We are, to some extent, always opaque to ourselves
November 25, 2023 2:36 AM Subscribe
Nor does it take a transformative life event to provoke feelings of loneliness. As time passes, it often happens that friends and family who used to understand us quite well eventually fail to understand us as they once did, failing to really see us as they used to before. This, too, will tend to lead to feelings of loneliness – though the loneliness may creep in more gradually, more surreptitiously. Loneliness, it seems, is an existential hazard, something to which human beings are always vulnerable – and not just when they are alone. from Loved, yet lonely
Speaking of precarious, I have had anosmia for four years. Ear infection not COVID related. I rely on my spouse for telling me whether something smells ok to eat and/or drink. I am very concerned lest she depart the planet first.
posted by DJZouke at 4:52 AM on November 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 4:52 AM on November 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
There's a line from William Gass I sometimes think about, where he's talking about Virginia Woolf's diaries:
"Loneliness is the diary keeper’s lover. It is not narcissism that takes them to their desk every day."
The need for recognition of a changing self that the author describes can at least partly be soothed by one-sided conversations in journals and notebooks. I expect a market in A.I. friends and counsellors will emerge soon enough, if it hasn't already.
posted by rollick at 5:00 AM on November 25, 2023 [15 favorites]
"Loneliness is the diary keeper’s lover. It is not narcissism that takes them to their desk every day."
The need for recognition of a changing self that the author describes can at least partly be soothed by one-sided conversations in journals and notebooks. I expect a market in A.I. friends and counsellors will emerge soon enough, if it hasn't already.
posted by rollick at 5:00 AM on November 25, 2023 [15 favorites]
"We are, to some extent, always opaque to ourselves"
I'm my own LLM!
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:13 AM on November 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
I'm my own LLM!
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:13 AM on November 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
Those with a strong need for their uniqueness to be recognised may be more disposed to loneliness.
I think this is where some of the stigma of loneliness comes from. The drive to be recognized as special can bump against our egalitarian instincts.
I’ve struggled less with loneliness as I’ve gotten older and I think part of it is because as I’ve become more settled in who I am, my need to insist on how unique and different I am has declined. I see those things about myself, but i can also see the ways in which I’m more like others (or could have become more like others) - even people I find dull or terrible - than i would have thought at earlier points in my life.
posted by congen at 5:13 AM on November 25, 2023 [14 favorites]
I think this is where some of the stigma of loneliness comes from. The drive to be recognized as special can bump against our egalitarian instincts.
I’ve struggled less with loneliness as I’ve gotten older and I think part of it is because as I’ve become more settled in who I am, my need to insist on how unique and different I am has declined. I see those things about myself, but i can also see the ways in which I’m more like others (or could have become more like others) - even people I find dull or terrible - than i would have thought at earlier points in my life.
posted by congen at 5:13 AM on November 25, 2023 [14 favorites]
In cases like these, new relationships can offer true succour and light.
But where are those supposed to come from? The thing that stayed with me through this essay was, wow, for a lonely person, she sure does describe making a LOT of social connections. While the two lonelinesses she describes do matter and do cause pain, being unable to find anyone to be friends with, is its own kind of worse.
posted by mittens at 5:42 AM on November 25, 2023 [20 favorites]
But where are those supposed to come from? The thing that stayed with me through this essay was, wow, for a lonely person, she sure does describe making a LOT of social connections. While the two lonelinesses she describes do matter and do cause pain, being unable to find anyone to be friends with, is its own kind of worse.
posted by mittens at 5:42 AM on November 25, 2023 [20 favorites]
I think this is where some of the stigma of loneliness comes from.
I think it’s mostly because other people’s loneliness is really boring to hear about.
Storytime:
Fire alarm went off at 2AM in an apartment building I was living in about 12 years ago. Unusually for that building there were secondaries in the hallway, so instead of just going back to bed I packed my laptop bag, pulled the SSD from my workstation, bundled up for Boston winter and trundled outside with the other thousand or so residents. It turned out to be an actual fire from a forgotten stove (someone baking while baked, IIRC), flames shooting out the window, the works. Fire dept showed up a couple minutes after I walked out the door so it was only a 50% loss for the unit in question and light smoke damage for their neighbors… sorry, point is: it was immediately clear once outside that despite the cold none of us were getting back to bed for a solid hour.
I started chatting with a few neighbors and was almost immediately cornered by a much older man, think a decade younger Wilford Brimley stereotype and you’ve got the picture. Within the first minute of talking to him he launched into a very long monologue about his divorce and it went on for almost ten uninterruptible minutes of extreme awkwardness and mild cringe.
I am what we used to call “a very mild case of Asperger’s” - not sure there’s a term for spectrum extra-lite these days - and was utterly without the conversational tools to extricate myself, so I had to stand there, in the cold of a frigid Boston winter night at 2:30AM, listening to some 55-year-old man who had clearly not spoken to another human in a week pour his heart out because he just desperately needed to talk to someone and I was there and unable to politely excuse myself to go sit in my car with the engine running.
Two minutes into his monologue I swore that if I got out of that conversation alive I would, no matter what sort of relationship difficulties the future held, never ever allow myself to turn into… that. I was so bored. So secondhand embarrassed. I wanted to die. I wanted to… anything that meant I was not standing there in that moment wondering what mistakes had brought me to this time in this place.
So that’s why I never really talk about my divorce two and a half years ago, the two years of near-total social isolation that followed where I’d regularly go three weeks without leaving my apartment or seeing another human except on a Zoom call, the multiple times daily suicide ideation struggling, writing notes to family, practicing, etc. It’s fucking boring. I nearly fell asleep writing this paragraph.
What I talk about instead is the ketamine treatments for severe treatment-resistant depression and what it feels like to have your consciousness split into a million individual threads; to have the final coremost thread - even with a fairly heavy injection I never had a true ego-death as others describe it - sit down with the entire universe and debate the ontology of information as an atomic unit - not in the epistemological how do we know things sense but rather what the significance of information and communication ultimately are. At the single neuron transmission level, at the human-to-human, culture-to-culture, epoch-to-epoch and eventual sapient species-to-species. All things are composed of quantum states: to know anything and to communicate anything is to in some sense violate the no-cloning theorem in spirit - if not the letter of the law - at a macroscopic level.
