Hey guys, I'm going to get straight to the point here.
I know this is a difficult time for a lot of people right now,
for a variety of different reasons.
That feels like an obvious thing to say but what is a lot less obvious
is how to deal with all of it.
I've been struggling with feelings of loneliness, in the last week in particular.
It's hiting me a lot harder than I was expecting and that is not at all meant to alarm anybody.
I'm going to be completely fine. But, I think we should be taking this really seriously.
And, it's not the kind of thing that just goes away if you ignore it.
And so, I can imagine there a lot of people all around the world now going through a lot of similar feelings.
Now, the tricky thing about this is that it's deeply complex and it looks a little bit different for a lot of us.
I've also been hesitant to talk about this because I feel and know that I've been very fortunate
and have led a very privledged life. And so, you know, what right do I have to say anything on this topic.
How much does my pain even matter when there are people out there that can't even eat.
But that, in many ways, is precisely the problem.
We haven't given ourselves the permission to openly talk about this very grey subject.
And despite having a name for it, right, we have a name to describe this feeling, we don't have much vocabulary to actually talk about it.
I'm going to be speaking about my own experiences and thoughts on all of this, which is the only thing I can directly draw from.
However, precisely for that reason
I'm also looking to get in touch with experts who can provide valuable insights on this subject.
That is going to take some time to coordinate, so I'm asking for your patience on that.
But, I think it's exciting because
I think it's really important to include that.
To try and explore this as it should be explored.
Sometimes, it is very diffucult for me to make sense of what feels like waves of emotions
that are pulling me further and further off shore.
But, at the end of the day, you have to try anyway.
For so much of the last few years I've been sprinting.
I've been so incredibly focused on figuring out who I am
and building things that,
without meaning to,
I think I've sometimes closed myself off from the vulnerabilities and messiness of relationships with other people.
This isn't something that I've explicitly chosen
it's just a recurring pattern that I've noticed.
So, it feels like it's happening by itself.
By inertia.
I've been focused on sorting myself out, on my career, on achieving my goals.
I thought I had my priorities crystal clear.
And now, with everything going on around the world, I've been thinking a lot about my life decisions.
To relationships in my life:
the world isn't ending but the speed at which certain things can end has never been more visible to me.
And I'm asking myself: have I been chasing the right things?
The way I see loneliness is almost like two entirely seperate things:
There is the idea of loneliness, which we all are familiar with because you understand what I'm saying when I say the word,
you know, you understand the concept.
And then, there's the experience of loneliness, which makes you feel like an alien in a human costume.
To even say that I feel lonely sometimes, as we all do on occasion, feels like admitting to a major weakness.
Even mentioning it implies failure.
You know, like there's something wrong with me.
I wonder if that comes from an idea that I have in my head that a true man
or a true woman is always strong and independent.
I've always told myself that I don't need anybody else, you know,
I don't wait for others to chase down my objectives.
And I take pride in that, I take pride in my accomplishments.
I can fend for myself and take care of myself.
But how true is that really?
Can I really cal myself a self-made man?
I would be nothing without the love and guidance that I received and continue to receive
from the people in my life.
My family, my peers.
You know, the support that I receive online.
I've been insanely lucky in so many ways and
without all that good fortune it's hard to say
that I woudn't have gone down a very different path.
If there is anything that has become clear as day to me over the course of my life
it is that I rely on other people for
basically everything.
And always will.
I remember seeing somewhere on the Internet that life isn't a sprint and it's not even a marathon.
It's a relay race.
And so, I feel guilty for saying these things because there are times that I feel like I can't accept other's love.
They don't understand these feelings of loneliness
and I'm not sure what's wrong with me.
When I moved to Mexico last year,
it felt like the beginning of a new phase in my life.
It was the first time that I was truly on my own, which was incredibly exciting and scary in some ways too.
One thing that I often tell myself is that a spiritual journey, which is simply a journey to learning about yourself,
is going to have lonely moments.
This is the price to pay for
exploring and questioning things that most people are too afraid to explore and question.
I tell myself that when I'm feeling will not and cannot last forever.
And that if I'm feeling this then this too must be a part of the human experience.
And is therefore worthy of the same curiosity and intention that I give to everything else.
So, I try not to run from it.
Which is easier said than done.
This is an invisible kind of pain that
is hard to even locate.
I tell myself I cannot find fullfillment and happiness in other things or in other people.
Which is something that I truly believe.
That can be a dangerous road to go down but it doesn't change the fact that
human life is fundamentaly meant to be shared in many ways.
The things is, relationships are messy.
Human beings are often unreliable or irrational.
Or flawed.
Deeply flawed.
And I belong very firmly in that category.
For all my efforts in self improvement and achieving my potential
I'm not sure I'm any more rational than I was before.
I have a part to play in all of this with my insecurities and my fears.
I think often times I'm the one obstructing the human connections that I so desire.
Something that I've learned that further complicates all of this is that loneliness doesn't just go away
by spending time with other people.
The feeling of loneliness always springs up in me almost as a consequence of feeling misunderstood.
Or when I'm seeking a specific kind of connection that I cannot have either physically or emotionally.
I certainly felt lonelier during periods like when I was in high school
than, more recently, I suppose, in life when I've had the opportunity to spend time with less people,
but
more of the right people, if that makes sense.
The tricky thing about travelling is that
you can very easily end up thousands of miles away from
your friends, from the people that you've built conncetions with.
I thought simply moving to a new place and staying put here in France
was going to solve my problems.
This way I can finally see the same people on a weekly basis.
I can create that sense of community.
That I was convinced that this was the solution. This was
going to solve this loneliness problem.
I suppose Mother Nature had
different plans.
But interestingly during this period of being,
spending so much time by myself
it has made me realise a couple of things.
It doesn't matter where I am.
If I don't figure out how to be more vulnerable and not give up on people
I'm never going to solve this problem for myself.
Yeah, okay, video-calling has its issues.
It doesn't even come close to spending time with people in person in my opinion.
But in a weird way it has put me in closer contact with
people in my life that I thought I didn't have time to talk to.
People that I think, I don't know, I took for granted or didn't consider.
But now they are back in my life.
'It's one of the paradoxes of the human condition -
we ask some variation of the question 'How are you feeling?' over and over,
which would lead one to assume that we attach some importance to it.
And yet we never expect or desire - or provide - an honest answer.'
That's a quote from Marc Brackett,
a professor at Yale that I recently got from a podcast that I'll link to down below.
It makes me laugh, our obsession with productivity and economic growth and our ideas around progress.
You know, do not give us the space for complicated things like emotions, which quite frankly, can seem like
a complete waste of time.
At the end of the day though,
we're not machines and your morning routine isn't a personality trait.
We've taken the tools and techniques that were meant to give us more time and space in our lives for the important stuff
and ended up
filling all of our time and space with those tools and techniques.
I'm not an expert on any of this so this is pure speculation
but I do wonder if our mental health challenges that we now face are a result of our priorities as a society and that includes everybody.
If anything, and this is the optimistic part of me coming out here, I have
high hopes that the shock of this year to all of us has the potential to wake us up to the value
of the connection in all of our lives, which is something I all to often take for granted.
It's certainly waking me up to the
effort and energy that I need to commit to this.
Because if not there are consequences.
And as for whenever we return to some level of normal, whatever that may look like,
whenever we can move freely again outside,
I hope I can translate the things that I'm feeling right now
into being more present to all the people that I cross paths with.