What if Loneliness is Good

on my bad days

the loneliness feels physical those are

the words of jan ford

a 40 year old clerical assistant who

celebrated her 40th birthday

alone in her part in her apartment

she’d been recently interviewed by the

guardian

about the impact of loneliness for those

people in lockdown living alone

she told the newspaper that she’d never

had much previous experience of

loneliness

but now she feels it drilling into her

bones

on her bad days she said that she can

barely open a can of beans

because she feels all her energy is

already consumed by just getting by

jan is one of thousands of people who

have been quoted

in the articles about loneliness in

lockdown

about the the dramatic physical and

mental

downturn in the effects of it

but as a result we are being sold an

alarming

narrative by the media that there is

an epidemic a virus a silent killer in

our midst

that is more powerful and can kill more

people than covet 19.

the former u.s surgeon general vivec

murphy famously said that the most

common illness that he saw in his years

of service

was not heart disease or diabetes it was

loneliness

mother teresa she described loneliness

as the greatest poverty

the leprosy of the modern world

as humans our connections enable us to

survive and thrive

and the most deepest human desire is to

belong

there’s something deeply ingrained in

all of us that wants to have a shared

identity whether that’s our shared

identity of our nationality

our religious beliefs our race and

ethnicity or our interests

think for example how many of us love to

go abroad

to get away from it all and yet we

frequent our irish pub

or we start up a conversation with total

strangers as soon as we hear

the local accent think of

people in sport the football fans how

they love to express their shared

identity by wearing the their team’s

shirt did you know that um man united

sold three and a quarter million jerseys

in the year

2018-19 the top team in the world

often we just follow the habits of our

ancestors

um without knowing without thinking

without

questioning but there’s definitely

something deeply involved in us that

wants to belong

and wants to have a common identity with

other people

now covet social distancing and lockdown

has really threatened our ability to

connect

and it has upset our social norm

our contact with friends and family um

work colleagues even strangers

has all been upset you know think

think back to your joyous moments um

the heavy experiences of going to

sporting events

concerts music festivals the theater

that can no longer happen think back to

happy birthday

that used to mean that you were at a

birthday party not starting alone

washing your hands

and even the absence of doing things for

stopping for a cup of coffee well start

shopping

or going into a cafe to work on your on

your pc

among strangers even that you know it

made us feel part of something

bigger than ourselves so totally out of

the blue

now we are feeling like jan ford and we

are experiencing our first taste of

loneliness

a better most unexpected and unwanted

side effect of the coronavirus pandemic

but what is meant by this word

loneliness

before 1830 loneliness and lonely were

rarely appeared in writing in 1674 the

naturalist john ray compiled a glossary

of infrequently used words

and he listed loneliness in that list

he deter he defined it as a term that

simply meant

places and people far from neighbors

around 1830 the time of the industrial

revolution

there was a dramatic shift in language

and loneliness started to be

regularly portrayed as a negative state

of being

and by 1860 we were all introduced to

probably the most

famous lonely character

the doomed spinster in charles dickens

books the great

expectations after that there were many

other lonely characters

including mark david caulfield he was

the lead

character in j d salinger’s book the the

catcher in the rye

he was blamed for inciting assassins

including

mark david chapman who shot john lennon

and he was found at the scene of his

arrest reading from the book

fiction are lonely characters but there

is nothing fictional about loneliness

the facts are that more than three and

five americans

are lonely according to a survey by

cigna insurers

and whilst we often associate loneliness

with old age

a yougov survey revealed that

millennials

that is the social media generation are

in fact the one that feels the most

lonely

with one in three saying that they are

often are always lonely

the office of national statistics in may

2020

revealed that five percent of the

british residents

uh 2.6 million people were chronically

lonely

shockingly in november 20 that figure

has

risen to 8 4.2 million

communities have changed gone in the

days

of nipping around to the neighbor to

borrow a cup of sugar

and i can fondly remember the open doors

in our neighborhood

people would just call in uninvited

unannounced and they were always