And once you’ve wrapped up that debate and firmly settled on what information and communication actually mean, beginning the long work of weaving your million threads back together in partnership with the universe. A joint exercise in which you have an equal vote and can weight which parts of you get a little more emphasis and which parts you need - however reluctantly, however bittersweet - to be put somewhere closer to the attic of your mind.
If you have any time left in your trip you can register a few parting complaints with the universe about being a self-important monkey in it, and a particularly lonely one at that. And the universe will hear you out but it won’t actually change anything.
That, I think, is more interesting to other people than the events of my divorce or the loneliness that followed. It’s an experience most people will never have and it touches on some pretty profound shit. Merely talking about it doesn’t make me want to crawl out of my own skin the way reviewing my own loneliness - god forbid someone else’s - does. I hate that this reinforces the emotional isolation and toxic attitudes towards the feelings of men in our culture, but all else being equal I’d rather be honest about what the world looks like from where I’m standing.
YMMV.
posted by Ryvar at 6:39 AM on November 25, 2023 [30 favorites]
I think it’s mostly because other people’s loneliness is really boring to hear about.
Storytime:
Fire alarm went off at 2AM in an apartment building I was living in about 12 years ago. Unusually for that building there were secondaries in the hallway, so instead of just going back to bed I packed my laptop bag, pulled the SSD from my workstation, bundled up for Boston winter and trundled outside with the other thousand or so residents. It turned out to be an actual fire from a forgotten stove (someone baking while baked, IIRC), flames shooting out the window, the works. Fire dept showed up a couple minutes after I walked out the door so it was only a 50% loss for the unit in question and light smoke damage for their neighbors… sorry, point is: it was immediately clear once outside that despite the cold none of us were getting back to bed for a solid hour.
I started chatting with a few neighbors and was almost immediately cornered by a much older man, think a decade younger Wilford Brimley stereotype and you’ve got the picture. Within the first minute of talking to him he launched into a very long monologue about his divorce and it went on for almost ten uninterruptible minutes of extreme awkwardness and mild cringe.
I am what we used to call “a very mild case of Asperger’s” - not sure there’s a term for spectrum extra-lite these days - and was utterly without the conversational tools to extricate myself, so I had to stand there, in the cold of a frigid Boston winter night at 2:30AM, listening to some 55-year-old man who had clearly not spoken to another human in a week pour his heart out because he just desperately needed to talk to someone and I was there and unable to politely excuse myself to go sit in my car with the engine running.
Two minutes into his monologue I swore that if I got out of that conversation alive I would, no matter what sort of relationship difficulties the future held, never ever allow myself to turn into… that. I was so bored. So secondhand embarrassed. I wanted to die. I wanted to… anything that meant I was not standing there in that moment wondering what mistakes had brought me to this time in this place.
So that’s why I never really talk about my divorce two and a half years ago, the two years of near-total social isolation that followed where I’d regularly go three weeks without leaving my apartment or seeing another human except on a Zoom call, the multiple times daily suicide ideation struggling, writing notes to family, practicing, etc. It’s fucking boring. I nearly fell asleep writing this paragraph.
What I talk about instead is the ketamine treatments for severe treatment-resistant depression and what it feels like to have your consciousness split into a million individual threads; to have the final coremost thread - even with a fairly heavy injection I never had a true ego-death as others describe it - sit down with the entire universe and debate the ontology of information as an atomic unit - not in the epistemological how do we know things sense but rather what the significance of information and communication ultimately are. At the single neuron transmission level, at the human-to-human, culture-to-culture, epoch-to-epoch and eventual sapient species-to-species. All things are composed of quantum states: to know anything and to communicate anything is to in some sense violate the no-cloning theorem in spirit - if not the letter of the law - at a macroscopic level.
And once you’ve wrapped up that debate and firmly settled on what information and communication actually mean, beginning the long work of weaving your million threads back together in partnership with the universe. A joint exercise in which you have an equal vote and can weight which parts of you get a little more emphasis and which parts you need - however reluctantly, however bittersweet - to be put somewhere closer to the attic of your mind.
If you have any time left in your trip you can register a few parting complaints with the universe about being a self-important monkey in it, and a particularly lonely one at that. And the universe will hear you out but it won’t actually change anything.
That, I think, is more interesting to other people than the events of my divorce or the loneliness that followed. It’s an experience most people will never have and it touches on some pretty profound shit. Merely talking about it doesn’t make me want to crawl out of my own skin the way reviewing my own loneliness - god forbid someone else’s - does. I hate that this reinforces the emotional isolation and toxic attitudes towards the feelings of men in our culture, but all else being equal I’d rather be honest about what the world looks like from where I’m standing.
YMMV.
posted by Ryvar at 6:39 AM on November 25, 2023 [30 favorites]
As I’ve gotten older I’m finding that I rely more on others to confirm my self worth. It’s a very precarious position to be in. At some point no amount of confirmation will provide it, then what?
Then you grow, whether you want to or not.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:54 AM on November 25, 2023 [7 favorites]
Then you grow, whether you want to or not.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:54 AM on November 25, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think she conflates existential loneliness — the fact that infinite distances continue between the closest of people — with social loneliness.
Social loneliness is about the fact that humans are herd (sorry, "tribal") animals that have a predilection for finding comfort in relationship to each other.
Existential loneliness is just a cold hard fact of existence.
I think when we’re starry-eyed youths we talk of soulmates and perfect understanding of one another and in general grab on to the illusion that existential loneliness can be overcome if people just love hard enough. As we get older we find (as the author has) that they are really two very different things and that while we can distract ourselves from existential loneliness it will always remain our problem to face alone.
It’s not that the infinite distance between yourself and other people can’t be managed, it’s just that trying to fill it with people isn’t going to work.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:10 AM on November 25, 2023 [30 favorites]
Social loneliness is about the fact that humans are herd (sorry, "tribal") animals that have a predilection for finding comfort in relationship to each other.
Existential loneliness is just a cold hard fact of existence.
I think when we’re starry-eyed youths we talk of soulmates and perfect understanding of one another and in general grab on to the illusion that existential loneliness can be overcome if people just love hard enough. As we get older we find (as the author has) that they are really two very different things and that while we can distract ourselves from existential loneliness it will always remain our problem to face alone.
It’s not that the infinite distance between yourself and other people can’t be managed, it’s just that trying to fill it with people isn’t going to work.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:10 AM on November 25, 2023 [30 favorites]
“It’s not that the infinite distance between yourself and other people can’t be managed, it’s just that trying to fill it with people isn’t going to work“
QFT.
