Am I the Loner in This Country of Lonely?
I suffer from this syndrome called “Out of sight, out of mind”. I didn’t realize this until a few years back when I came to America. I grew up as a single child in a nuclear family in a city where my father worked, away from my relatives. However, I never felt especially lonely – in my school and undergrad I had friends, and while working in Bangalore I had friends from my undergrad.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when I moved to the US, I realized that it takes me time to connect, and in prolonged solitude I suffer and long for human contact too. I think I knew this before, but what changed is how much more time and effort it takes to make friends as an adult, especially in an individualistic society. I get so frustrated at being lonely, and angry at people who could perhaps pay me a visit or give me a call, hypocritically, of course.
To state the corollary to the Golden Rule - since you do to others what others do to you, others do to you what you do to them. And if people are out of sight, they go out of my mind; so when I go out of sight of people, I also go out of their minds. And this vicious cycle makes me ever so lonely. I do understand that people get busier with work, family, responsibility, ambition. And that stands true for me as well. Hence, matching plans and schedules gets harder. But this rational understanding doesn’t make that longing go away.
I think somehow my mother understands this and calls me twice a day, maybe so that I don’t forget her. But on the other hand, maybe that kind of attention is what induced this behavior in me in the first place. I can entertain myself and be self-amused. But lately there is this everlasting longing to have human contact. I didn’t ask for it, and it is quite inconvenient and irritating to be sad. And the way I seem to cope with it is to get busier with work, adding a new dimension to this vicious cycle.
Another dimension perhaps was added by the ways we learned to live during the pandemic. On one hand, you can work from the comfort of your home; on the other, there is no one to talk to at the office, over that coffee break or that lunch. Even when you are in person, and you see your fellow intern walk to the table you are sitting, they take out their headphones and start listening to their audiobook, as you read your own book in silence. You see your undergrad batchmates coming your way, and you are waiting to make eye contact, and then comes out their phone and you cross paths without any contact.
The fascinating consequence is that you start valuing small gestures of kindness from strangers so much more than ever before – like that Airbnb host who offers you fruit or a late-night dinner, or that lady who pays for your ice cream, or that girl who shows you the path in that strange city where you were lost in. And also from people you know who break the vicious cycle for you – like that friend who checks on you to see if you are doing fine, or that long-lost school buddy who takes you on a hike, or your advisor who drives down to meet you. This is what makes me hopeful, that I can break out of this cycle, and all I need is a step towards another human.