It is astoundingly easy to go days without any human contact. Social isolation is not just for the recluse holed up in their room and using apps to get food and supplies delivered. Almost anyone can be socially isolated since human contact is no longer required while in a presence of other humans -- grabbing a morning coffee, attending a work meeting, watching a movie, or going to the gym (or so I hear). Without intention, human to human interactions can be absent of any real human connection.
As a kid, isolation wasn't an option for me. Even though I was perfectly content playing alone in my room all day, at some point I would be jolted out of the world inside my head when I'd be summoned for meals, to finish chores, or to head to bed. As a grown up living away from my family and working from home in a metropolitan city, I can easily go weeks without interacting with a real life human in real time.
As an experienced introvert, socializing with humans can be very overwhelming and soul draining. It's easy to avoid the discomfort and torture of pleasantries and small talk. For much of my life I believed that introversion is the reason why I can't be around many people for very long. It was preposterous to imagine that social isolation could be a choice.
Humans are creative. And as a human, I can attest that I can pretty much always think of a reason why I should or shouldn't do something. Being sure that my perspective is correct, I'll dig in my heels and gaslight myself until the thing that I believe becomes the undeniable truth. And when my choices and thinking are challenged, I will look incredulously at my accusers and in my most earnest voice say, "you don't know what it's like to be me".
And I'd be right. Technically speaking, no one knows what it's like to be any of us. Our stories and our experiences are unique to us and literally no one else can fully understand all the layers and nuances of who we are and what it's like to be us. But does that mean that no one can relate to us at all?
The feeling of injustice, pain, frustration, stress, and every other feeling word became words we know because we all know that feeling. We're less alone than we think and more people get what we're going through than we think.
More often than I'd like to admit, I feel tremendously alone. Especially when I'm not at my most healthy, I sink into the sinkhole of loneliness (or to those who grew up with The Looney Tunes, the "quicksand" of loneliness). The further I am pulled in, the more isolated I feel and the more I try to fight the current, the stronger the pull. It feels like everyone else is hanging out with everyone else and I'm the one person getting left out. I feel rejected and unwanted and in the scary times, I wonder if I actually exist. And when I finally find the wherewithal to reach out and text a few friends, every second before the respond feels like more and more of an indictment on my personhood.
Yes, I'm being a bit silly for dramatic effect, but the feeling of loneliness isn't that far off. Sometimes I don't notice the gravity of what I'm feeling because my default action has historically been to numb the feeling with food, tv, business, sleep or scrolling. But during Valentine's season, loneliness awareness becomes hard to ignore both in myself and in the people around me.
Every now and then, I feel compelled to do something about it and find ways to help people connect and feel seen. I wish I had the same gumption to help myself connect, but some times it's easier to be bold and barrel out of complacency when we're helping people we care about.
I ask you please, do not leave reading this with the message that making the effort to reach out and be a friend to others will gain you friends and free you from your loneliness. Being intentional with others doesn't solve your loneliness, but it does force you to spend less time thinking about yourself and staying stuck.
Being a friend to others and genuinely caring about adding value to their life can be immensely lonely. But despite the challenge, I've found a surprising amount of energy to keep going because what drives me is that I can not live with myself if I continue to be part of the problem.
When I'm too scared to say, "hello," to a fellow human, compliment their outfit, ask for their Instagram, or to send a text to them that I was thinking of them, I am making myself more and more isolated and rejecting so many beautiful opportunities to fight this epidemic of loneliness and social isolation all around me.
When I see people questioning if they matter and if anyone cares about them, a fervor to do something about it rushes through me. The more I submit to that fervor, the less I think about myself and the less I feel alone. Even though I fail a lot and let myself be ruled by fear, the more I push past that fear and take courage, the less scary it is to connect and the less and less energy it takes to be intentional with the people around me.
For the past year, I've been trying to create more opportunities to connect with others throughout the day by looking at them, asking their names, and finding something to say or ask that isn't completely creepy. Have you ever been in a long line and the stranger next to you randomly starts a conversation? I used to hate that, but now I'm that random stranger.
I've experienced the most rejection I have ever experienced in my life when I started on this journey add more connection into the world, but I've also experienced the most beautiful moments of acceptance and had the most beautiful conversations with the most beautiful humans. People have not been the judgmental tyrants I had imagined, but instead, they have been tremendously kind and utterly fascinating.
Don't get me wrong, it'd still be a lot easier to go days without human contact, but I'm not sure I can do easy anymore. Can you?