What is LONELINESS? It is not about being on your own.

Add a Comment

Comment by Catherine Mascrès on May 9, 2009 at 3:47pm

I thank you for your post, eventhough you made a link which I had not really seen. Loneliness to me has nothing much to do with having lack of confidence or having nothing to say in society. I like being alone. It is anyway, never alone, there is always a bird singing, a plant growing or a child passing by. It is time to think, to gather strength, to make art, to communicate in different ways. In other terms, being alone, I'm not lonely. I'm lonely when I am misunderstood. I'm lonely when the child I breastfed for three years and eight months is not able to share with me. I'm lonely when the one I breastfed for two years and eight months, takes the car keys from my pocket, and goes and crash himself on a wall...then I am lonely...and I would rather be alone.

Comment by J William (Bill) Moore on May 9, 2009 at 3:43pm

Lovely post! As it is now proven that we can reprogram our brain and enjoy life in the the present moment with no fear, no pain, no stress (and no loneliness) I'd say to everyone follow these great tips and keep learning more... good place is www.HeartMath.org and John Assaraf's 'Having It All'! Smiles, love and best wishes, Bill

Comment by Pena Gheorghe on May 9, 2009 at 3:40pm

ORAŞUL MEU

Oraşul meu
e aşezat pe glie,
cu Câlniştea mea
arătoasă;

minunea Oraşului
e vrednicie,
în sufletul meu
cu poezie.

Oamenii toţi,
întineresc în veşnicie,
cu cerul pe umeri
şi viaţa duioasă;

Oraşul meu
e aşezat pe glie,
cu Câlniştea mea
frumoasă.

George PENA

Comment by Robert Sloan on May 9, 2009 at 3:11pm

Loneliness and Solitude are two different things.

If you are afraid to be alone, then there may be deeper problems than loneliness. There may be something about yourself that you don't want to accept. One of the bitterest cruel social realities is that bigotry can be internalized.

I know it took a lot, it took years to be comfortable with the fact that I'm a disabled man and never can just "take a few months and put myself in shape" to become athletic or even abled. Breaking that denial hurt a lot.

Solitude is enjoyable, it's a relief from the press of people pushing you this way and that. Every one of them has their own idea on how you should spend your time. You can't turn your life into a democracy and follow the will of the masses and have anything left for yourself -- you will be run so ragged that even if you had an athlete's constitution, you'd never get any sleep. Someone always wants your time and commitment.

People-pleasing, not deciding alone who you are and what you want, always going along with what others pressure you into, is a road to ruin that's very common for people who had to grow up with a drunk or addict. Or a codependent who ditched the drunk but didn't solve the problems of the abuse cycle's distortion of social behavior -- which includes home behavior. If you're afraid to be alone, the problem is real and deep.

If you never enjoy being alone, then there are real needs you have that are not being met in your current situation and it is necessary to figure out what those are and heal the wounds that make being alone so painful. I hesitate to suggest therapy because there are many problems with it, be very careful if you choose a therapist. Look at the actual results the therapist gets with other patients. Be sure you're on the same page in terms of religion and general socila values, many therapists wind up judging against their own specific ethics forgetting that there are big cultural differences and try to push people toward a type of bland function that's supposedly normative but not really functional.

I've had many bad experiences with therapists who were in denial about my physical disabilities even after they were diagnosed by doctors. They had an uncanny ability to attribute my physical symptoms to psychological causes and try to push me to live in ways that would wipe me out fast in wasted effort -- those with chronic fatigue can't afford to waste body energy on inessentials and have to find the physically easiest ways to do everything in order to have a fighting chance at doing even some of the things they want to.

If they never knew anyone who had your religion that miscommunication can make therapy useless. I found that out the hard way too, then got that explained to me by an excellent psychiatirist in Minneapolis.

So when you're alone, look honestly at who you are even if that hurts, and ask yourself if you're being pushed in directions of natural conflict by situations that don't work. Once you identify what the conflicts are, it's a lot easier to decide what to do with them.

The decision can be as basic as realizing "I may have been born in the North but I fit in socially a lot better with Southerners. Moving South is going to make it easier for me to have a social life in the real world."

Comment by Nancy Beahm on May 9, 2009 at 3:00pm

Lonliness happens for me when I take my eyes off the bigger picture, that being God. When I feel alone or sorry for myself, I give myself "x" amt of time to wallow in it, because a lot of times that down times gives me much needed rest. Then I get off my butt and do something for others. Doesn't have to be much, a task, listening, complimenting someone, that helps a lot to get me out of the funk and things back into perspective. Blaring music and dancing around the house like an idiot doesn't hurt much either. That frees up my soul and brings me much joy!

