Loneliness As Superpower
What I watched: Why We’re Fated to be Lonely on The School of Life YouTube channel. Uploaded October 31, 2016.
Loneliness is rampant. We read reporting in recent years about widespread loneliness. During these pandemic times, the sense of isolation and loneliness is heightened for many, especially those who have waited out the dangers of the virus alone. No one should discount how taxing such loneliness has been. What I write here is by no means intended to minimize any sense of despair someone might feel when lonely.
Yet, if there is a silver lining, I try to find it. While I do not live alone, anyone who knows me is aware of the high degree of socialization my pre-pandemic daily life entailed, and they also know how much alone time I crave.
I have not left a four-square block radius from my home in more than a year. I have not done a single maskless, face-to-face meeting with anyone outside of my household. This has not been easy, but clearly it was doable because, well, here we are, and here I am.
Admittedly, being raised an only child and a profound introvert until my late teens probably helped me develop isolation coping skills. In my youth books were often my closest friends.
But I am not other people. Other people are composed of different stuff, different backgrounds, different dreams and aspirations, different levels of tolerance for being alone. The need for connection and socialization varies as many ways as there are people.
All that said, I was grateful that I remembered this beautiful video from the people at The School of Life. I have watched it a few times. It gives me some solace. Perhaps it will you too. It validates why I need so much alone time and perhaps why I am choosing to view the upsides of the pandemic lockdown rather than dwell on the downsides, of which there are absolutely many.
Reframing loneliness from a negative into a positive, indeed a kind of superpower, was my way of making lemonade out of the lemons with which we have all been presented. When I watched the video, it made me realize how important alone time is to me. I am sure an outside observer would see my alone time as a type of loneliness, but it’s anything but for me.
While I do have close, intimate relationships in my life, I am starkly aware that I have never met the proverbial soul mate. I consider that a fantasy some tell themselves to make life more bearable, as if meeting the matching puzzle piece among the billions of people walking the planet is likely and the ultimate relationship goal. I find this reality comforting. As the video says,
It’s deeply unlikely that we will ever find someone on exactly the same page of the soul as us. We will long for utter congruity but there will be constant dissonance because we appeared on the Earth at different times, are the product of different families and experiences, and are just not made of quite the same fabric.
Perhaps due to my age, I have accepted this reality. I long ago stopped looking for exact matches in my partners, friends, or colleagues. I would suggest a similar mindset, but I’m not here to tell anyone what they must do. That’s up to each individual.
Loneliness can foster introspection, self-discovery, learning, and growth. But as we explore and discover ourselves and the world’s truths, we may also place ourselves into a smaller community of people with whom we match up.
The problem is sure to get worse the more thoughtful and perceptive we are. There will simply be less people like us around. It isn’t a romantic myth. Loneliness truly is a kind of tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind.
The famed German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose works have sparked significant philosophical discussions since the late 18th Century, was clear that attempting to fully and entirely understand another person is folly.
At an exasperated moment near the end of his life the German writer Goethe, who appears to have had a lot of friends, exploded bitterly, ‘No one has ever properly understood me. I have never fully understood anyone. No one understands anyone.’
Sounds rather dire doesn’t it? But it’s not. There are benefits to loneliness. Creativity and deeper engagement with life can be a side effect of loneliness once we accept and become comfortable with such a state. Great art, music, novels, stories, movies, ideas, projects, and movements have often been spawned by someone at first wallowing in loneliness but eventually allowing it to inspire rather than stultify.
Spending extended time alone can also better prepare us for good relationships that may cross our paths in the future.
Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. It heightens the conversations we have with ourselves. It gives us a character. We don’t repeat what everyone else thinks. We develop a point of view. We might be isolated for now, but we’ll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate. Loneliness renders us elegant and strangely alluring. It suggests there’s more about us to understand than the normal patterns of social intercourse can accommodate, which is something we can take pride in. A sense of isolation truly is, as we suspect but usually prevent ourselves from feeling from fear of arrogance, a sign of depth.
Let me end by saying to anyone who is lonely that your loneliness is valid, it is real, and no one, including me, has the right to tell you that it’s not. Perhaps, though, if you can, flip the script and try to view loneliness from a more positive perspective. If therapy, meditation, or talking to a friend is necessary to alter your mindset, do not hesitate to engage all strategies to get to a better place with loneliness. If you ever feel suicidal, call for help. Asking for help shows strength. There are many hotlines one can call including the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
Enduring loneliness is almost invariably better than suffering the compromises of forced community.
When I write, I am continually aware that I write from my own set of experiences and opinions. I offer this to you only in the hope that if loneliness is indeed something with which you wrestle, maybe it can be reframed, at least somewhat, as a positive.
The draft of this post sat in the queue to be sent to my subscribers, and then just before it was to send, I stumbled across a beautiful TED Talk, The gift and power of emotional courage, delivered by psychologist Susan David.
After watching it, I realized that perhaps I was guilty of trying to encourage a forced, false positivity with this post. I truly hope I am not. Please know that I fully support people experiencing and being honest about the full range of emotions from blissful joy to dark depression and everything in between. I do not want to be one of those inspirational types who proclaim we should all be positive all the time. That’s not only not how life works, it’s not healthy or useful.
Susan David says in the video,
Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger. Psychologists call this amplification. Like that delicious chocolate cake in the refrigerator. The more you try to ignore it, the greater its hold on you.
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When we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
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Research now shows that the radical acceptance of all of our emotions, even the messy difficult ones, is the cornerstone to resilience, thriving, and true, authentic happiness.
So, feel what you feel. I hope that there is some positivity you can extract from time alone and the sometimes-accompanying state of loneliness, but I will try to never negate anyone’s honest emotional state and try to summarily replace it with a positive one.
Hugs.