Loneliness
By: B. Nathaniel
Tags: Etiquette, Isolation, Meaning Of Life, Empathy, Loneliness

And the Problem of Social Etiquette

Anthony Intraversato -- Unsplash

It was another hot and humid day during the madness of the pandemic that had robbed the world of all reason — or at least some sense of proportion.

Ben sat in an Italian restaurant eating tagliatelle and bolognese (but without cheese, due to his allergy to the smelly stuff). He looked out at all the pedestrians wearing their masks, passively overhearing the well-worn conversations about Corona that were on the lips of virtually everyone sitting at the tables near to him.

Then he heard the words, “I’m lonely.”

These words were uttered by a thirty-something man with an eastern European accent as he engaged with a young woman sitting opposite him. Ben speculated that it was their first date. This admission of loneliness (for which Ben had an uneasy admiration) was immediately followed by a somewhat clumsy attempt to repair any possible negative effects that the word conjured up in popular discourse, like neediness, lack of self-sufficiency, or any other sense that would make his date run a mile.

Ben momentarily considered how the current age had demonized all conversational references to this fundamental human need for companionship. It placed an over-emphasis on platitudinous exhortations such as the importance of self-sufficiency, being comfortable alone, and even the somewhat confusing (and confused) claim that one needs to love oneself before one can love others — as if this could be achieved in some sort of imagined solipsistic vacuum that completely disregarded the social dimension of mutual needs into which we are already born.

We are members of a social species and it is this which structures each and every individual from the inside-out.

The admission of loneliness, these days, is pervasively seen as a weakness connoting a lack of substance and self-integrity that is to be scorned rather than pitied.

“No,” Ben thought. “Not pitied! Rather, it ought to inspire empathy — but perhaps that’s the very reason why the admission of loneliness is treated as such a cardinal sin, precisely because it is a rude reminder to the listener of the very same sense of emptiness that dwells within them. In effect, the use of the word in a social setting is impolite. And thus, somewhat ironically, it is considered to be a mark of anti-social behaviour.”

Briefly glancing at the prospective couple next to him, he considered the further irony that it is nothing other than the need to escape loneliness that motivates people to date in the first place. But etiquette requires the absence of the word and its replacement with more socially acceptable expressions that are in line with the increasingly self-centred newspeak that has come to define common discourse in the world we live in today.

Ben struggled with the conversational gymnastics that this newspeak demanded of each and every language user and mourned the loss of opportunity to simply say what he felt. He was also particularly conscious of the way in which the different meanings of the words alone and loneliness had been conflated. Everyone requires some amount of alone-time, but without being continually haunted by the ever-present loneliness of their lives as a whole.

Loneliness is really about a lack of sharing and it was ‘sharing’ that Ben missed most of all. Sunsets had lost their allure and food had become tasteless without it. The joy of having someone else to think-about and think-through by thinking and feeling-with had left him feeling like a hollow husk because he missed the opportunity to re-experience life vicariously through the beloved eyes of another. And, in turn, to bask in the gentle warmth of being seen by them.

He yearned to grow beyond the monotonous limitations of self-interested solo projects, self-concern, and habits of thought that had actually diminished his being. Too much ‘alone-time’ can do that.

The world can become too familiar and dull, but a sense of wonder may be restored again through the vision of another — a communion in which it is possible to see with fresh eyes by feeling the joy and delight of their perspective. It is a feedback loop of mutual inspiration through which each party may transcend the limitations of their individual points of view — lifting themselves just as they lift the other.

It has long been said that a couple is considerably more than the mere sum of its parts.

And this is why the Self, like a thin crust clinging to a hole at the heart of itself, can only fill itself, develop and flourish in the presence of and inter-penetration with another. “To love and be loved,” Ben thought, “is truly to have significance.”

So why all the embarrassment?