LONELINESS AS THE HUMAN CONDITION

I recently attended a presentation on loneliness aimed at young people; it was offered by a mental health professional. The presentation focused on offering many slides detailing the rise in loneliness. The presentation seemed to be asking for the audience to identify with their loneliness instead of accepting it as a starting place to construct the life they most wish to live. The language used sounded like the language of victimization and suggested that loneliness  was something being done to them. I do not think this was the speaker’s intention but I do think this is the world that was constructed through the speech. 

Sometimes it is useful to hear what is not being said in the message. There was no talk on how to create:

-a sense of personal agency

-responsibility and accountability

-choices generating a reminder that we are free

-creating a meaningful life

-creating meaningful work

- meaningful relationships

-a dynamic focusing on what one can give instead of focusing on one will get

-meaning by choosing to engage with the experience instead of chasing the outcome

-meaning from the suffering our lives have handed us

-resiliency

-a point of view focusing on seeing the opportunity

-opportunities from obstacles

-an understanding of what is within my control and what is not

-acceptance as an ongoing process

The acceptance and recognition of loneliness seems to me to be a starting place and not an ending place. Viktor E. Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, states that meaning is found in the world and not in the human psyche. He states that the more we forget ourselves and give to the world, the more we (unintentionally) reach our own potential and the more human we become. 

My takeaway from the speech is asking the question: how is offering the statistics on loneliness helpful? Some may say that the speaker is providing us with the statistics from the research. From this point of view, it was a good speech. I think, though, there is a larger question to ask: what world was constructed through the talk? It all sounded rather hopeless to me. It seems that loneliness is the human condition rather than a pathology. We do not make the condition better when we speak about it as an epidemic. We make the condition better when we step into the world in whatever capacity we have and offer the best of what we have to give. Our loneliness, then, becomes the catalyst for bringing out our best selves. This is the message I want to remember and this is the message I wish for my students to remember. Today, we need to be reminded of this more than ever.