Solitude can be peaceful, productive, and empowering, but there’s little to gain from loneliness, and much to lose. Loneliness erodes confidence, self worth and can lead one to compromise in the quality of relationships.
Loneliness is among the most devastating human experiences, so why would anyone choose to be alone so much of the time?
I’m the kind of person that feels lonely in a crowd. When social interactions fail to foster meaningful connection, I am vulnerable to that stinging feeling of being ignored, or sometimes rejected. It’s not that I’m a wimp, it’s not that I’m weak or overly sensitive, I believe it is that I have high hopes that when I put myself out there – look you in the eye, or reply thoughtfully to your post, etc., that you will seek my gaze or acknowledge my reply.
Unfortunately, today, we are all inundated by communications that are not sincere. They are either sourced in marketing, or just memes vying for attention. Maybe they are snark, intended to show off an aloof intelligence. People become so accustomed to communications that do not foster connection, that when they see it, it is either not recognized for what it is, or it seems intrusive and demanding of a personal reply, or the invitation to sharing was not accepted.
When I first started working towards limiting social media and fostering real connection, I would try to write an email to someone every other day. I picked people who I had mutually respectful relationships, who I hadn’t had a real conversation in years in most cases. People who I genuinely missed feeling close to. Well, that was a flop. The notes were either ignored or given a brief acknowledge on facebook, through which I inferred, if I am to communicate with this person, it will be through this medium, despite my express desire to leave it. That is what a true FB friend is, I suppose.
This all presents with a tone of frustration and bitterness, I am sure. And that’s what I feel. I’m inclined to accept their commitment to social media and forego the friendship, or accept that they don’t have a reciprocal interest in correspondence. Even posting on fora with similar narrow interests, say on melodeon playing, it’s damn near impossible to make friends. If I share something that I feel is honest, genuine, and perhaps puts me in a position of vulnerability (something akin to how much joy playing the instrument gives me in a challenging time), it’s disregarded, I think it makes people bristle for some reason. So instead of responding to an invitation to substantial conversation, the modus operandi is to trade cheeky remarks and offer oneupmanship of one kind or another.
As I type here in my home, two unreleasable starlings are singing and chatting away merrily in their aviary, and four large rescue dogs are curled up in a heap by the fire. I do know that animals are capable of deceit and manipulation, but they genuinely seek connection with those close to them. When I go in the aviary and one of the birds stands on my head while I wash the water bowls and divvy up the berries and mush, she’s being real. Expressing enthusiasm, showing trust, and engaging in a relationship. If she just wanted the food and water, she’d just wait by the empty bowl and keep a wide berth.
The dogs using each others’ flanks as pillows and checking on one another and me throughout the day and evening, it’s real, not posturing (though they do this in play).
My connection with these animals, and my son, with whom I have a good relationship, and the grand, beautiful indifference of nature is sufficient. There is something tragic in saying goodbye to the bullshit exchange of digital humanity, a sense of my own failure to participate and sort through the heap of live wires for the living nerves, and a failure of humanity as a whole to be more substantiative. The setting forth into Monastic life is, in ways, as much a death as it is a commencement. But nothing real except sorrow and loss seems to come from the everyday world to me, so I will keep looking elsewhere for the joys that I find resonance with.