“We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.” — Albert Schweitzer

(Before we get started, I wanted to put a warning that I am not a professional. I am just a mom with a lot of thoughts that I have to get out. My intent is to open discussion and give my opinion, and that’s it.)

I am naturally an overzealous person. I went into this topic thinking that I knew the exact direction that I wanted to go. After all, I’ve lived it. I watch so many people in my life be consumed by it. But as life so often likes to remind me, I was humbled. My straightforward pursuit of trying to understand the emotion of our modern-day generation turned into something else. Patterns started to emerge. Two threads woven into the fabric of our society. Often overlooked but carrying more weight than we think.

The desire of the human heart is connection. Our history being the ultimate display of our affections, taking its shape in art and all its forms. Yet, it’s always the first thing exploited. As quickly as these fiery hot passionate feelings come, they can just as quickly turn into feelings of desperate bitterness that would rival Greek tragedies.

As we have evolved, we birthed and improved our sciences. It wasn’t until recently that we started keeping track of things like mental health, let alone the statistics pertaining to it. Our human biases have gotten in the way of even investigating within certain demographics. Missing whole populations. So it can be easy for us to say now that we are lonelier than we have ever been. But there’s no actual definite answer of that. And from personal experience, I have found that when someone doesn’t have the emotional wherewithal to navigate complex emotions, they’re not always able to identify what they’re feeling. In other words, you can ask someone if they’re lonely, but if they don’t understand the gravity of that word or have a completely different interpretation, then of course they’re going to have a different answer. Now, I wanna be careful not to disregard people’s feelings. They are still being felt. And there’s definitely something to be said about that.

It seems strange to be talking about the topic of loneliness during the times of technology. We are more technologically advanced than we have ever been in human history. We are more connected than we have ever been. Everything is connected, but with that we are exposed to the whole rest of the world, like anything that can be both beautiful and ugly because we don’t know how to navigate it. Oceans are no longer dividing us. We can simply just pick up our phones, hop on one of the thousands of social media sites, and speak to someone thousands of miles away. But at the same time, we have managed to create a subculture of people that are so lonely they are screaming for help. And although with this blog I am primarily talking about Americans, I do see the impacts of this throughout the rest of the world.

The weight of social media plays a huge role in our societal structures and standards. Our consumption of news reinforces that. With all new things, there is a whole new way of learning. And I think it’s fair to say we have not reinforced the idea of media literacy. The effects of that are seen right here in these very online spaces, right in front of us, but we choose to look away. The powerful exploiting our desire for stability. Curating the perfect storm of chaotic madness, all while benefiting.

There’s only so much that we can blame on others. Although society is being exploited, we also have accountability. It’s rooted in how we raise our children, how we see ourselves, and the societal expectations that we have placed on them and us. We have stopped wanting better for our kids and for our neighbor and instead we have traded that for wanting to see people suffer worse than the way we have. We see reflections of this in our gender expectations. We have told women that they are the scapegoats to everyone’s emotions, but we have infantilized them. We have unfairly created a world where men are equal parts, unaccountable, and accountable. Not allowing spaces for them to even remotely begin to process their feelings, and then telling them they’re no better than the work they can provide. We have created a space where neither group knows how to emotionally regulate instead opting to pointing their fingers at the other. And this isn’t the only facet in society that we see this.

At the end of the day, most of us are just trying to do our best, with the tools that life gave us. Somewhere along the way, we have stopped allowing ourselves room to grow and are just angry at each other. That anger allows room for people to exploit us. My hope is that there can be healing and forgiveness within our society, not to make excuses, but enough to allow grace so we can truly bring progress to the table.

Yours,

Shay

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