reserved for those who won’t put themselves out there.

Loneliness happens in the average moments of every day.

It comes from acknowledging the bitter reality that the only company we can fully have is our own.

Part Two — Normalizing Loneliness

Loneliness, it seems, is fated. We cannot completely share our lives fully with anyone; and doing so might be a bit disturbing to the recipients of the deepest, weirdest parts of our souls. How do we balance the desire for honesty with the need for acceptability?

Plus, there are a lot of people. None of which are exactly like you. Pursuing congruity with the mass of life in our shared world will always be met with at least some dissonance. No one is capable or qualified to completely understand and connect with anyone. And the further we delve into our minds and experience the further we increase the asymmetry, making us even less accessible. Don’t think this is everyone else’s fault, either. We aren’t able (nor are we often willing) to offer this desired connection to those around us yearning for it, too.

Loneliness is going to happen.

But what ought we do about it?

Loneliness Isn’t (Always) Bad

First, let’s normalize that the experience of being alone is not a sign of failure. It is natural and unavoidable.

Usually, the experience of loneliness leads us to conjecture that we are weird; that something is wrong with us. Yet, to be human is to feel alone despite our culture’s hushed silence. It is not a bad thing; it is a common one. Even if folks don’t regularly talk about it, experiencing loneliness has no moral value.

The cultural presumption may just be a modern trope, as well. Many epochs of human history did not conclude that loneliness was a sign of disparity. In fact, the origins of desert monasticism — folks removing themselves from society to be alone and in silence for long periods of time — was a sign of prestige. Much art depicted a lonely figure in the landscape not as a means of derision but of honor.

The age of romanticism is to blame for the shift in a disposition that has led to our present standard where having an empty calendar is equivalent to having a social deformity. It started with marriage. It was a pleasant hope, too. Through romantic love, there seemed to be the possibility that you might finally find connection and meaning through another person. Yet, even the monastic life was less discouraged as monks were pushed away from solitude to the clerical life of urban centers.

The dawn of modernism came with a spurious rejection of our own company. Solitude went from a respectable endeavor to a form of pathology. Failing to be constantly surrounded by the clamors of civilized life became a defect. Most notably, as expressed in the song Eleanor Rigby, failing to fail in love would simply leave you picking up rice after the weddings of more noble characters. Who would want to be such a pitiful figure with no enchanting partner?

Yet, we’ve seen the answers of romanticism fail in their hypothetical aims. Adding more people doesn’t solve the problem of being alone. In fact, the modern condition can appear quite bleak compared to the tribal experience of ages past.

Consider Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Thanksgiving painting compared to the advertisements of Swanson TV dinners just a decade later that paralleled the rising action of colored TVs. A quaint table full of elegant, complicated foods fit to nourish a day of togetherness versus a frozen concoction on a tray that will fill the stomach while perusing the best entertainment available.

Here’s the deal — modernity has come with massive benefits, wondrous technology, and a lot more people within reach. Yet, we are far lonelier. Emile Durkheim, a 20th-century sociologist remarked on what he called Mechanical Solidarity versus Organic Solidarity. As globalized industrialization began its rise, he noticed that the dynamic density — the number and diversity of people one has access to and the degree of interaction between people — was increased compared to agricultural and tribal societies. With this came much more formal social structures away from collective communities.

Your interactions were no longer determined by geography and family. The modern world transcended the geographic and ancestral constraints. It also, however, came with specialized social roles, division of labor, and social institutions. More contact, less connection.

Scanning the modern landscape, the increase of mental and emotional health issues (not to mention physical health issues, as well) runs in parallel with these sociological changes. Durkheim even wrote a study on how in every area where industrialization grew, so did the suicide rates.

It’s almost as if the luxurious gains and access of modern society have left us deficient elsewhere. The lingering question remains: how do we continue such a lifestyle while still compensating for our psychological needs?

Loneliness Is (Sometimes) Good

Another cue from history may be in order. Recognizing the normal and unavoidable nature of loneliness will hopefully cause us to release the experience of its negative insinuation. The stigma does not reflect reality. Yet, while loneliness appears to be integral to being alive, entire epochs of history seemed to engage its nature more holistically. As lovely as it sounds from my modern vantage point, I’m not saying I desire to be a desert monk or tribal villager. However, there was a time when loneliness was not seen as a curse. Rather, it was appreciated.

It still can be.

A second approach, then, would be to see that loneliness may have possible benefits. Not only is this experience not a disease, ailment, or mental disorder, but it might also have value.

We have, therefore, a very normal and inevitable component to being alive; one that isn’t all that fun. My claim is that you will not get rid of the experience. You can, however, choose how to engage and work with it. This leads to the possibility of entertaining the positive effects of the experience.

How, then, do we own the reality of loneliness and possibly discover its oft-hidden value?

