Everyone has felt lonely, at least once in their life. If you are anything like most people in life, you've been there and done that, and don't care to do it again. Why be lonely when you can be happy? Just like overcooked vegetables, a second helping of loneliness is nothing to be desired. In fact, it falls short of being tolerable, and sometimes leaves us on the edge.

So the question isn’t that we get lonely, but why we do. Let's look through a few lenses to understand the why behind this feeling so many of us put forth an effort to avoid.

Lens One: Popular culture is becoming more and more influence of what I have observed in the world in the time period that we are currently in. There are more people in the world now than there were five years ago, yet the feeling of loneliness hasn’t gotten any better, and maybe it has gotten worse.

Looking at American culture in general, we see people surrounded by others. Whether that be friends in person, on the internet, or the many other avenues that we “connect” with others. Socialization is what it has come to be called, but how much of this socialization actually allows us to be social?

The average amount of friends that a Facebook user has is 338 . This is a great number, and while it is nice to keep in touch it can be found upon inner reflection that these people and that type of socialization are not sufficient enough to cure the loneliness that fills people.

So if feeling lonely today can’t be fixed by the number of people who know you, or the amount of likes your Instagram picture gets, then is there another way or are we just doomed?

If you ask me, doomed is not something that has to be a reality. In your loneliness level can experience a downward spike. Just like anything in life, a process in required, and that process takes the resource of consciousness and time.

In a culture that pushes the more friend the better, it sure is funny how the other side is not thought about. There is a reason why gradual increases are usually applied to progression that people are taking part in.

Want to stop the loneliness that popular culture sends your way? Try being more intentional with who you spend your time with. Not only that, but something that will allow result to be seen in this area, is to go beyond surface bubbly talk.

Talking about your favorite Netflix show is great to start a relationship, but to really feel fulfilled by the people you are with, you have to be vulnerable and open up to them.

It might seem risky, but with great risk also comes the potential for great reward. Being personable with people, might lower loneliness more effectively than a few hundred snapchat friends ever will.

Lens Two: Loneliness is not a problem that has occurred with the growth of technology, and the advancement that has occurred in the recent years. Truthfully, loneliness has been around almost as long as dirt has, this even includes the ancient time.

Often times we forget that people who lived a long time ago have stories too, and are more than just a few significant events on a time line.

If we look at their lives though the lens of our popular culture, we see that they have more reason to be lonely than not to be.

Lets be honest, living in desserts, traveling a long ways to get anywhere, and no music is not the greatest recipe to live a lone-less life. This might be true for our context of life, but when we look at loneliness in the culture of the times, we see that their struggle with it was as real as ours is today.

Where would we be able to find accounts of loneliness that occurred in the ancient times? The best place to look is the Bible.

Believe it or not, the Bible is filled with a lot of individuals whose lives yield a story that includes loneliness. Just to name a few, lonely people in the bible range from lowly maid servants like Hagar, to men such as Job. Yes each of these accounts have varying degrees of the outer loneliness, but maybe they are not all that different when it comes down to it.

Hagar was a slave to Sarai and Abram, and eventually ran away because of the abuse that Sarah put onto her. In those times, when Hagar left from their household and was left to be alone. It wasn’t like she could turn to her Facebook friends. No she went out to the desert. And o top of that she no longer belonged to any house hold, which was added extra exclusion to her loneliness, because now she was pushed beyond the margins. This is especially true, because in that culture the society ran off of patriarchs (older men lead the family), and without that going for her (even if she was just a slave), she had nothing.

To put this into perspective of the culture that we know, it takes the misery that is presented in the Bible and magnifies it by about 100 times. I can’t even imagine how lonely that would be.

Okay so what, is the conclusion being lonely that all human experience it from the ancient times of the Bible, to the modern times of today?

If both of these accounts that have just been analyzed are compared, one specific overlap is revealed. Why we are lonely has to do with the inner self.

To be lonely is not necessarily dependent on outer circumstances. Just because Job had everything taken from him he wasn't consumed by loneliness that he took his own life, which is pretty amazing considering his circumstances. On the flip side the amount of followers on twitter doesn’t reflect how that person should feel either.

The common intersection here is the person themselves. To be more specific, the inner part that only you really know. So if you are lonely, the first step to not being stuck there is to start from within.

Open up to people, and take risks that can give you a full heart and a spirit that makes people think that you have it all. On top of that don’t let life’s circumstances get you down. After all, as one of my favorite quotes goes, “Joy is not dependent on your circumstances, but on your relationship with God.”

So stop trying to fill your gap of loneliness with more names that signify nothing deep, instead challenge yourself in a way that you can take each day, and every challenge with a new prospective that lets you feel loved like the way you are meant to feel.