For some weird reason, I love the movie "While You Were Sleeping". It probably has to do with memories of the first time I saw it. Happy times.
Anyways, there's a scene there that has been flashing in my mind very frequently lately: Lucy, Sandra Bullock, has saved Peter and is at the hospital with him at night. They are alone and it seems to be very late. She has been talking "to him" for quite a while and then she says: "Have you ever been so alone you spend the night confusing a man in a coma?"
And the thing is that it's actually very common. Well, not really talking to men in commas, but feeling that kind of loneliness.
It's surprising how many people suffer from this condition. So many call the psychic hot lines or the television shopping lines because they are alone and need to hear someone's voice. Others get involved in cyber-dating, or even settle for less-than-acceptable relationships just to run away from it. Jack Diamond (here I go again) commented last week on the several times during his career when he's gotten calls during his show from lonely suicidal people who have no one to talk to but the radio show guy.
Lonely people do bizarre things, like reach out to strangers. Besides our innate need for social interaction, we just don't really know how to handle being alone. We are born alone, we will die alone. How come we are not taught how to handle it? Why does society have to make us believe that being alone is bad? Because we have, indeed, been raised to believe that being alone is a sign of failure and rejection. Too many times we wrongly tie our self image and self value to someone else's opinion. People who are alone are flawed, or so their isolation leads them to conclude. We need to feel that we "belong" somewhere, in Lucy's case in Peter's and the Callahans' life. We are just "not good enough". Being alone makes us feel so rejected, hurt, alienated that we start feeling lonely. We feel defeated. Thus the despair.
Why the stigma? Can't we make a difference between solitude and loneliness? Can't we be alone without feeling lonely? Anyone that has ever felt loneliness can confirm that a million people can't make you feel it less. Nothing worse for lonely people than a crowd.
Solitude on the other hand is many a times positive. It can make us feel independent and empowered. It can make you recycle your energy and reconnect with your inner self. Nothing better to reconnect with others than to know yourself, truly, completely.
Maybe if we could teach our children the difference between solitude and loneliness there'd be less desperate people. Maybe we would not feel as lost when we are alone. We might even embrace our times of solitude, cherish them.
I guess my point is, after all the rambling, in a world that has been moving in a direction that isolates us more and more replacing physical interaction with instant telecommunication technologies, wouldn't it be beneficial to distinguish being alone from being lonely?
There will always be people that feel lonely, unfortunately, but tying loneliness and solitude together in one package creates more intense and frequent situations that sometimes end up calling for desperate measures, like comatose confusions.
Anyways, there's a scene there that has been flashing in my mind very frequently lately: Lucy, Sandra Bullock, has saved Peter and is at the hospital with him at night. They are alone and it seems to be very late. She has been talking "to him" for quite a while and then she says: "Have you ever been so alone you spend the night confusing a man in a coma?"
And the thing is that it's actually very common. Well, not really talking to men in commas, but feeling that kind of loneliness.
It's surprising how many people suffer from this condition. So many call the psychic hot lines or the television shopping lines because they are alone and need to hear someone's voice. Others get involved in cyber-dating, or even settle for less-than-acceptable relationships just to run away from it. Jack Diamond (here I go again) commented last week on the several times during his career when he's gotten calls during his show from lonely suicidal people who have no one to talk to but the radio show guy.
Lonely people do bizarre things, like reach out to strangers. Besides our innate need for social interaction, we just don't really know how to handle being alone. We are born alone, we will die alone. How come we are not taught how to handle it? Why does society have to make us believe that being alone is bad? Because we have, indeed, been raised to believe that being alone is a sign of failure and rejection. Too many times we wrongly tie our self image and self value to someone else's opinion. People who are alone are flawed, or so their isolation leads them to conclude. We need to feel that we "belong" somewhere, in Lucy's case in Peter's and the Callahans' life. We are just "not good enough". Being alone makes us feel so rejected, hurt, alienated that we start feeling lonely. We feel defeated. Thus the despair.
Why the stigma? Can't we make a difference between solitude and loneliness? Can't we be alone without feeling lonely? Anyone that has ever felt loneliness can confirm that a million people can't make you feel it less. Nothing worse for lonely people than a crowd.
Solitude on the other hand is many a times positive. It can make us feel independent and empowered. It can make you recycle your energy and reconnect with your inner self. Nothing better to reconnect with others than to know yourself, truly, completely.
Maybe if we could teach our children the difference between solitude and loneliness there'd be less desperate people. Maybe we would not feel as lost when we are alone. We might even embrace our times of solitude, cherish them.
I guess my point is, after all the rambling, in a world that has been moving in a direction that isolates us more and more replacing physical interaction with instant telecommunication technologies, wouldn't it be beneficial to distinguish being alone from being lonely?
There will always be people that feel lonely, unfortunately, but tying loneliness and solitude together in one package creates more intense and frequent situations that sometimes end up calling for desperate measures, like comatose confusions.
2 comments:
1- excelente post
2- "theres nothign worst for a lonely person than a crowd"... palabras sabias y certeras!
La soledad por lo general me da como de a ratos, va y viene. Vivir así debe ser horrible.
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