Loneliness: The word fills us with dread. I know people who go out on dates every night, just to be with someone, anyone-even though they hate dating and aren’t looking for a long-term love. I know people who stay in terrible relationships simply because they provide SOME interaction, albeit mostly negative interaction. We will do anything, it seems, to offset the possibility of being alone. Sometimes I think we don’t even like LOOKING as if we’re alone, a hunch confirmed by a young woman who told me recently that when she goes into a Starbucks or a bar alone, she whips out her phone and starts texting someone, anyone, just to show to whoever might be observing her that she is not…..alone. So loneliness has become, in addition to a state we all dread, a state of shame.
This is occurring despite the evidence that living alone can be far, far less lonely than an unsatisfactory relationship; despite the evidence that talking– really speaking with someone, sharing ideas that take time to articulate–is immensely satisfying (it’s called Friendship); despite the fact that single women are, by all surveys I know, actually significantly less depressed than married women (in my last survey, two-thirds less depressed); despite the fact that connecting on a wired instrument is clearly not satisfying on the deep, soul-satisfying level that a good talk with an actual person who sits next to you is. Sometimes when I see people with their earphones on and their BlackBerries beeping and their cellphones in their hands, or walking down the street talking to someone hooked into their ears, gesturing wildly, I wonder if what they’re hoping to convey (and to believe) is that any connection is better than none. Goddess forbid you’re seen unwired, walking all alone and enjoying the view.
I suspect our endless disembodied, distant updates on one another are just that-updates-and are fun and newsy and techy and lots of nice things….but hardly what makes us feel both human and strong, both alone and connected to something important. And I wonder, too, if what you’re doing down there on earth when you can’t go fifteen seconds without wiring someone, or go a day without your phone, is promoting a new kind of loneliness, one I’ve never witnessed before in all my thousands of years–a loneliness specific to being inundated with messages, voices, information and data. It’s a loneliness coming from being connected to everything and everybody, but not connecting with just one attentive, unwired, friend who has put aside the time to be sitting down with you and nobody else but you.
