Why do I feel so Lonely?
***Happy International Women's Day***
"Modernity is surely a lonelier place than the world that preceded it. It isn’t ultimately technology (cities, cars or screens) that have made us lonely; it’s an identifiable set of ideas. Being on one’s own doesn’t have to be problematic, demeaning or say anything sinister about one’s character. Yet we have in a variety of ways made this the firm equation. Loneliness does not arise simply because one happens to be physically isolated; it’s caused when our culture encourages to feel a sense of shame at being so. We have rendered ourselves lonely first and foremost because of certain stories we have started to tell ourselves about what loneliness means...
Most eras before our own knew that solitude did not – per se – have to be a sign of wretchedness or deficiency. There were ways of being one one’s own that could be filled with honor and an impression of communion with what is noble and sincere; physical isolation could be accompanied by a strong sense of connection with a god, a person in a book, a piece of music or a quieter part of one’s own mind. One could be alone and at the same time not feel isolated or damned – just as one might be surrounded by family and yet feel painfully unseen and unheard...
Romanticism didn’t just make single people feel freakish; it massively increased the pressure on anyone already in a couple who couldn’t lay claim to extreme contentment with their partner; it made those who were merely quietly muddling along and politely putting up with some less than ideal habits and routines feel lonelier and more cursed than they had ever done. For most of history, no one had expected couples to be very content; forbearance and compromise had been praised as the true achievements. One was doing very well indeed if one managed not actively to despite one’s partner after a few decades. But under the new influence of Romanticism, anything but perpetual ecstatic transport appeared to be a violation of the ground rules of existence...
Romanticism trapped the human race in a double bind: by framing singlehood as psychologically impossible, it encouraged us to panic and accept marriage proposals that it would have been wiser to resist. But at the same time, by suggesting that ongoing fascination and bliss were the norm within every decent relationship, it made the vast majority of couples feel as if they had somewhere along the line gone very badly wrong...
The way to make people feel less alone isn’t to pull them out of their musings in the forest or in the diner, in the library or the desert – and force them to go bowling. It’s to reassure them that being alone is no sign of failure. To lessen modernity’s crisis of loneliness, we need for solitude to be rehabilitated and for singlehood to regain its dignity. There is nothing catastrophic about eating dinner, many dinners, on our own."
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