On Loneliness…
24 Dec 23
In a way, if we look at someone’s life, it all comes down to how they spent their time.
You might think this piece is not for you, but it is surely for you. If not for you at this point in life, it is surely for one of your close family members or friends. I can also claim that the stuff I’ll cover in this piece — you would have experienced it at some point in time in life or you’re experiencing it right now.
We all suffer with loneliness at some points in time during the day; blessed are the ones who don’t feel the pain of it. You might be suffering with it consciously or you might be suffering with it unconsciously, like air pollution.
I am writing this piece after watching the documentary by ColdFusion, in many ways, it opened my eyes and made me realize that I am not the only one stuck in this, but the majority of the population.
A few months ago, I read a tweet from a friend saying, “when living alone and it hits you that you’ve not spoken a single word for the last three days.” There are days when the first words I speak with a human only come out later in the day when I call someone. I spend a lot of time in the subreddit of Nagpur, and often, there’s a post about someone struggling to make friends. I also encounter people who claim to find my city uninteresting because there’s nothing to do! In contrast, managing my own social life is a second job in itself for me.
I grew up in a nuclear family of three, and just five months ago, I lost my father. With all these connections and the number of people I spend time with every week, as well as the new faces I greet, you might think I would be the last person to talk about loneliness. However, that’s not the case. I have many connections, but only a few constants. I’ve had some constants, but due to certain circumstances, they aren’t as close to me as they used to be. Despite this active social life, I do feel lonely sometimes.
Here’s an incident: I love spending time with friends. After an event, the four of us had about two hours to kill before heading to our respective homes. We grabbed some light food, browsed through a book sale, and then decided to have dinner somewhere. Since it was a spontaneous plan, two friends backed out while we were at the book sale. I was engrossed in checking out the books, and the moment my friend told me he was heading home and couldn’t join for dinner, it hit me hard. It felt like when you promise a kid ice cream, but upon reaching the store, you discover it’s closed. The snag here was that I’d now be spending my Saturday night alone, and I’d already had a busy week and I could no socialize.
With these emotions I decided to write that night, here’s my experience:
Except for the time with my friends, I spend most of my hours alone. I work remotely and asynchronously, so there’s very limited interaction with my colleagues, and we rarely have meetings. All of it piles up, and I need to actively spend hours planning my weekend. Another significant issue is that, thanks to technology, the way we end up spending most of our time with phones and laptops — we as humans are not designed for that. We need to move out, spend time in the sun, interact, play, be like kids, and at the end of the day come back to a secure home and to the folks or something we love. It could be the mundane ‘how was your day?’, cooking a dish, indulging in some goofiness, or simply spending time in silence. Just someone else’s presence helps us keep our senses intact.
At the end of the day, after I’ve worked and there’s nothing planned, I do feel lonely at times. I mean, at the end of the day, you feel like like involving in some very trivial things, but that doesn’t happen at all. Not just me; after interacting with many of my friends, they have the same story. Some of these friends live in bigger cities, earn, and save a lot of money but struggle to keep active social lives.
There are times when I’ve felt — what am I going to do with all the money that I’ve invested since I haven’t much upgraded my lifestyle over the years. I know being existential at times is okay, but it’s wrong to feel like this, right?
I recently spoke to a friend of mine from college and wanted to know his routine in detail in the city of Bombay, where he works now. He lives alone in his studio room. Most of his weekdays are spent at work, and despite living in such a significant city that has so much to offer, he hardly talked about how much the city impacted him. He mostly talked about work, how he makes food sometimes, and when he returns from work, all he does is check his phone — Instagram, YouTube, and whatnot. He’s a pretty chill guy and can mix with anyone and also spend time with anyone, but he went on to say that he has started to like his time when he’s alone. His parents had visited him a while ago, and he claimed that he really craved for his space when they were with him. He admitted that his routitne and the time he spends all by himself is problematic.
The documentary says — every idle minute we end up resorting to our smartphones to open a random application, catch up on some game, check YouTube, watch short-form video content, etc. If we see, this wasn’t the case even just 15 years ago. The way we spend time in our default actions are pretty dangerous. This is because we don’t actually consciously spend the time on things like Instagram and it eats into our day. I’m sure there are times when we’ve scrolled through an app for hours to the point that it kind of became an addiction.
Somewhere down the line, all this personal progress always isolates us from other humans. Nietzsche said, “The path to all great things passes through silence,” and another great said — loneliness is the cost of self-development.
On the other hand, loneliness and isolation results in losing a purpose in life. This especially affects the folks who are not smart enough to deal with what life throws at them, and they give in to stuff like addiction, which becomes a bigger problem to tackle and come out of.
The very basis of human existence is communication. We, of course, like to talk about all the trivial things that life throws at us, but what we love is to talk about our interests and the things we care for. People love games, they jam to music, talk about their favorite painters, books, etc. Such communities exist everywhere, from Reddit to Facebook groups, and all the way to dating apps that match people based on their interests.
One way to untangle this mess of loneliness is to be with folks and be with them during the changes in their life journey and the way they think. Sadly, our own close families often fail at this. Blame it on poor upbringing or our closed-mindedness and selfishness. Despite reading great books on love, we fail at putting acceptance this into action. Also, thanks to our smartphones, the hypercapitalistic society in which we live, and the dopamine hits — we have started to value individualism more and more. Everybody wants to stand out from the crowd, but in this journey, there are times when our close ones really don’t play a part in it.
Morgan Housel, in the amazing book “The Psychology of Money,” points out that at one point in time, when it comes to accumulating wealth, one needs to stop moving their goalpost after calculating their needs, wants, and the quality of life they desire.
