The foundation of loneliness in modern life
People are often speaking about the loneliness epidemic—especially the male loneliness epidemic.
It’s a real and tragic phenomenon, due to the foundation of disconnection so common to modern life. It’s even been baked right into our city planning, as well as exacerbated by the increasingly heavy addiction to an online world in the wake of the shut downs of 2020.
But although there are many apparent causes of such a phenomenon, the ultimate reality is that loneliness is our own doing, in and through the choices we make every single day.
I’m not going to pretend it’s an easy solution, or that most of us are particularly heroic. It isn’t and we are, on the whole, not.
Human beings function largely according the environment they find themselves in and respond to whatever is normative. Thus, the environments we co-create or, as it seems to be increasingly more, have thrust upon us from higher powers we have no access to, to a high degree dictate our experience of life. We are creatures of habit, of instinct, of influencing and being influenced.
On top of this, some things cannot be changed by our immediate noticing of them, regardless of how accurately we diagnose the problem. Most things are beyond us to affect in a meaningful way.
Thus, if our environment dictates a lonely existence—which on the whole it certainly does—then we will drift ever more to that lonely existence.
The slow drift into isolation
And so the best strategy is to own the reality, no matter how bleak, that modern life ushers us into our little lonely silos to separate us from each other, and that unchecked, loneliness will certainly be our portion.
And then, from that starting point, with all of our summoned heroism and agency, choose to respond.
We are lonely, in the end, because we choose to be.
The answers, fortunately, are somewhat simple.
Rather than striving to have great designs and grand plans, most of human life happens in the smaller, regular cadences: things like Tuesday morning coffee, or Friday night Bible study, or the friend we go for walks with on Sunday afternoons.
It looks like having a regular games night at the parish, or getting together to recite poems and sing songs by a campfire or in a squished living room over warm tea. It looks like meeting at the beach to stare at the waves.
Why convenience leaves us lonely
It also happens only in and through inconvenience. People are wonderful, and they are our antidote to loneliness, but they also constantly cause us inconvenience. Planning get togethers takes time and attention. Driving to meet people is time and expense. Getting off our phones and leaving our homes can feel taxing when we are in the habit of spending our time alone.
Modern life has slowly conditioned us to prize this convenience over everything, but it’s a foolish way of perceiving people and all of reality. Nothing extremely convenient is all that rewarding, and things that take something from us often provide us with meaning, purpose, and joy in return.
I am preaching to myself as much as anyone: we all have these ever-deepening patterns of self-focus and convenience in a time of immediate gratification at our fingertips—worlds of everything we could ever be curious about or want to see. We can play a podcast to simulate the intimacy of a familiar human voice. We can, quite easily, live out our entire lives hidden away from the earthy reality of other people.
And this will be a very dark destiny, whose ultimate essence is that of deep, crushing loneliness.
Rebuilding connection through ordinary life
The beautiful thing, however, is that it doesn’t take much to rectify—not much inconvenience, really at all. Small steps out break the spell and remind us who we really are: flesh and blood creatures with emotional, spiritual, communal needs to survive and flourish.
So call the friend today. Rebuild the world, and our own inner cry for company, with stitches of love.
KAY CLARITY ARCHIVE 