Epidemic of Loneliness: It gnaws at us when connections fail.
It is what we say we value more than anything else. In surveys to determine the factors that contribute most to human happiness, respondents consistently rate connection to friends and family—love, intimacy, social affiliation—above wealth or fame, even above physical health.
This should come as no great surprise. We are social animals, descended from a common ancestor that gave rise to all the other social primates. It may well be that the need to send and receive, interpret and relay increasingly complex social cues is what drove the evolution of our expanded cerebral cortex—the reasoning part of the brain. After all, it is our ability to think, to pursue long-term objectives, and to form bonds and act collectively that allowed us to emerge as the planet’s dominant species. Certainly, there is no other physical attribute—size, strength, speed, eyesight, smell, hearing—that accounts for our success.
Despite their genuine, human desire to connect, millions of people are predisposed to undermine social connection. Despite their best efforts, they alienate rather than engage others. And yet these people are no more or less attractive than anyone else, and their problem is not lack of social skill.
Obviously, objective circumstances—the new kid at school who doesn’t know anyone, the elderly widow who has outlived her contemporaries—can make meaningful connection more of a challenge.
And yet it is possible, for instance, to be miserably lonely inside a marriage, a situation that resonates in fiction from Flaubert to Jackie Collins.
It is possible—in fact, it is highly likely—to feel lonely in a bustling corporate office. Talent, financial success, fame, even adoration, offers no protection from the subjective experience. Janis Joplin, who was as shy and withdrawn off stage as she was raucous and explosive on, said shortly before her death that she was working on a tune called, “I just made love to 25,000 people, but I’m going home alone.” Three of the most idolized women of the twentieth century, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana, were famously lonely people. And yet a fourth, Gretta Garbo, was famous for saying “I vant to be alone.” Which serves to remind us that there is nothing inherently problematic about solitude in and of itself. Loneliness isn’t about being alone, it’s about not feeling connected.