Loneliness

Sometimes one must be alone. Which however is not the same as being lonely. Loneliness is commonly defined as “A state of solitude or being alone” or the “perception of being alone and isolated”. Basically, it is “a state of mind” when one no longer finds meaning in one’s life.

Loneliness seems to be a “state of mind” that is reaching the proportions of a sort of pandemic. I have recently discovered that there is a minister of loneliness in the UK. And one in Japan. As well as a Ministry of Happiness in the UAE. I thought at first it was a hoax, something from a fairy tale. A minister of loneliness. What an idea. But it turned out to be true. 

Loneliness and happiness, to judge from the above, are apparently inseparable from each other. But are they? Surely if we are happy, we are not lonely no matter how alone we may be. We have all known moments of loneliness, as I have, but they never lasted very long. There was too much in the world to rejoice about. 

Being alone has its advantages. Is there any other time when we can just let our thoughts wander? Another good time is at night, in the dark, when we wake up and can’t fall back to sleep. Undoubtedly it is not easy to stop “thinking”. Our preoccupations in the dark may loom larger, but we can also call up the positive aspects of the day just passed, or the year, or many years ago. We can think of being happy. It’s not always easy to channel our thoughts and the secret is to go back to a specific day, perhaps when we first discovered the joys of reading and writing or when we first fell in love. Letting our preoccupations fall into second place and forgetting the demands of the unrelenting assault on our attention we are subject to every day, provides us with a chance to think how grateful we should be for existing. . . now. Not yesterday and not tomorrow. But now. 

Let my description of a day in 1993 be a beacon for those who surrender to loneliness. 

I was still trying to come to terms with the recent loss of my mother. And although she had for some time been living in a world all her own, life had no intention of coming to a stop. I was truly alone for the first time in I don’t know how many decades. I had to get away and find something that would somehow give me peace of mind. Old age unquestionably had its limitations but also its advantages and privileges with experiences youth could never have. Our many-layered lives build up in depth and richness as time passes. In the end to be blown away, to explode into nothing. No, I tell myself, for the particles of our lives will rain down on other lives. We become so full of feelings, experiences, impressions that our bodies at a certain point can no longer hold them and explode like a star, a rocket, a flame with sparks that ignite new fires. 

I hiked up to the Badia, a 12^th century abbey, to get away from the unrelenting supplications I had been subject to in the past months. Here, with swallows swooping around the tower, I became part of another world. I didn’t mind being alone – almost rejoiced in being alone and being able to ‘feel’ the surroundings with the wind blowing my hair awry and then rushing through the poplars and olives, sideswept, and the russet field of wheat down in the valley. A bird flew by and gleamed white as he turned. Orvieto loomed up in the background, slightly hazy, with further on the valley and the mountains. Despite the background noise of cars and motorcycles from the road above, which the wind was unable to drown out, and the gleam of the bird’s calls, there was a sense of peace and space.

True, I was alone but the miracles of the world we live in kept me company.  But even had I been in the city, wandering the streets and feeling invisible, for no one knew me and I had no one to keep me company, my thoughts would have gone out to the host of other people like me who were making the most of the lives they had been gifted with before it got too late.