Comment by Robert Sloan on May 9, 2009 at 3:00pm

For years and years, for most of my life people said to me "Get some exercise! Start going on long walks and you'll feel better." Yeah RIGHT. This is because despite the physical evidence of my severe limp, the fact that if I stand up I keel over to one side, that my spine isn't straight and even sitting down I keel over to one side and have to prop myself up, they believed that I had no disabilities and cheerfully shoveled more social pressure into the DENIAL that kept me from seeking either Social Security or any of the treatments that since have helped me live with my less visible disabilities, stress induced asthma and fibromyalgia.

People love to repeat advice they got from other people whether it fits or not. They like to feel like they're the one that solved your bad situation with one cheery suggestion that was so obvious you tried it and made things worse for decades. They usually get offended if you tell them "I tried that and threw myself into three weeks of bed rest because I threw my back." I knew my back was bad but people ignored that when I warned them about it.

I noticed a bit of gendering in your comments anyway -- men who feel more confident wearing some makeup and perfume are generally either actors or in some way into crossdressing. The solution there isn't for them to push it in situations where it's rejected but to look for drag events and clubs where they can meet other men who enjoy wearing women's makeup and clothing. There are a lot of them. EVery man I've ever known who was into that and found a drag community has wound up flourishing and becoming a lot more social, tended to learn to apply it better and had a much happier life. Transgender women go through the drag community and slowly discover who they really are when freed of the expectation they have to act like men to be socially acceptable to anyone -- and often still stay involved because that's where their friends are even after they've had surgery and rebuilt their lives.

This advice can be dangerous to people in genuinely bad situations.

I mentioned the drag queens and transgender women because I've also seen them driven to the point of suicide by SOCIAL REJECTION which is quite real and devastating to anyone who's in a bad CONTEXT.

So I am going to add an anthropological sidecar to this dose of homebrew psychology, because if you suffer a lot of loneliness and have tried all or most of the things in this article, then maybe the problem isn't with you at all. Maybe the problem is with pushing yourself into social circles where you don't belong, getting repeatedly hurt and even constant mental rehearsal just sharpens up the occasional stinging good return line when the inevitable conflicts come up again because the people in your current context DO actually REJECT YOU on something basic and real about you that isn't just a superficial habit.

First off, start a personal journal. Asking feedback from everyone around you is good, it'll at least tell you what face everyone around you is trying to put on things. Write down everything that happened including the things that people say that are negative. Chart everything you do for a week or three -- it takes three weeks to really establish a habit -- without trying to change anything.

Sort out the statements they make about you into things that you think of as positive and wish they would say more often, things about you they say that are negative and you wish you could change, and things they say about you that when translated are negative ways to say things that are neutral or positive if rephrased. Context is everything.

I'm a writer. I know slant.

Things like "He's so stubborn, he always goes his own way" can be delivered in an admiring tone of respect or a disgusted tone of offended false authority. That's one of the ones that got said about me a lot, because I literally walk to a different drummer. The one that goes Thump, Drag, Thump, the limping pace of someone who can only walk at a quarter the speed of any other adult my size and needs to be running full tilt to achieve a normal walking pace.

Correlate this with reality.

I have seen women diss each other on appearance and weight constantly. Sometimes from outside it becomes a ludicrous joke to see a heavily obese woman fuss and snottily tell her friend "She is so fat, look at those thighs, she thinks she looks so good" about a woman who only has maybe 10 pounds to drop -- when the speaker ought to be considering radical surgery because she needs to shed over 100 to get down into human size range.

Don't take up sports, exercise programs or heavy new physical activity without understanding your real health conditions and how they affect your participation. You could be pushing for a heart attack or something in the process of trying to fit in better. Start slow and gradual, build up to it over time and don't ever, ever ignore back pain and keep doing what brings it on or you could turn a marginal back problem into a major life-crippling permanent back problem. I've seen this happen to a lot of people.

It's inherent in human beings to be vulnerable to social pressure and negative social pressure.