I’m a writer and an soft extrovert and the sort of person that is actually interested in hearing about your divorce or whatever (I spend a lot of time, as part of my day job, talking to/interviewing elderly people and I love it even when it breaks my heart). People, often strangers, tend to talk to me, unprovoked, about their lives. And I like to listen. Sometimes I think a lot of loneliness comes down to feeling like you’re not being heard by another real human being. You’re just screaming into the void. Which is why social media doesn’t usually help.
The existential bit? Boy Howdy, do I relate. And I have a loving family and wonderful friends. I still feel lonely with them. But you manage. You figure out that, at best, you find a few people that can really “get” like 40-60% of what you’re on about 40-60% of the time. And then you realize that learning how to fill the rest, by finding peace with yourself or serving community and/or discovering avenues to meet people that might fill another percentage point or two is how you claw out of the abyss and get through the rest of your life. Or at least it is for me
posted by thivaia at 7:27 AM on November 25, 2023 [16 favorites]
QFT.
I’m a writer and an soft extrovert and the sort of person that is actually interested in hearing about your divorce or whatever (I spend a lot of time, as part of my day job, talking to/interviewing elderly people and I love it even when it breaks my heart). People, often strangers, tend to talk to me, unprovoked, about their lives. And I like to listen. Sometimes I think a lot of loneliness comes down to feeling like you’re not being heard by another real human being. You’re just screaming into the void. Which is why social media doesn’t usually help.
The existential bit? Boy Howdy, do I relate. And I have a loving family and wonderful friends. I still feel lonely with them. But you manage. You figure out that, at best, you find a few people that can really “get” like 40-60% of what you’re on about 40-60% of the time. And then you realize that learning how to fill the rest, by finding peace with yourself or serving community and/or discovering avenues to meet people that might fill another percentage point or two is how you claw out of the abyss and get through the rest of your life. Or at least it is for me
posted by thivaia at 7:27 AM on November 25, 2023 [16 favorites]
I think I dread becoming Ryvar's Wilford Brimley almost more than anything--it's one thing to suffer, another to suffer and bore people. But I think the skill Divorced Brimley lacked was to turn his suffering into gossip. People love gossip. They love it when it's honed, when it's funny, when it's shocking. You can get away with so much bitterness if you're funny. And that's why, when I spend a little time each day in front of the mirror practicing for when I finally encounter someone who would like to hear about my woes, I try my best to keep it dishy and light.
posted by mittens at 8:01 AM on November 25, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by mittens at 8:01 AM on November 25, 2023 [21 favorites]
You can get away with so much bitterness if you're funny
Yes, this is the way! I don't do this with random strangers, but with the few people I'm close to. No one wants to hear a long, depressing, self pitying rant - but take the same content and make it very darkly funny - bonus points if you can focus on threads of absurdism.
As a bonus, I find this method actually makes me feel better too. If I sit there and just do a long, ruminating diatribe about why I hate my life and am tired of being screwed over by the universe, the other person listening is bored/uncomfortable, and I end up feeling worse. But if I take the same rant and instead do it in a lighthearted, funny way, then I feel better, the other person laughs and engages, and it works so much better.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:09 AM on November 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
Yes, this is the way! I don't do this with random strangers, but with the few people I'm close to. No one wants to hear a long, depressing, self pitying rant - but take the same content and make it very darkly funny - bonus points if you can focus on threads of absurdism.
As a bonus, I find this method actually makes me feel better too. If I sit there and just do a long, ruminating diatribe about why I hate my life and am tired of being screwed over by the universe, the other person listening is bored/uncomfortable, and I end up feeling worse. But if I take the same rant and instead do it in a lighthearted, funny way, then I feel better, the other person laughs and engages, and it works so much better.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:09 AM on November 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
What I started thinking about, reading the article, was that for me loneliness is often the result of not being able to share the important aspects of myself and have them understood.
I’m a liberal, single, middle aged woman in a red state. When people ask if I have kids or where I go to church, and I say I don’t, I can see something close up in their eyes. They don’t know how to relate to me. In fairness I don’t always know how to relate to them. I can sometimes be good at asking questions, and that can help bridge the gap. I can be curious about what it’s like to have a toddler or a rebellious teenager and I can affirm that they have an identity outside of motherhood. It seems to work okay, sometimes.
posted by bunderful at 8:37 AM on November 25, 2023 [14 favorites]
I’m a liberal, single, middle aged woman in a red state. When people ask if I have kids or where I go to church, and I say I don’t, I can see something close up in their eyes. They don’t know how to relate to me. In fairness I don’t always know how to relate to them. I can sometimes be good at asking questions, and that can help bridge the gap. I can be curious about what it’s like to have a toddler or a rebellious teenager and I can affirm that they have an identity outside of motherhood. It seems to work okay, sometimes.
posted by bunderful at 8:37 AM on November 25, 2023 [14 favorites]
I've typed and deleted a bunch of stuff
The topic compels me, the voice not so much. I am thinking about this a lot lately and glad to see the article posted, thank you chavenet. I can't spot your posts like I can spot chariotpulledbycassowaries but I'll get there, a pattern is sure to emerge ;)
posted by elkevelvet at 9:06 AM on November 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
The topic compels me, the voice not so much. I am thinking about this a lot lately and glad to see the article posted, thank you chavenet. I can't spot your posts like I can spot chariotpulledbycassowaries but I'll get there, a pattern is sure to emerge ;)
posted by elkevelvet at 9:06 AM on November 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think when we’re starry-eyed youths we talk of soulmates and perfect understanding of one another and in general grab on to the illusion that existential loneliness can be overcome if people just love hard enough. As we get older we find (as the author has) that they are really two very different things and that while we can distract ourselves from existential loneliness it will always remain our problem to face alone.
I mean, I don't know, I'm 40, and it seems pretty real to me, I feel really heard and deeply understood by my partner and it helps to assuage the existential loneliness I would otherwise feel. What's the age at which I stop believing in it and start feeling lonely? I want to know so I can start eating cheeseburgers and clog my arteries and die first.
posted by corb at 9:35 AM on November 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
I mean, I don't know, I'm 40, and it seems pretty real to me, I feel really heard and deeply understood by my partner and it helps to assuage the existential loneliness I would otherwise feel. What's the age at which I stop believing in it and start feeling lonely? I want to know so I can start eating cheeseburgers and clog my arteries and die first.
posted by corb at 9:35 AM on November 25, 2023 [8 favorites]
I’ve struggled less with loneliness as I’ve gotten older and I think part of it is because as I’ve become more settled in who I am, my need to insist on how unique and different I am has declined.
