I am sure we have all been alone at some point in our lives, whether it was as a child on the playground, a teenager walking through the hallways of school, or an adult sitting at the workplace, undertaking the monotonous slog of the day. As someone who has been alone a few times in life,I can tell you that loneliness is paradoxical. On one hand, it is peaceful and leads to ideas, and on the other hand, it is terrifying and suffocating.
Loneliness can be quiet and still. This leads loneliness to be the whetstone that hones great ideas to perfection. Loneliness allows me to reflect on my life, and as preachy as this sounds, how regular interactions around me have a greater philosophical meaning. For example, a car driving past pedestrians on the road and leaving them behind is reminiscent of how time does not wait for us, no matter how much we want to stop and savour the air. Time is the car. We are the pedestrians. Another way to interpret this could be how the car represents the pace at which life moves. The pedestrian is still us, but the reason why we are slower is that we are still enamoured with the past. The nostalgia and sometimes desperation to return to the past is what are slowing us down and causing us to linger behind life. As I reflect on my life when I am alone, I think about my past: the mistakes I made (I cover my eyes with my hands and scream more than I like to admit) and how I can be better and not repeat them again. When I am alone, I have the peace and quiet to grow my ideas, brainstorm the stories I want to tell one day, and have imaginary conversations with people I really want to talk to often while listening to phantom music in my head. When I am doing any of these things, I do not feel alone. I mean, do I seem truly alone? Are we ever truly alone? I am alone in the physical sense, yes, but I am allowing the world to show me its wonders, and with those wonders surrounding me, I see that the world is not a blank slate despite being alone. In loneliness, our mind is forced to become more active to fill the space that lacks a person, and that leads us to dance with the ideas,memories, and interesting characters in our minds. Play with them until we find something that takes up our time to the point that the loneliness is not perceived anymore.
Loneliness can be quiet and still. This leads loneliness to be suffocating because eventually our creativity and ways to fill the loneliness grow stale. Loneliness feels like you are drowning, and you cannot scream for help. I used to be a lonely child. I would wander the playground for the entire breaktime, watching other people and skipping through the structures, praying that someone,anyone, would notice that I was missing something. I searched and wandered and wandered. Nothing helped, so I tried to forget. I wrote about my loneliness in school assignments. I sought refuge in the world of fiction, trying to forget about my life. I told myself back then that it was boring, but I think it was just sad. Despite all this, I could not conquer the beast of breaktime. I just started digging for rocks on the playground. That did not make me feel any less alone. What helped me slay it was 2 people joining me in digging rocks on that playground and a teacher who actually cared. I felt lighter inside and actually had other people to speak to, other than my mind. That dissipated when the school year ended, and I was back to square one, and I stayed there for 2 more years. I slayed the beast again by bringing books to break time. I believe the worst part about loneliness is the fact that you do not feel like asking for help. Eventually, you stop and fear speaking out to change the now familiar loneliness.
I know that this is not exactly related to health. But the thing is, as I showed earlier, loneliness can be both positive and negative and has psychological impacts. And due to this, I believe we struggle and wonder whether someone who is alone requires help or not. I have struggled with this too, and I was alone once. You would think I know what it looks like, but I do not. I have seen people who look like me every day. Sometimes I reach out, and other times I blissfully ignore it as all those kids on the playground did. Sometimes, when I reach out, I am simply incompatible with this lonely person, and I am the wrong person to reach out to. But it is better to reach out to an incompatible person than not to reach out at all, especially in this ever-changing world. Loneliness means you are without or with little guidance, which allows bad habits and toxic ideals a perfect mind to sow their seeds into.
So what I am trying to say is to make this world a better place we need to reach out to those who are lonely whether they know they want help or not. This world is becoming more and more insensitive, so it is becoming harder to reach out and easier to ignore. I am not asking you to reach out to every lonely person you see. I am asking you to reach out to at least one person. That alone makes a significant difference.
Leave a Reply