Part Three — The Benefits of Loneliness

There are a wide variety of causes of loneliness and a vast multitude of remedies — all of which deserve their own attention. But I’ve found that a very simple adjustment in perspective can begin to alleviate what sometimes feels like a plague.

As I see it, there are three options to the predicament before us.

  • Pretend — quite technically, this is a reactive psychological response to any suffering that humans can choose. In the context of loneliness, this response also appears to have the highest number of adherents. We just won’t talk about it, acknowledge it, or even consider it’s reality. An experience under the rug is an experience that isn’t real. If we can make the sense of being alone incognito, well, why would we even need to read something like this?

  • Compromise — we take the psychological vacancy of loneliness and replace it. While also being a form of reactive response, this option actively seeks to fill the void with false or shallow connections.

  • Acceptance — embrace the inevitable reality of feeling alone and the possible benefits of such an experience.

The issue here is that pretending or compromising plays to our cultural hand much more effectively. The solution is immediate even if it is unsustainable or ultimately unamiable. For example, searching for connection in the course of normal social experiences will never provide a holistic depth of shared knowledge. Yet, if we can continue jumping from interaction to interaction, we can have a sense of connection with an infinite supply of rebounds that may just carry us to our eventual death.

We have a fear of being alone which leads to an impatient restlessness to the point that we will go for anything to soothe the soul. Not only will we continue to transiently run from our same disappointments, but the person filling the lonely hole is there to supply a need as opposed to garnering genuine connection. Relational objectification ensues. And we guarantee that connection will remain elusive.

This compromise resulting from our fear of being alone also signs away the potential value of solitude. Surface-level relationships will keep us from the stigma of loneliness and the fear of missing out, but in running to relational one-night stands we might do well to wonder what we are running from. Not only is the grass rarely greener on the other side, but sometimes we are afraid of being present in our grass and mud that is the familiar echoes of our own soul.

On the contrary, accepting our loneliness is not only a more honest life, but possibly a healthier one, too. There is something wonderful about accepting our own average, mediocre smallness in the world. As it happens, such an approach is rife with difficult potential.

1 — The Benefit of Contentment

Embracing the disconnected reality of being alive allows you to give up the endless journey of chasing something. You’re not filling a hole with band-aids to the symptoms of being an average, distinct human being. Part of this is simply accepting that you are normal. No one is enjoying a journey of pure, unadulterated connection. Everyone is quite like everyone else.

But you are also accepting yourself. How often do we search for acceptance in the company of others because we don’t like ourselves or because we don’t like being constrained by our own presence? There is a Jewish parable on the command not to covet. We often lust for what we don’t have and the ancient rabbis compared it to someone who has their own garden but constantly stands at the edge wishing they had everyone else’s garden.

Usually, this is based on past experiences of feeling unworthy or being neglected, but we run a tape in our head that we don’t deserve to be content with ourselves. We don’t like ourselves and assume that no one else will, either.

Can we be okay with our own company?

And can we admit that we are just like every other human being wandering through the world stuck with a meager, isolated life?

You only have you. Learning to live in reflection of that reality is a good step in learning to be alive.

2 — The Benefits of Loneliness

This contentment is not just for honesty’s sake — it also comes with some value.

For one, the physical limitations of the human body require rest. This is a rarity in the modern world. Sure, our constant search for connection and noise keeps us from being left with our own company, but it also keeps us from the rejuvenation that comes with solitude. Sometimes, we need these kinds of boundaries. We need to make room for detachment and disconnection. Which means we need to be alone.

Solitude also allows us to see. If you can stand to be fully present with yourself, you just may be able to actually see who you are and where you are. I believe this is why people are beginning to mediate without any religious connotation, or why venturing on a quiet walk is more and more desirable.

While the reactive response wants to run away, acceptance opens you up to knowing and seeing the depths of your soul. This doesn’t mean it is pretty. There is a reason we avoid loneliness: because we don’t want to see ourselves. It’s a fair notion. But then we venture into the false and shallow connection which acts as a drug to escape the hideous spaces of our internal cavities. In turn, we don’t tend to know who we are.

There’s something real and honest about accepting our smallness and our strangeness. There is something about a proper sense of proportion when we are honest about our finitude and eccentricity. Your life is a blip of breath. There are 7 billion people who don’t know you exist. Your loneliness can be a healthy reminder that the world doesn’t revolve around you; that the world is not arranged for your preference or satisfaction. Yet, you is literally all you have. Being comfortable in your own skin is a wonderful sentiment. In the end, it’s also your only option. I suppose we should start getting comfortable.

The Christian tradition may have gotten this one right — you are dust and to dust you shall return. And we are all dust, together. You won’t be the hero of the story, but you can be grateful for your own powerlessness to overcome the odds of the human condition.

Then, in seeing the world and seeing yourself more clearly, you might be able to act more honestly with your small life in the small place that you are.

But you need to stop looking at the lonely gardens of all the lonely people and start being content with seeing your own.

Because it’s the only one you have.