So hold on here we go
Hold on to nothin’ we know.
I feel so lonely
Way up here.
—Roy Orbison and Joe Melson, “Only the Lonely”
It’s one of the sublime paradoxes of our wonderful technical age—which neither you nor I are going to forsake anytime soon—that as we become more one with everyone we are also becoming more alone than ever.
While we are connected to virtually the entire world, and profess to have thousands of Facebook “friends” and Twitter “followers,” so many of us instinctively feel we are missing something.
Two-fifths of American adults now say they are lonely.
Not surprisingly, those numbers increase among persons in the categories “unmarried” and “uncommitted.”
One fourth of Americans now live alone.
Those groups are growing as others are shrinking. Only about half of Americans are married now.
In the 1980s, on average, Americans said they had between three and four “close friends.” Today that number is just over one.
To fill the void many of us turn to online relationships. Not necessarily to meet someone “for real,” but just to have some interaction with another human being.
I’ve known people—some deeply wounded, some simply by choice—who prefer those cyber relationships, use them as substitutes for the chance-taking that always comes with the real thing.
And I’m not talking just romantic relationships. Years ago I knew someone, not from Rockdale, who had a “cyber mother and father” online several states away and referred to them as “Mom and Dad.”
Sad thing is, this individual had an actual mother and father and lived under the same roof with them.
One writer noted many of us live “Spotify lives,” picking and choosing from an endless buffet of online choices. We can communicate only with whom we want, shut out anything which may not fit into our universe.
Of course we may never be challenged, may not get the highs and lows which are part of life, and we may feel like we are missing something important.
There’s a word for that. It’s called loneliness.
It’s not just the Milennial generation, and here I must brag on a young man of whom I am exceedingly proud. He’s my son.
About a decade ago, a college boy needing a job, Mark briefly was one of those much-hated phone telemarketers. He didn’t sell anything; he was doing marketing surveys.
He got some abuse and hangups, of course, but found most people to be decent and polite even if they didn’t take his survey.
Then there was the night he found an elderly lady on the phone. “She answered my survey,” he said. “Then she just started visiting. After awhile I could tell she just wanted to talk to someone, anyone. She was lonely. I don’t think she had anyone to talk to except me.”
I told him I hoped he talked to her all night.
“I didn’t make my quota that shift,” he said.
Told you I was proud of him.
Sometimes something so profound is really that simple. We need each other. That’s the way we are—to use a word I don’t like—programmed.
We need our phones, tablets, computers, widgets, too. Just try living without them in 2018.
But every once in a while we need to look up, take a deep breath.
And make eye contact with a fellow human being.
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