I am bad with numbers, but that’s no excuse for this post to
not start with some factual researched statistics about loneliness that I have
come across read and learning about this over the years. But I can say this,
and anyone would believe this anyway that people today are lonelier than ever.
As clichéd as it may sound, in a world where you can reach out to anyone with
just some nimble movements of your fingers, we are finding it harder and harder
to reach out to anyone.
As humans, we all need people around us. To talk, to share
things with, to love, to be friends with, to touch, to laugh with, to cry with,
and so many things. Having someone around us is so essential and inherent that
even as infants, if our mothers don’t seem around us enough, we are irritable
and can grow up to live with potential psychological issues.
Today, when we have the possibility of making friends with
people anywhere in the entire world, when we can pick anyone to date with a
swipe of a thumb, when we can talk to our family miles away without paying an
extra penny, when we can converse face to face with our beloved anywhere in the
world no matter how much distance (or time) separates us, we are still ending
up alone in coffee shops, sipping our coffee, earphones in our ear and
sometimes scribbling on the napkins. On other times, gulping down the food for
two by ourselves at a restaurant. And then coming back home with no one to
unwind to and narrate how we had a close shave walking down the street or how
lovely it was when we met an interesting stranger at the church. And sometimes
when our arms feel weary – almost in pain, for lack of someone – a family
member, a friend, a lover - to hold on
to when we are feeling down in the dumps. And for many of us, even sadly, we
lie in the bed in the arms of another person, still feeling as forlorn as
anyone could be.
For the ones who don’t feel lonely, this situation will be
seen from a different perspective than the ones who feel lonely. Loneliness, as
many might assume, isn’t an objective situation. It is highly subjective. I
might be sitting in a room full of people, and yet feel lonely. I might be
living all alone, and yet not feel lonely. Well, this is something that many
people would know already. But there is a lesser known catch 22 situation that lonely
people land themselves into beyond this – the thing that I call the curse of
loneliness, to be precise.
The curse is that, very paradoxically, a person who feels
lonely avoids with all their might any active human contact they can have. This
is the behaviour that keeps them etched into their loneliness and feeds it even
more. It’s a never ending loop. You are lonely, you avoid people, as a result
you end up even lonelier and again avoid people, and there is no way out of it.
Someone I talked to this afternoon told me I was
overthinking it when I told them that when one feels left out, they isolate
themselves even more. They probably wouldn’t understand the point I was making.
As a person who has gone through this, I know how another
person who is lonely reacts most of the time. It is not ironical or even
surprising when a person complains that he is lonely, and yet ends up
cancelling plans, saying no to go meet up with someone, giving the excuse that
they are busy on the weekend when all they are doing is eating a packet of
chips and watching videos on their phone on their bed. They cringe at the sight
of a ringing phone, in the dilemma whether to pick it or not and at the same
time making up an excuse to give later to the caller as to why they missed the
call. They most likely have a string of messages on their phone that are
unanswered, with them procrastinating about writing back at the later time of
the day when they are ‘free.’
In the world that’s grown to be so individualistic, it is
difficult to both get someone else we care about out of loneliness and also to
get oneself out of it, thinking about the intrusion we could be making into
another’s life by forcing them to go out with us or to call someone up and
speak our heart out to them. The era of social media has left us socially
handicapped – giving us a false sense of having people around us.
We are all on our own.
Yet, when there’s no one to lend us a hand when we are there
in the dumps, we could consider extending our own hand to ourselves; and if
possible, sometimes to someone we encounter in the dumps as we make our way out
through it.