Here's another piece of radical advice. It may hurt to do it, but try turning off the television completely. Don't watch television for three weeks. Period. You don't have to forget your favorite programs -- get someone else to record them and clip out the commercials, or purchase them for download where the commercials are already filtered out. The number of commercials -- 90% of which are designed to raise social anxiety and then demonstrate how that product can solve all social conflicts -- is so high that any adult who spends an hour watching it raw on cable or broadcast is in effect trying to follow a story while a screaming three year old interrupts every two or three minutes demanding your attention. Most of it is for tons of things you either already have or don't want. Much of the rest is for food, which if you like any of the foods is going to throw your system out of whack raising anticipation of eating in general and then get you snacking so much you do wind up gaining a lot of unwanted weight even if you don't just salivate and head to Red Lobster as soon as the commercial comes on.

With my fibromyalgia, I found out that I will function a whole lot more if I reduce stress in my life. I get bored with most TV easily and at various times drifted out of watching it. When my family moved to Kansas, we got cable and then because of a minor logistic difficulty -- it was out in the living room, not conveniently in my room where my art supplies are -- I didn't bother to watch at all. So I got to see the results on my stress levels and stress symptoms of cutting it out.

The opinions that commercials hold of you are negative. You're perceived as lacking something essential to get social acceptance. That comes in visually and audially, and it doesn't matter that these people are fiction, that it isn't real, that the man in a white coat isn't really a doctor. In your instincts, the critical views of television commercials impact you like a charging rhino trampling your instincts. They feel real. They raise social anxiety.

The source is a situation you can walk away from so easily because it isn't real -- you can order the same fictions and documentaries from another source and avoid the advertising without hurting yourself or your social prospects at all. No real other people are hurt by this decision. Remove that source of social pressure and you're left with only the social pressures that are real within your family, your workplace, your current living situation and past ties.

Television is popular because it doesn't demand any response. It does viscerally, but functionally you can sit there doing nothing for hours and be entertained without having to say anything to it. Comedies are a source of jokes you can tell people and since most of them may have been watching the same show, it's familiar humor, a common topic at the office or in any neutral social situation where no one wants to stand out as too individual.

Now comes the hard part: facing the possibility that social rejection may be very real and having to face drastic changes to your life in order to deal with it. I mentioned the drag queens. They were a small, colorful minority in the shelters. A huge number of shelter residents were battered women and people whose lives had been destroyed by bad relationships, often with alcoholics or addicts. Another huge portion were alcoholics and addicts.

If you have never done so, go online and find a site about alcohol or addiction that has one of those questionnaires "Are You An Alcoholic?" Do the quiz, answer honestly, you don't have to let anyone else see or know the results. This is for YOU to find out.

If the answer is yes to substance abuse or alcoholism, SEEK HELP. Seek real help. Alcoholics Anonymous is free and available anywhere I've ever lived, I think there are chapters in towns that have only 50 people in them because four of them form one. This goes for women too, alcohol and substance abuse is not gendered and doesn't only strike men. It's also brutally common. I suspect there are some social pressures in ordinary life that push people toward it -- and that alcoholism itself becomes a simple answer to loneliness and social rejection. Get too blotto to care and that solves the problem, also automatically invites you into a huge social network of other drunks too blotto to care and allows the worst bullying brat behavior, common to the gang, to get anything you want anytime from anyone who's not a drunk. Alcoholism is self reinforcing socially.

This is why Alcoholics Anonymous is so successful, drunks who join still get the giant social network and connection with other people who understand. They don't lose that community on giving up the alcohol, they shift to meetings and mutual support instead and wind up living much happier lives. They can move to a new city, go to one meeting and come away with contacts and friends as if they'd been there for months trying to meet people.

Then, if you have determined that alcohol or substance addiction isn't your problem -- both of these things are very similar in getting a lot of negative social pressure from everyone around the drunk who isn't one -- ask if you're married to one, or a parent is one, or your boss. Look at your closest everyday contacts to see if the patterns of alcoholic/addict behavior are going on. Because the alcoholic/codependent pattern is just as life-destroying and just as common.

If you're lucky and none of your intimate circle are either alcoholic or codependent, you are facing a different social problem and it may be more individual or personal. If it is that you're living around an alcoholic, this may be when you notice the elephant in your living room and the fact that the drunk's reactions to everything in your life are very, very different from the social responses of people who aren't drunks. Your coworkers may think of you as friendly, competent, cool, a great person to be around but the drunk is constantly berating you as not good enough on whatever axis hurts worse.

Look for patterns like that.