When I studied linguistics in college, I read that the amount of detail needed to sufficiently describe something according to the cooperative principle can vary greatly depending on context and purpose of the speech act. "Italy looks like a boot" - probably not enough to navigate the shoreline, perfectly sufficient to find it on the map.
There are lots of people in my life, who probably have more of an "Italy looks like a boot"-level of knowledge about me. As a teenager that made me feel horribly misunderstood. Now I think, eh, close enough. This has done wonders to alleviate my general malaise and feeling of alienation.
Still....
On the platform formerly known as Twitter, a recent main character posted a bitter rant about allegeded "asexual millenials" (probably zoomers of varying sexual orientations) celebrating friendsgiving in a way deemed too cringy by the poster. It made me fondly remember the actually millenial friendsgivings of my own college years (which would surely inspire equal derision and contempt by this jaded critic of contemporary mores; a bunch of theater kids solemnly gathered in the attic of Cecila's grandmother, listening with rapt attention to Cecilia reciting a long poem about Puritans).
This in turn triggered a series of other fond college memories: long nights spent around the ashtray in front of the dorm kitchen with the smokers, gossiping, arguing, mentally masturbating; our jour fix at the coffeeshop on campus debriefing after the class with that one professor every normal student preferred to avoid because he demanded so much; going swimming at the public indoor pool and afterwards for running-sushi with my flatmate every Thursday; another friend throwing a birthday dinner for me in her appartment, because my own appartment was too small to host anything; going into town after an exam, having no plans for the rest of the day, randomly running into some acquaintance and spontaneouly deciding to spend the rest of the day together, running errands, going for a coffee; sitting on a blanket in the park, listening to friends singing and playing guitar; going to see a band I knew; even one or two especially exuberant nights at the club. And I normally hate clubs.
I loved college. I loved that college town. I finished one degree, moved away for a bit for a job, missed the place too much and moved back. I finished another degree, took a series of precarious, badly paid gigs, had to give up my appartment when my flatmate got a call to teach in Heidelberg, stayed on a friend's couch for a while. And then I finally got a full-time job in the place I was raised, and moved back there for good.
And when I returned to that college town, some time after, to visit some friends still living there, I felt like a tourist, like the place I had known for ten years no longer existed, and neither did the person I had been. And I remember thinking that no one ever really got to know her and now no-one ever will.
I don't know what had gone into me. Would be certainly news to my friends from college I had just been visting, and have visited many times since and am actually still friends with to this day. But at that moment, that's what I felt.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I love my friends. I could have no better ones. I reconnected with old friends from high school and even Kindergarten and I also managed to make new friends after moving back home. I'm not spending as much time with them as I want to, and it's mostly my own fault. I have a job now where I'm always interacting with a lot of people. I need a fair bit of solitude to recharge my social batteries. Any complaints I might have about my social life I will lay solely at my own feet.
But I keep thinking I need to keep a diary, I need to get back into writing. I feel like there's a part of me not even I get to know otherwise. "Loneliness is the diary keeper’s lover. It is not narcissism that takes them to their desk every day." It's not a replacement for friends. And friends, maybe, are no replacement for it.
posted by sohalt at 9:38 AM on November 25, 2023 [20 favorites]
When I studied linguistics in college, I read that the amount of detail needed to sufficiently describe something according to the cooperative principle can vary greatly depending on context and purpose of the speech act. "Italy looks like a boot" - probably not enough to navigate the shoreline, perfectly sufficient to find it on the map.
There are lots of people in my life, who probably have more of an "Italy looks like a boot"-level of knowledge about me. As a teenager that made me feel horribly misunderstood. Now I think, eh, close enough. This has done wonders to alleviate my general malaise and feeling of alienation.
Still....
On the platform formerly known as Twitter, a recent main character posted a bitter rant about allegeded "asexual millenials" (probably zoomers of varying sexual orientations) celebrating friendsgiving in a way deemed too cringy by the poster. It made me fondly remember the actually millenial friendsgivings of my own college years (which would surely inspire equal derision and contempt by this jaded critic of contemporary mores; a bunch of theater kids solemnly gathered in the attic of Cecila's grandmother, listening with rapt attention to Cecilia reciting a long poem about Puritans).
This in turn triggered a series of other fond college memories: long nights spent around the ashtray in front of the dorm kitchen with the smokers, gossiping, arguing, mentally masturbating; our jour fix at the coffeeshop on campus debriefing after the class with that one professor every normal student preferred to avoid because he demanded so much; going swimming at the public indoor pool and afterwards for running-sushi with my flatmate every Thursday; another friend throwing a birthday dinner for me in her appartment, because my own appartment was too small to host anything; going into town after an exam, having no plans for the rest of the day, randomly running into some acquaintance and spontaneouly deciding to spend the rest of the day together, running errands, going for a coffee; sitting on a blanket in the park, listening to friends singing and playing guitar; going to see a band I knew; even one or two especially exuberant nights at the club. And I normally hate clubs.
I loved college. I loved that college town. I finished one degree, moved away for a bit for a job, missed the place too much and moved back. I finished another degree, took a series of precarious, badly paid gigs, had to give up my appartment when my flatmate got a call to teach in Heidelberg, stayed on a friend's couch for a while. And then I finally got a full-time job in the place I was raised, and moved back there for good.
And when I returned to that college town, some time after, to visit some friends still living there, I felt like a tourist, like the place I had known for ten years no longer existed, and neither did the person I had been. And I remember thinking that no one ever really got to know her and now no-one ever will.
I don't know what had gone into me. Would be certainly news to my friends from college I had just been visting, and have visited many times since and am actually still friends with to this day. But at that moment, that's what I felt.
I don't know where I'm going with this. I love my friends. I could have no better ones. I reconnected with old friends from high school and even Kindergarten and I also managed to make new friends after moving back home. I'm not spending as much time with them as I want to, and it's mostly my own fault. I have a job now where I'm always interacting with a lot of people. I need a fair bit of solitude to recharge my social batteries. Any complaints I might have about my social life I will lay solely at my own feet.
