If we’re going to become a less lonely society, we need to take advantage of opportunities to gather together. It’s that simple. It’s also becoming more challenging to do as we hide behind social media and news media, more interested in keeping us afraid of “others” so that we will continue to give them our attention.
We talk about loneliness as a mental health issue often. We complain about the lack of third spaces in society. We complain about how people don’t reach out anymore. What we likely don’t talk enough about is how volunteering to help other people is an antidote to all of that.
It doesn’t sound like much. At the same time, we see so little of this in our daily interactions that it doesn’t take much to stand out as a good partner, friend, or boss. The bar is not set very high, but it does require sitting still with someone and focusing on them for that time.
How often can most of us say we do that?
Is it any wonder we have such a problem with loneliness?
The same thing is true of adults, and this is why the lack of places where we can talk about difficult things without someone threatening to “ban” sites is also dangerous. We are cutting off the community that so many people desperately need.
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It’s no wonder that I felt alone. I was alone. I was also lucky in finding someone else who was willing to tell their secret in my 20s. Most survivors remain alone with their trauma for decades. Even when they go about their lives, marry, have families, etc., they live alone in their trauma. Others tried to tell someone and weren’t believed, which is a level of being alone that I cannot imagine.