Look for whether everyone around you agrees on what your problems are or whether there are some significant differences by context. I have seen this get devastating especially on people who didn't grow up with an alcoholic or codependent. If they get into a job where the boss is a closet alcoholic or seriously codependent, all of a sudden the tricks and mind games of the abuse pattern: Victim > Persecutor > Rescuer -- will hit like a ton of bricks because the person who never lived with one before has no defenses and can't believe that anyone would be that blatantly vicious or underhanded. They are. It's routine. It happens every time to greater or lesser degree and once enmeshed, it's darn hard to see what's going on till you stand back and analyze the situation.

The original poster's seventh point is "Try not to leave a difficult situation."

Look at why the situation's difficult from outside yourself in order to judge that. Because if you wandered into a bad situation as an adult with no experience of the alcoholic-addict patterns and got enmeshed in them, leaving the bad situation may really solve the problem -- especially if the situation is a new romantic relationship or a new job. Either a new and saner lover or a new and saner boss may change your life to make it a lot more like what you remember.

Compare the past and the present.

This can help if you were stuck with codependent/alcoholic parents and have been living in Crazyland all your life. The reactions of people who don't live in Crazyland are going to be weird and almost unpredictable for a while on your own. Seek help. Alanon is good help, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. So is ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics (and dysfunctional families). The dysfunction could be over something less common than alcohol, it could be growing up with mental illness in a parent or with illegal drug addiction or prescription addiction -- but if that's your situation, facing it for what it is deals with the problem of social rejection at its root -- and opens the door to living out in a real world full of people who don't ever kowtow to the family drunk, do not expect betrayals, lies, mind games and cruelty at every turn or have any reason to, and life can be so much richer and happier.

One of the things the family drunk does is isolate everyone in their fief from any outside contacts who cauld say things like "Your dad's being completely unreasonable" or "You shouldn't have to put up with getting beaten up like that." Or even "You could get killed if you stay with that lover, why don't you notice that you went in the hospital three times with those fights?"

Some bad situations are way too dangerous to just stay in them and try to make it work -- and will not get any better till you draw a line and either walk out or stand your boundaries.

Finally, if your situation is not that dire, look for other situational reasons. If you recently relocated, the problem may be as simple as finding new contacts in a new place. You may have been socially successful where you lived last because you put years into meeting people and building up contacts but be faced with an overwhelming need in a new place to completely rebuild your social network.

Use the Internet to meet people.

Even if your problem's just shyness, the Internet is a safe way to meet others without getting critical comments on your local accent which isn't normal or your chosen style of hair and clothing. Look for people who share your real interests. Find your affinity groups. For me that's roleplaying games, science fiction and fantasy, art, garrulous philosophers and debaters, other writers and cat nuts.

I love my cat. My cat is also a wonderful icebreaker online, if I post pictures of him I'll find every other cat lover in the groups I'm in and it shows any new contacts that I'm capable of loving somenoe, that I like animals, that I'm a decent person. He is a healthy and happy cat. He's definitely one of my good points and a socially safe icebreaker -- most people are cool with animals and cat lovers are so common that I'll find kindred spirits no matter what the site's topic is about.

If you suspect someone is an abuser, look at how they treat their animals. Most abusers start with the family dog or cat. If the dog acts like a worthless pathetic terrified mutt and isn't a rescue that just arrived, if the dog's sustained multiple injuries and is scared to meet new people, it's reason to look at the owner. An owner who's trying to mend the damage will be quick to talk about the dog's sad past and most of all may already have another dog or cat who shows none of those signs of abuse and is happy and friendly. But if all the animals look pathetic and cringe away from you in terror, it's time to look at what else is going on. Especially if the owner denies that and tries to force the animal to come forward, yells at it or hits it in your presence. Look at how they behave toward that abused animal to tell the difference between real rescue and an abuser trying to cover for the abuse.

I learned everything I know about holding boundaries and having a healthy social life from my cat. By and large, cats hold their boundaries. Cats are as social as human beings but each cat will have his or her own territory that moves with them. They respond with immediate rejection if they don't like something -- and it isn't that they don't like YOU, it's that they don't like anyone touching their belly. My cat hates having his belly tickled. Pet his back and he purrs if he's in the mood for affection.

He's very clingy with me and a little shy with strangers, because he was too young when I got him and never had that seven-to-twelve week kittenhood stage of exploring the world -- he and I were situationally isolated during his first year so it took him a long time to get to like other people. He's now much friendlier with guests and he loves my daughter and son in law -- but he judges people on how they treat me. He has inevitably spotted it every time I wound up with an abusive roommate even in the early Rescue stage of codependence, hissed, avoided and used to claw abusers to warn me. He was always right.

