Sitting in a room full of strangers is somewhat comforting after spending a lot of alone time. As I sit here with my headphones in and eyes fixed on my computer, I cannot help but be glad to hear the murmurs of other people in the background of my music. I am someone who requires a lot of alone time. After a busy night, there is nothing I love more than just going home and recharging my batteries…alone. Let me clarify what I mean by "alone time," though. I love productive alone time. Productive alone time is much different than zoning out on TV for hours. Don’t worry — I do plenty of the zoning out thing, too.
When I spend this productive alone time with myself, I feel as though I am ready to be with people again and I have my head on straight. However, when I do zoning out alone time, I feel a bit empty and not right. This feeling of emptiness and just not feeling right is directly linked to a little thing I like to call loneliness. Sound like a familiar word? I wouldn’t be surprised if it did considering it is something that every single human has felt at one point or another.
Loneliness is funny in the way that it makes us feel like we have nobody. What is funny about that is that it is something that is a common thread through all humans. We are all lonely at times. We feel like nobody understands, but literally everyone can relate with us on this subject. Go up to your best friend and talk to them about a time you’ve been lonely. They will probably be very understanding and share a time they were lonely as well. The interesting thing is that the same exact thing would happen if you were to talk to even the cashier at Walmart about it. Loneliness is universal among humans.
I went to Haiti the summer after my junior year in high school. On the way to Haiti, I was slightly nervous about the language barrier. As you may know, Haitians speak French and Haitian Creole. I was pleasantly surprised when I came home from a week of amazing connections with people who were once complete strangers. My French wasn’t very strong at the time, so I relied mostly on sheer human interaction. Emotion was at the core of my interactions with the Haitian people. Throughout the week, I experienced deep joy and happiness alongside humans who were much different than me. But were they really that different? We related in a much more tangible way than words: emotion.
I found out firsthand that humans relate a lot more than any of us think. There is definitely truth to people just not living in our shoes or understanding our situation, but at the core of our beings, we all have felt emotions but in different ways. I am specifically talking about loneliness because I believe it is an emotion that plagues our generation. The times I feel the most lonely are the times that I have been on my phone for hours scrolling through the same newsfeed over and over again and the times that I isolate myself into zoning out alone time. As much as I’d like to say I don’t spend a lot of time on my phone, I know that I do. I am someone who loves human interaction. I think that when people come together and are able to create things, it is amazing. Unfortunately, we live in a generation of technology.
Technology is so useful and I am not trying to bash on it at all, but I think that with the rise in technology, it is easy to have extreme loneliness. In a way, social media has connected me to friendships and allowed me to keep up on friendships, but it has also shown me what my life isn’t. There will always be positives and negatives to new technology in social contexts, but like I said, I am not here to analyze technology. I am talking about how this relates to loneliness.
Spending time alone is wonderful. It’s a time when you can better yourself. Productive alone time is key to avoiding loneliness. I understand that loneliness is much more complex than just how we spend our alone time, so invest in friendships to help encourage you in your lonely times. Never feel guilty to ask someone for some help on the days when it feels more intense than normal. We all deal with this. We can all relate to loneliness in its various degrees. Don’t forget that while we can all relate in the negative emotion of loneliness, we can also relate in the positive emotions of joy and happiness and love. Most importantly, it’s OK to sit in a room full of strangers because, maybe, they are enjoying your company too.