But I keep thinking I need to keep a diary, I need to get back into writing. I feel like there's a part of me not even I get to know otherwise. "Loneliness is the diary keeper’s lover. It is not narcissism that takes them to their desk every day." It's not a replacement for friends. And friends, maybe, are no replacement for it.
posted by sohalt at 9:38 AM on November 25, 2023 [20 favorites]
it's a big topic.
An old friend of mine (now gone) lived a particularly precarious childhood -- serious poverty, criminality in the family, becoming criminal himself at a very young age. He once said that while all of that was brutal, as soon as things did settle for him (maturity, getting a job, leaving that family behind), he got ambushed, almost destroyed by loneliness. Because the one thing he never lacked through his mad early years was other people up close, sharing their dramas (and vice versa). Not particularly healthy obviously, but ...
(quoting him now)
"Weirdly, you at least knew that you existed, that your presence had an impact, for better or worse. Whereas alone on the night shift at work, mostly killing time until 6am and then you were just going to go home alone to your shitty apartment and sleep all day, try to anyway -- that was a whole other hell I just wasn't prepared for. And the worst part was, the lonelier I got, the worse I got at even beginning to connect with people. I'd meet somebody who was halfway nice to me and I'd immediately blow it, I was just so fucking desperate to have them want to be around me that, of course, that's exactly what I sabotaged. The number one cause of extreme loneliness is less extreme loneliness."
(very much like the Wilford Brimley guy mentioned above)
What finally worked for him? That's a long story but AA was involved. And yes, all the time I knew him, he had lots of people in his life.
posted by philip-random at 10:16 AM on November 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
An old friend of mine (now gone) lived a particularly precarious childhood -- serious poverty, criminality in the family, becoming criminal himself at a very young age. He once said that while all of that was brutal, as soon as things did settle for him (maturity, getting a job, leaving that family behind), he got ambushed, almost destroyed by loneliness. Because the one thing he never lacked through his mad early years was other people up close, sharing their dramas (and vice versa). Not particularly healthy obviously, but ...
(quoting him now)
"Weirdly, you at least knew that you existed, that your presence had an impact, for better or worse. Whereas alone on the night shift at work, mostly killing time until 6am and then you were just going to go home alone to your shitty apartment and sleep all day, try to anyway -- that was a whole other hell I just wasn't prepared for. And the worst part was, the lonelier I got, the worse I got at even beginning to connect with people. I'd meet somebody who was halfway nice to me and I'd immediately blow it, I was just so fucking desperate to have them want to be around me that, of course, that's exactly what I sabotaged. The number one cause of extreme loneliness is less extreme loneliness."
(very much like the Wilford Brimley guy mentioned above)
What finally worked for him? That's a long story but AA was involved. And yes, all the time I knew him, he had lots of people in his life.
posted by philip-random at 10:16 AM on November 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
I may be experiencing the opposite of this.
I was a bit of a family oddball - the first child born into the extended family, older than the next child by 2 or 3 years. I was also bookish and intellectually curious, artsy and cared little for girly things. Which meant that absolutely NO ONE in my extended family of grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins quite knew how to relate to me for a while. One cousin was also a weirdo artist, but he was off doing his own thing a while - and my own parents were a little too Parenty to be able to relate in the way I needed. So I went off to New York and Found My Tribe and have been wildly happy there. I have had bad luck in life now and then, but so e good fortune as well, and as recently as 3 weeks ago the thought of ever leaving NYC made me weep.
But I was just home for Thanksgiving, and more people were around than usual. And...we've all had it a little rough lately. There's a few people who have passed on, a couple others who have had mental illness struggles. There is another crop of kids running around- some are early teenagers. And I am recognizing my 12-year-old self in my nephew, but also seeing my studious self in my niece. The other weird arty cousin has moved back and still does music, but now also teaches boat building and is raising 2 kids.
My brother and that cousin broke out guitars at some point after dinner for a big family jam session, and somehow my cousin got me to sing "Angel From Montgomery" with him. I am usually too shy to sing in front of most people, but....somehow it felt okay. Even with my brother and parents staring at me like "where did THIS come from?"...
And I was surprised to find myself thinking seriously that you know, maybe leaving New York to rejoin THIS tribe sometime isn't such a bad.idea. I was the oddball then, but we somehow all are on a similar level now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:24 AM on November 25, 2023 [16 favorites]
I was a bit of a family oddball - the first child born into the extended family, older than the next child by 2 or 3 years. I was also bookish and intellectually curious, artsy and cared little for girly things. Which meant that absolutely NO ONE in my extended family of grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins quite knew how to relate to me for a while. One cousin was also a weirdo artist, but he was off doing his own thing a while - and my own parents were a little too Parenty to be able to relate in the way I needed. So I went off to New York and Found My Tribe and have been wildly happy there. I have had bad luck in life now and then, but so e good fortune as well, and as recently as 3 weeks ago the thought of ever leaving NYC made me weep.
But I was just home for Thanksgiving, and more people were around than usual. And...we've all had it a little rough lately. There's a few people who have passed on, a couple others who have had mental illness struggles. There is another crop of kids running around- some are early teenagers. And I am recognizing my 12-year-old self in my nephew, but also seeing my studious self in my niece. The other weird arty cousin has moved back and still does music, but now also teaches boat building and is raising 2 kids.
My brother and that cousin broke out guitars at some point after dinner for a big family jam session, and somehow my cousin got me to sing "Angel From Montgomery" with him. I am usually too shy to sing in front of most people, but....somehow it felt okay. Even with my brother and parents staring at me like "where did THIS come from?"...
And I was surprised to find myself thinking seriously that you know, maybe leaving New York to rejoin THIS tribe sometime isn't such a bad.idea. I was the oddball then, but we somehow all are on a similar level now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:24 AM on November 25, 2023 [16 favorites]
I wonder if only children tend to feel lonelier, or if they’re more inured to it, used to it, maybe in the sense of being less bothered by it. I used to think the latter, but as I get older I’m leaning toward both simultaneously.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:28 AM on November 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 10:28 AM on November 25, 2023 [5 favorites]
If the function of the brain is predictive modeling, then the dataset presented to the developing brain naturally affects its subsequent predictive ability. philip-random's friend was raised in close contact with other people. Consequently, the friend's brain was trained to expect human contact and is now distressed because the anticipated human contact is not forthcoming.