We’re driving faster and faster into the future, trying to steer by using only the rear-view mirror. — Marshall McLuhan
As per the book “Upstream” by Dan Heath, we are all a lot more reactive in life and things than we should be. There’s the Long Now Foundation that aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset and to promote “slower/better” thinking.
Today’s capitalistic world is designed so that we all spend our lives doing things that are more materialistic. We need to keep a healthy balance, indulging in meaningful capitalistic things and also, equally if not more, indulging in things that are out there for free — a relationship with friends and family, spending time in nature, love, art, and giving meaning to things, etc. I say this because all the expensive items that we purchase will vanish one day, and after a point in time, we get into the habit, and they lose their charm. On the other hand, thoughts, relationships, knowledge, when compounded, gives long-term returns.
We are always running for the thrill of it, thrill of it
Always pushing up the hill, searching for the thrill of it
On and on and on we are calling out, out again
Never looking down, I’m just in awe of what’s in front of meIs it real now?
Two people become one
I can feel it
Two people become oneThought I’d never see
The love you found in me
Now it’s changing all the time
Living in a rhythm where the minute’s working overtime
At work and a colleges, there’s a very negative trend of showing yourself busy all the time, and for others to show the busyness, people resort to pretty bad techniques. I remember in my first internship, I just couldn’t help but wait for it to end and used to dreaded my work. Fortunately, now is not the case; I like my work and the things that generate money for me. Being busy is one thing, and I actually find the people who say they are busy to do things to be plain stupid. Unless that busyness generates you a great amount of money or is significantly changing the world for good, then I don’t think there’s any point in being busy and doing that work. On top of that, when you ask these people about being busy, they never have anything interesting to share anytime. To each his own, but this false facade of being busy is something I actually dislike a lot.
Marcel Proust on the idiotic business of being busy, from the book How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
The lesson? To hang on to the performance, to read the newspaper as though it were only the tip of a tragic or comic novel and to use thirty pages to describe a fall into sleep when need be. And if there is no time, at least to resist the approach of Alfred Humblot at Ollendorf and Jacques Madeleine at Fasquelle, which Proust defined as, the self-satisfaction felt by “busy” men — however idiotic their business at “not having time” to do what you are doing’.
It hurts when you are close to someone and then your relationship with them fades away. I’ve also had to make the tough decision of cutting folks from my life because they never had time and got busy in their own things. This same experience also made me reevaluate my connections and helped me understand the depth of connection I should have with people in my life.
I also have many rich friends who make a lot more money than me relatively, but they are pretty boring people and also claim to be busy all the time. They got stuck in the loop of making more money and then indulging in the trivial things that come with more money. There’s always going to be a richer friend, a more expensive watch, a better home, the next expensive gadget, the latest iPhone, and it will never stop.
We gotta question ourselves sometimes — despite doing enough, why do we still not feel at ease and feel there’s always more to do?
The idea is working creatively so you can eventually enjoy the work you do & if you are really lucky this will lead you to working less. Your hard work should not be rewarded with more hard work. The glorification of industry, the “rise and grind” mindset is unsustainable and just not enjoyable. As a culture we should stop glorifying busy, the continuous glorification of busy will only lead us to digging holes with teaspoons instead of shovels, making us not only inefficient but alarmingly stupid. In order to get true productivity you cannot focus on being constantly active.
When someone’s depressed, it’s natural to feel like wanting to be alone and lock yourself in a room and cutting things off from the rest of the world. It’s important, as that time is needed for your amygdala to register and make a memory of the experience that’s causing you trouble. Dopamine levels are low, and after a point, they rise up after you’ve rested and slept. Our bodies are amazing, and after processing the emotions, they give us enough energy to go out and do things in the world. Very obviously, that’s the reason why folks are inclined to join a gym after a breakup, travel, pick up a new hobby, or momentarily have enough motivation to speak with someone.
As a society, we lack at this. I mean, how many conversations have we had when things are not so good, and we end up saying things are “okay” when things aren’t really okay? Again, stuff that’s not happy, great and new isn’t as socially acceptable as the sad moments of life.
I lost my father about five months ago, and there are only a limited set of people with whom I’ve had heartfelt conversations. Sorry to report, but most of my friends and family failed at this, and what they are good at is not talking about the hard things, not having deep conversations, and strawman arguments.
So, what can we do about all this?
- Have hard conversations and check in with folks who are close to you, if you’re in a position to do so. Also, go and reach out to folks when you’re in trouble, the right people. They might not have the best thing to do or say, but it will lead to something.
- Cut down on social media, know what’s enough for you; something like gratitude journaling or just writing about your day and documenting can really help in the long term.
- Design your life and spend your time more consciously. Reevaluate your friends and connections — ideally, they should help you grow and achieve things in life. Not liabilities but assets.
I actively dislike cafes and loud places where you pay for expensive coffee and unhealthy food. Parks and homes are now my first place of choice to meet friends.
There are great people out there, and a lot of good can happen if you go out and reach out to folks. Believe in serendipity; there’s an article on maximizing serendipity by David Perell, and it’s probably the best way to end this piece.
There are enough books to read, enough games to play, enough music to listen to that would exceed our lifetime, and it will never be enough.
The question is — when do you think it will be enough for you to press the pause button on life and just enjoy nothing?
Bonus read/listen:
- Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
- Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends by Dr. Marisa G Franco
- Huberman Lab — Understanding & Conquering Depression
- The Science of Love, Desire and Attachment | Huberman Lab Podcast #59
Notes for this piece
