The topic is Loneliness. A dictionary defines Loneliness as “sadness because one has no friends or company.” I have often wondered what our worst National problem is. Recently I was reading “One Mind” and author, Larry Dossey M.D., told me it is Loneliness. WOW – Loneliness! Who would have thought this? I would have said unhappiness or addiction, but these are secondary to Loneliness.
So where does this Loneliness come from? Perhaps it comes from our National idealization of independence. Loneliness increases as we become more independent, more separate and distant from others. More separation from others causes a lack of personal contact with others, isolation and then Loneliness.
Many years ago a wise person told me our isolation came with air conditioning and a garage door openers. Now that’s a novel thought, even ridiculous. Perhaps she was right though. The arrival of air conditioning allowed us to retreat from our front porches in the summer to the cool of our homes and forgo talking to people as they passed our porches. Now porches like those built in the first half of the last century no longer exist. Garage door openers allowed us to drive home, open the garage door, drive into the garage, and close the door without talking to our neighbors at all creating even more separation. Big cities have added to separation and Loneliness too where people rarely know even their next-door neighbor let alone anyone in the neighborhood. Thoreau called cities “concentrations of Lonely people.”
If Loneliness is caused by separation from others and lack of personal contact with them, what do you think Internet surfing, computer games, cell phones, Facebook and Twitter do for personal contact with others?
I fear a great dis-ease called Loneliness is overtaking our young people far quicker and more devastatingly than air conditioning and garage door openers affected their parents and grandparents.
There are other problems with our immersion in technology, like not being able to write a real sentence in English everyone can read and understand. Texting has sunk our command of language to lows not seen since the Middle Ages.
We are poised for an epidemic of Loneliness!
So how do we reverse this trend? My suggestion is service to others. By personally serving others we actually contact, even touch, people both physically and psychologically. We begin to see people, as they are – just like us – with needs, wants and desires for a better life. We start to see what we have in common not how we are different. We begin to connect.
This connective antidote to loneliness will not manifest itself overnight but gradually with the increasing velocity on our journey of life.