You can see this behavior in dogs. If you socialize a puppy with attention and treats, it will come to expect attention and treats all the time. The adolescent dog, not receiving the anticipated goodies, will become more aggressive (begging at the table, jumping up on visitors) to obtain the reward that the dog has been conditioned to receive.
Now in my case, my parents kept me in a cage for a few years during my early childhood (roughly from the age of 2 until 5 1/2, at which point I started kindergarten). During this interval, most of my waking hours were spent alone in a cage in an empty, silent house. (I don't have a lot of memories from this time, although I recall with some pride that I learned to tell time by watching the shadows crawl across the floor.) As a consequence, my brain's Large Living Model did not predict human interaction, so there was no frustration or loneliness when it was absent.
My point is that early childhood development likely determines your emotional expectations of your environment. I've read that the brain reacts positively when perceived circumstances fit the predictive model, and become distressed when the predictive model fails. (Ie, you're driving along not even minding the other cars until OH SHIT THAT TRUCK CAME OUTTA NOWHERE! Or, less dramatically, you go to the grocery store and for some reason they're all out of that brand of bread that you like.) If you expect people and have none, you feel lonely. If you expect isolation and find it, you feel normal.
posted by SPrintF at 10:59 AM on November 25, 2023 [16 favorites]
You can see this behavior in dogs. If you socialize a puppy with attention and treats, it will come to expect attention and treats all the time. The adolescent dog, not receiving the anticipated goodies, will become more aggressive (begging at the table, jumping up on visitors) to obtain the reward that the dog has been conditioned to receive.
Now in my case, my parents kept me in a cage for a few years during my early childhood (roughly from the age of 2 until 5 1/2, at which point I started kindergarten). During this interval, most of my waking hours were spent alone in a cage in an empty, silent house. (I don't have a lot of memories from this time, although I recall with some pride that I learned to tell time by watching the shadows crawl across the floor.) As a consequence, my brain's Large Living Model did not predict human interaction, so there was no frustration or loneliness when it was absent.
My point is that early childhood development likely determines your emotional expectations of your environment. I've read that the brain reacts positively when perceived circumstances fit the predictive model, and become distressed when the predictive model fails. (Ie, you're driving along not even minding the other cars until OH SHIT THAT TRUCK CAME OUTTA NOWHERE! Or, less dramatically, you go to the grocery store and for some reason they're all out of that brand of bread that you like.) If you expect people and have none, you feel lonely. If you expect isolation and find it, you feel normal.
posted by SPrintF at 10:59 AM on November 25, 2023 [16 favorites]
I'm an only child and I am used to lonely? Or I don't feel it really? I learned at an early age that the other little children were NOT guaranteed to be my friends and playmates (which is to say I got bullied in kindergarten and other little children may very well be The Enemy), so being alone is restful, not stressful. My cousin has an only child (got overruled on having two, apparently) and cousin said they felt bad for the son being the only kid at Thanksgiving. Kid was playing video games all day so I doubt he minded, mind you. I think being an only is great, actually. I've always been Too Weird For Everyone, which sucks rancid donkey balls, but also makes you learn that avoiding people is good.
Socially, we have to get along with other people for our own survival. If everyone hates you because you're a weirdo, you are very, very unsafe. You are a target. People tell me to blow off say, the opinions of people at work, but their opinions literally run my life, I cannot ignore them, blow them off, or say "haters gonna hate, I'm fine as I am. " People are telling me to ignore that stuff, but it's important. It affects everything. If people don't like you, your life is, at best, a whole lot harder. If I can't appeal to more people, I don't get to survive. People won't let you survive, in some respects.
SPrintF, this sounds like "The Monitor" concept in the Burnout book by the Nagoski twins. If you expect something to happen in a certain amount of time, and it doesn't, then you start feeling frustrated, want to give up, etc.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:56 PM on November 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
Socially, we have to get along with other people for our own survival. If everyone hates you because you're a weirdo, you are very, very unsafe. You are a target. People tell me to blow off say, the opinions of people at work, but their opinions literally run my life, I cannot ignore them, blow them off, or say "haters gonna hate, I'm fine as I am. " People are telling me to ignore that stuff, but it's important. It affects everything. If people don't like you, your life is, at best, a whole lot harder. If I can't appeal to more people, I don't get to survive. People won't let you survive, in some respects.
SPrintF, this sounds like "The Monitor" concept in the Burnout book by the Nagoski twins. If you expect something to happen in a certain amount of time, and it doesn't, then you start feeling frustrated, want to give up, etc.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:56 PM on November 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
I think that often those of us who don’t have likeability privilege wind up getting talked past by those who do… the tinkerbell method doesn’t work for everyone, belief isn’t an effective bootstrap approach. We need to get our own forum together for discussions by and for us—but that is also free of the damaging politics of extremists like incels.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 2:30 PM on November 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 2:30 PM on November 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
Loneliness is a thing I think about frequently. I'm incredibly social, but as I have always felt like an outsider even in my deepest friendship circles. I am a twin and I think that has always affected my outlook on relationships. My earliest memory is a lonely one. As I get older, I wonder if I am co-dependent or if it is just depression or some other bit of neurological happenstance, but in the end it doesn't matter.
I remember the loneliness of a train horn running at midnight in Birmingham, Alabama. I used to walk around my neighborhood at night when the restless was too strong to stay in bed. My parents would have heart attacks because I'd slip out of the house in elementary school and investigate the local cemetery because I was so alone. Let's not dwell on the scores of break-ups, whether platonic or romantic, or how the rush of NRE would help me feel like I had a connection with someone. I overexplain everything about my life, not because of neurodivergency but because I deeply want people to understand me like I want to be understood.
I have friends and loved ones. I have children who adore me , a wife and other partners who clearly find me interesting and attractive. I have a job that provides me a sense of fulfillment. But I am still lonely. It's hard.
posted by gwydapllew at 3:23 PM on November 25, 2023 [7 favorites]
I remember the loneliness of a train horn running at midnight in Birmingham, Alabama. I used to walk around my neighborhood at night when the restless was too strong to stay in bed. My parents would have heart attacks because I'd slip out of the house in elementary school and investigate the local cemetery because I was so alone. Let's not dwell on the scores of break-ups, whether platonic or romantic, or how the rush of NRE would help me feel like I had a connection with someone. I overexplain everything about my life, not because of neurodivergency but because I deeply want people to understand me like I want to be understood.