welcomed with the cup of tea and the

homemade

bread we used to call it tequila

it’s a commonly known irish term

but sadly today 73 percent of

of uk residents don’t know their

neighbors names

but enough doom and gloom the theme

today of

tedx cookstown is what if

so what if loneliness was good

pre-1800 when people were described as

lone as lonely

it simply meant that they were in a

state of loneliness and solitude from

the latin word

solace meaning alone being lonely did

not imply

any emotional lack in fact it was a

positive word

a time when people could reflect and

discover who they really were

it had holy connotations jesus was often

lonely and contemplative

and solitude was often associated with

intellectual breakthroughs

and great moments of creativity in 1606

shakespeare was actually in quarantine

from the bubonic plague

and at the time where just like now all

the theaters were closed

and he wrote three of his greatest works

king lear

macbeth and anthony and cleopatra

in 1687 newton sat lonely under a tree

and he discovered gravity in 1804

wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud

resulting in his best known work

and in 1928 alexander fleming the lonely

researcher discovered penicillin

and changed the course of medicine

in september 2019 before covert was born

the historian doctor find bind alberte

dr faye bind alberti she published a

biography of loneliness

the history of an emotion she says we

tend to think of lonely people just

needing and waiting for others to reach

out and to help and support them and to

make them feel less lonely

but she does say that this is an

injustice to the different types of

emotions involved

loneliness is complex some people feel

lonely

despite being surrounded by extensive

networks and others may not

even if they live alone often

people often lonely people don’t

necessarily want

company and even those that do they

certainly don’t want just anybody

having owned a matchmaking company i can

certainly vouch for that

many people simply like being alone

using the time to be creative where to

study

and i’m sure there are so many others

like me who some days

just want to run away to be on my own

whilst i in no way wish to belittle

anyone suffering from chronic loneliness

i firmly believe that in this age of

covert

the last thing that people need to be

told

is that being alone means that they are

in danger

of falling victim to another epidemic

reading and hearing continuous negative

narrative about loneliness

drills into the mind and if it isn’t

halted

will become a self-fulfilling prophecy

we at circuit breaker lockdowns we now

need circuit breakers and loneliness

we need investment in new education

to raise awareness and understanding of

the positive power of the mind

how to apply that science and to disrupt

and counteract negativity

something that we were never taught in

schools

most importantly the media must stop

this overwhelming barrage of negative

language and loneliness

which serves no purpose whatsoever other

than to increase

people’s anxiety and their feelings of

helplessness

conditioning them into depression

instead the media must help to influence

people to embrace the idea

that this is a rare opportunity to be

alone in the positive sense of the word

just like the pre-1800s as mandy hill

said

a season of loneliness and isolation is

when the caterpillar gets its wings

it will take time i personally can say

that as a former bank manager i

discovered that i was institutionalized

over those 35 years

i never even realized that i was

creative

it took a while to uncover it and

unearth it

and decide to go self-employed to

utilize my

innate ability to connect people

during lock time lockdown i2 had time to

sit

in lonely contemplation to contemplate

loneliness

and i wondered how can we keep connected

whilst being apart

what if this period of solitude was an

opportunity to do things differently

and transform the way we deliver

connectiveness forever

what if people from across the world

could come together to share interests

learn new things or simply to be

entertained

what if loneliness could be tackled

and we could provide a support structure

and a sense of belonging

for people like jan ford

whilst i continue to further develop my

ideas to bring the answers to these

questions to life

much more needs to be done to change

societal attitudes and perceptions of

loneliness

people fearing for their jobs and

families

businesses facing closure people without

internet

access children going without subsidised

meals during school holidays

should be regarded as a truly lonely

the world’s governments need a period of

lonely contemplation

to restore their 2020 vision and

foresight

the best thing that could come out of

lockdown would be the total

re-evaluation

and recreation of how our society is

structured

what if what if this were to happen

it would make loneliness a force for

good