This Society Of Loneliness
It’s insane isn’t it? It feels like there are so many more things created today that should have us engaging with one another even more- yet at the same time; I’ve noticed people are so much lonelier.
What is it about these times that makes us feel so alone? Is it the technology and the fact that while it gives us more ways to connect online, we have become much more detached in person? Or is it that we are a society of people who only live to please ourselves?
I think about these things everyday. In fact, my best friend and I were at a local coffee shop just the other day and sharing how lonely we both felt. Aside from the attention of (my boyfriend) and (her husband) and (each other) we didn’t have very many close friends. Isn’t that insane? We are in NYC, a city of eight million people and among so many people; we feel lonely.
It’s important to note that being lonely doesn’t mean you don’t have people around you or people in your life. Sometimes it can just be that the specific people you want around, don’t always have the time or it can be that you aren’t connecting with people on the level you want to. Loneliness is not the absence of another humans presence, it’s an absence of the warmth and comfort of a genuine human to human connection.
What we are lacking as a society, especially here in New York City, is the warmth of human interaction. We are a sea of lonely-isolated people who don’t know how to connect with others anymore, it’s almost foreign to us to connect to another person on such an intimate level.
As my best friend and I looked around the coffee shop we noticed how there was no one conversing besides us. Everyone was sitting in a chair; eyes glued to their computer screens or to their cellphones. We were surrounded by so many people, so many bodies- and yet the place felt strangely cold.
We both agreed that our loneliness came from being surrounded by people who only connected on shallow levels. Most friends just want to talk online, not many want to meet for a coffee and sit down and have a long in depth conversation about life and what they’re going through. She mentioned how much different it was for her to be in a place where people seemed to solely care about themselves. She had previously lived in Spain where people were much more warm and welcoming; she and her friends were like one big family. This culture of isolation and coldness was a shock to her.
I looked around one last time, taking a sip of my coffee and nodded my head. I completely understood, I’d grown up surrounded by family and family friends and somehow as an adult I have found myself with a lack of both, for the most part. Even my family has become so distant and cold with one another; seeing each other once every couple of years.
We have somehow, as a people lost the very thing that makes us who we are; our ability to connect and to be loving with one another. I have made it my goal, to try to connect on a deeper level with the people already in my life and with people that I meet. It’s not always easy. At times I notice people feeling uncomfortable if I go passed the normal ‘small talk.’ But small talk isn’t really speaking, when we do that we are just going over pleasantries that we already know the answers to. They are rehearsed lines that take no thought or even emotion: ‘How was your day?’ ‘Good.’ ‘Oh, mine was good too.’
We are so fearful of technology advancing and there one day being robots; but we are becoming so much like our technology, robotic. We are losing our human warmth and our way of connecting with other people and giving all of our time and our focus to our careers and to our technology. It’s almost like it happened over night that we’ve become this strange society of loneliness.