I have friends and loved ones. I have children who adore me , a wife and other partners who clearly find me interesting and attractive. I have a job that provides me a sense of fulfillment. But I am still lonely. It's hard.
posted by gwydapllew at 3:23 PM on November 25, 2023 [7 favorites]
The article reminds me of a question on the green not long ago about the difference between who we think we are & who other people think we are & how that feels: Do you know whether your partner values your best characteristics?
I have been in a close relationship where my partner does not seem to know who I am, and I did feel something that I might call loneliness, although it was different from the loneliness of being actually alone.
There is an important difference between seeing somebody as less than they see themselves and seeing them as more than they see themselves. To simplify grotesquely, if a close friend who has not historically considered himself an intellectual comes to me and says, "I am now an intellectual," and I say, "You are not an intellectual," then I am failing to see him, as described in the article, and yes, it may make him feel lonely. If on the other hand I say, "Yes, you are an intellectual, and I sense that you are also now an aesthete and a dreamer and a crusader," I am again seeing him differently than he sees himself, but I am doing it in a way that opens rather than closes the question of who he might be. I try to do that when I can, I don't know, I just like it.
posted by the charms of plurality at 3:28 PM on November 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
I have been in a close relationship where my partner does not seem to know who I am, and I did feel something that I might call loneliness, although it was different from the loneliness of being actually alone.
There is an important difference between seeing somebody as less than they see themselves and seeing them as more than they see themselves. To simplify grotesquely, if a close friend who has not historically considered himself an intellectual comes to me and says, "I am now an intellectual," and I say, "You are not an intellectual," then I am failing to see him, as described in the article, and yes, it may make him feel lonely. If on the other hand I say, "Yes, you are an intellectual, and I sense that you are also now an aesthete and a dreamer and a crusader," I am again seeing him differently than he sees himself, but I am doing it in a way that opens rather than closes the question of who he might be. I try to do that when I can, I don't know, I just like it.
posted by the charms of plurality at 3:28 PM on November 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
As the old song goes, you got to walk that lonesome valley; you got to walk it by yourself. Nobody here can walk it with you. You got to walk it by yourself.
posted by argybarg at 10:20 PM on November 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by argybarg at 10:20 PM on November 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
so being alone is restful, not stressful.
jenfullmoon - thank you for expressing this so well - it is exactly the same for me - albeit for different reasons. And yet, sometimes I wonder if I am ever truly alone. I am usually in internal dialogue with whichever great teacher I last happened upon. "But that's just books," laments my wife. "Maybe to you, love, but to me Aurelius, Lao Tzu, Silesius, Rolle, Merton and hundreds of others are as real as the bloke next door - in fact, a lot more real," I reply. "But Dad, you haven't had human contact in the last 2 weeks," wails my son. "Son, what are you talking about? I've been listening to Handel non stop for the last 2 weeks (I like to binge) - I feel like half of Europe and centuries of its citizens have been with me. I'm up to my ears in humans," I reply. It's who I am and I'm long passed apologising for that.
That being said, my heart goes out to anyone here who feels lonely today. I know how raw and corrosive it can be.
posted by dutchrick at 3:36 AM on November 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
jenfullmoon - thank you for expressing this so well - it is exactly the same for me - albeit for different reasons. And yet, sometimes I wonder if I am ever truly alone. I am usually in internal dialogue with whichever great teacher I last happened upon. "But that's just books," laments my wife. "Maybe to you, love, but to me Aurelius, Lao Tzu, Silesius, Rolle, Merton and hundreds of others are as real as the bloke next door - in fact, a lot more real," I reply. "But Dad, you haven't had human contact in the last 2 weeks," wails my son. "Son, what are you talking about? I've been listening to Handel non stop for the last 2 weeks (I like to binge) - I feel like half of Europe and centuries of its citizens have been with me. I'm up to my ears in humans," I reply. It's who I am and I'm long passed apologising for that.
That being said, my heart goes out to anyone here who feels lonely today. I know how raw and corrosive it can be.
posted by dutchrick at 3:36 AM on November 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
We have so many ways to communicate with each other in these times, yet many people are more lonely than ever. I believe that it might have something to do with estrangement from the source of our being. Loss of soul whatever one might call it. "We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are." Thomas Merton
posted by DJZouke at 5:27 AM on November 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 5:27 AM on November 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Carl Gustav Jung
posted by armoir from antproof case at 6:05 AM on November 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
Carl Gustav Jung
posted by armoir from antproof case at 6:05 AM on November 26, 2023 [12 favorites]
I am blown away, but not surprised, by the richness of the Mefi response to this topic. Makes sense that wanting to hang out on this website is an indicator that we all search for community beyond what we can find in person.
Currently I can't say I feel particularly lonely but I'm in a new relationship so we'll see how that goes. I'm also spending a lot of time figuring out who I am when I'm not masking my recently diagnosed ADHD, which is recasting lot of my memories in a new light.
In general I am being kinder to myself, which also means not hating myself for being an odd duck not everyone will understand. That takes a lot of the pressure off.
posted by emjaybee at 8:57 AM on November 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
Currently I can't say I feel particularly lonely but I'm in a new relationship so we'll see how that goes. I'm also spending a lot of time figuring out who I am when I'm not masking my recently diagnosed ADHD, which is recasting lot of my memories in a new light.
In general I am being kinder to myself, which also means not hating myself for being an odd duck not everyone will understand. That takes a lot of the pressure off.
posted by emjaybee at 8:57 AM on November 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
I feel that Jung quote in my bones, especially after the holiday week. It's not possible to be in community with people who can't admit to ones humanity. These people say they love and care about me, but not enough to forsake reactionary politics and ableist eugenicism.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:17 AM on November 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 9:17 AM on November 26, 2023 [6 favorites]
And so I have to be the bigger person and keep the fact that their speech and actions only further isolate me. Then they wonder why and worry that I prefer my hemitage.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:19 AM on November 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 9:19 AM on November 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
ctrl/f "solitude" = only one hit in this thread.
Solitude has always been my go-to word when I'm trying to describe the pleasure of being on my own for a while, maybe a long while. Whereas loneliness, that's when life-the-universe-everything has imposed this "oneliness" on me, and yes, it can happen in a crowd.
posted by philip-random at 12:04 PM on November 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
Solitude has always been my go-to word when I'm trying to describe the pleasure of being on my own for a while, maybe a long while. Whereas loneliness, that's when life-the-universe-everything has imposed this "oneliness" on me, and yes, it can happen in a crowd.
posted by philip-random at 12:04 PM on November 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
the charms of plurality, that was my question, and I fully agree that it is related to loneliness, and have read this article and the comments avidly because it's a subject of keen interest to me.
I feel so essentially alone in the world--well, I am alone in the world--and the twin sides of that are a craving for solitude on the one hand and a pervasive feeling of loneliness on the other. I'm the childless only child of an only child, and was uprooted every single year to start again in a new school, so solitude was the default. My brain was formed in these conditions. It should be no surprise that it's now something I need in order to function properly. But making lasting connections with people requires, you know, being with them. I'm eternally at war with myself. My partner is really the engine of our fairly active social life, and I am so grateful to him for that. I just don't have the drive to make it happen on my own.
I think I'm actually happiest when I feel connected with my partner and my few close friends--when I feel loved and seen and understood for who I am--but when I am blessedly alone in my house. We had a lovely convivial Thanksgiving and then I retreated to my house and lay on the sofa doing nothing in silence for hour after glorious hour.
Also, I appreciate the quote about loneliness and diary keepers. It has always annoyed me that my journals are full of so much negativity. It seems like I only have the urge to write when I have a relationship in disarray. All the happy, contented parts of my life go unrecorded. I guess this is why.
posted by HotToddy at 3:42 PM on November 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
I feel so essentially alone in the world--well, I am alone in the world--and the twin sides of that are a craving for solitude on the one hand and a pervasive feeling of loneliness on the other. I'm the childless only child of an only child, and was uprooted every single year to start again in a new school, so solitude was the default. My brain was formed in these conditions. It should be no surprise that it's now something I need in order to function properly. But making lasting connections with people requires, you know, being with them. I'm eternally at war with myself. My partner is really the engine of our fairly active social life, and I am so grateful to him for that. I just don't have the drive to make it happen on my own.
I think I'm actually happiest when I feel connected with my partner and my few close friends--when I feel loved and seen and understood for who I am--but when I am blessedly alone in my house. We had a lovely convivial Thanksgiving and then I retreated to my house and lay on the sofa doing nothing in silence for hour after glorious hour.
Also, I appreciate the quote about loneliness and diary keepers. It has always annoyed me that my journals are full of so much negativity. It seems like I only have the urge to write when I have a relationship in disarray. All the happy, contented parts of my life go unrecorded. I guess this is why.
posted by HotToddy at 3:42 PM on November 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
My SO was dumped a month before her wedding. For the next year, she absolutely forced herself to learn to enjoy her own company in gardens, museums, beaches. This amazes me. It is so difficult for me to really value worldly experiences without someone present to share them with. I spent a ton of time alone during my teens (due to a whole bunch of weird, vaguely abuse-related circumstances) and I spent every minute of them pining for company. I wrote poems and songs and stories and filled sketchbooks, all in a desperate hope that I could someday share my experience with someone else.
This year, I've been coming to terms with how valid both of these methods of cope are. I admire her for her self-reliance, and I'm proud of my ability to make lemonade out of isolation.
posted by es_de_bah at 4:39 PM on November 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
This year, I've been coming to terms with how valid both of these methods of cope are. I admire her for her self-reliance, and I'm proud of my ability to make lemonade out of isolation.
posted by es_de_bah at 4:39 PM on November 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
> And once you've wrapped up that debate and firmly settled on what information and communication actually mean, beginning the long work of weaving your million threads back together in partnership with the universe.
> It's not that the infinite distance between yourself and other people can't be managed, it's just that trying to fill it with people isn't going to work.
fwiw...
A Cursed Blessing - "Søren Kierkegaard's theory of despair."*
> It's not that the infinite distance between yourself and other people can't be managed, it's just that trying to fill it with people isn't going to work.
fwiw...
A Cursed Blessing - "Søren Kierkegaard's theory of despair."*
You’ve probably had the experience—perhaps while listening to music, seeing an old friend, or walking in nature—of feeling as though you’ve reconnected with some deep part of yourself. These moments might not be outwardly dramatic, but inwardly they feel significant, even profound. They remind you that, for some time, an important part of yourself had gone missing, and you’d forgotten that it even existed. “The greatest danger, that of losing one’s self, can occur so quietly that it is as if it were nothing at all,” wrote Søren Kierkegaard. “Every other loss—an arm, a leg, five rixdollars, a spouse, etc.—is noticed, however.”posted by kliuless at 3:16 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Kierkegaard called this loss of the self “despair”: a spiritual sickness that, he believed, afflicts us all. The way he describes it, despair sounds like bad news, and in a way it is. Yet for Kierkegaard, despair reveals the spiritual reality of our being. It is a sign that we are more than just bodies, thoughts, and emotions—since all these things were still there after we’d lost touch with our deeper, truer self...
Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair rests on the distinction between a human being and a self. A human being, he explains, is a synthesis of opposites: “of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.” But this he continues, “is not yet a self.” To be a self, a human being—who is already a composite of relations—must develop a relationship to itself. This involves both consciousness and desire. Relating to ourselves means being aware (or unaware) of ourselves and wanting (or not wanting) to be ourselves. It also means recognizing that we did not cause or create ourselves. We are brought into being and sustained in existence by something other than ourselves—and this “something other,” at least in Kierkegaard’s view, is God...
For Kierkegaard, people who fall into despair are spiritually disconnected from themselves: There is nothing in their lives that holds together that entire composite of relations that makes them who they are. Though he was writing in a Protestant culture, there is nothing specifically Christian, or even biblical, about this notion of godly connection and disconnection. For Kierkegaard, being a self means needing and longing to find yourself, to become yourself—and this means reaching out, across the abyss, in search of God. That search, even in a secular sense, is potent. “God” may mean many different things, even if it only names a mystery, and in Kierkegaard’s work, this concept is seldom nailed down...
Especially compelling is his diagnosis of the different forms of despair that arise from an imbalance between the various pairs that make up the human synthesis (those first folds in our sheets of paper). Too much necessity, and we lose all imagination and hope—we cannot breathe; too much possibility, and we float airily, ineffectually, above our own lives. Too much finitude, and we lose ourselves in trivial things; too much infinitude, and we’re disconnected from the world. Since life is so rarely in balance, despair is the inevitable state—but understanding this, for Kierkegaard, opens up a renewed perspective on how to live with this inevitability.[1,2]
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posted by waving at 3:56 AM on November 25, 2023 [4 favorites]