This is because my cat's view of how other people treat me isn't filtered by human social expectations. He can see it in the body language, he can smell it in the subtleties of people's odors. Animals are perceptive. I know it's very common for cats or dogs to see right through bad situations -- and correctly identify all the good people in your life that you shouldn't avoid or shy away from, but get closer to and listen to when they contradict the nasty things that abusers keep saying about you.

I'm not a loser, not a failure, not a liar or a malingerer. I'm a real disabled man with some severe physical limits on things I can do that other people enjoy very much and in all honesty wanted to invite me into, whether that was hanging out in a mall shopping or joining sports activities or taking long walks. People who know this context think of me as brave or cool, and strong, partly because I've had the time to grieve it and I'm used to the unthinkable, it's just what is, I actually enjoy life when I don't have the resources other people do. So peolpe think of that as brave because the situation is terrifying.

It could happen to anyone normal in a car accident and then they'd have to get over it, have to become brave or just be miserable -- and most do get over it and become "brave" about it because what you live with every day ceases to have any shock value. I still whine as much as anyone if I get the flu, but my chronic diseases are something that isn't going to help.

But because I drove myself into the ground living with those disabilities and failing constantly at Activities of Daily Living that most people can take in stride and don't even think about. I know how deep DENIAL can get. Loneliness usually has a cause.

Sometimes it really is as simple as being in a new region and not knowing anyone, loss, the real loss of your social network. The solutions aren't overnight but you can build it up again if you had to move because of your job or your spouse's job or something.

But for some people that kind of isolation can scare them to the point they never do build it up again and the initial rejection of "stranger" cuts so deep they're afraid to start. That is its own situational problem -- and something that has to be tackled internally as well as externally.

So look honestly at what they're saying -- and whether some of the negative things are motivated by jealousy and actually positives phrased negatively. If so -- avoid that person! I mentioned the fat lady calling the skinnier woman obese for a reason -- it could be jealousy or envy over anything. Over income, over perceived luxury -- you may have different priorities in your spending that produces a dramatic display in one area while curtailing others that aren't as important to you -- your talents, skills, education, abilities.

You may be facing discrimination on religious or ethnic grounds. If so, the solution isn't to try to approach bigots without knowing that's what you're doing -- that you're breaking ground and fighting discrimination. It's good. It can be very useful to suck it up and make friends with people who hate you categorically, because that can break the discrimination for you and everyone that comes after you. But if you know that's what you're doing, the rejections along the way hurt a lot less. You don't expect them to welcome you with open arms.

And when I mention discrimination, the majority of people in this country will face it in some way. Women are discriminated against on gender in a lot of ways. Religion can be a huge source of discrimination. Gay or bisexual people face discrimination. If you're black or brown or Arab or Asian you know already what's going on with that, it's real obvious -- and the thing to do is compare the social rejection with what's going on in your own community.

If you're a mutt like the President of the United States you can get it from both sides by not conforming to the community that claims you, too. It's a mess. So there are other external reasons for social rejection that hurt less if you accept them for what they are and work patiently to erode the prejudices.

Here's a shocker for Christians, in many places fundamentalist Christians get shut out or shut down when they least expect it, because this country is not a monoculture and people are afraid a self-defined Christian will start to act like an embarrassing bigot and break the social acceptance that's been achieved. This includes anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic and anti-whatever groups within self declared Christian groups. You suffer from the stigma of the worst extremes because it's exactly those extreme hate groups who are more likely to say "I'm Christian" and mean a whole host of social attitudes that Christ would be shocked and horrified by including hating blacks, keeping women down in a servile status, discriminating against any other religion it is -- the term "Christian" has come to mean "fanatic right wing" whether it is or not. There is a way around this.

Mention your actual church specifically instead of saying Generic Christian, if you say Methodist or Lutheran or Episcopalian then it goes into a less fervent crazy-category and is less scary by far to people who've had bad experiences with hate groups. They won't be as likely to see your cross as a burning one.

That is exactly the type of discrimination that I'm mentioning -- because it can blindside people and come up unexpectedly, scaring an otherwise normal person into thinking there's something wrong with them when it may be something as specific as HOW you mention your religion that makes people welcome you or start looking the other way and edging off.

Social problems are that. And in today's America they are not all about whether you have confidence or self esteem.

Confidence builds on skill and experience. So look honestly at what's going on and build a repertory of ways to deal with bad situations without denying that they're bad situations. Don't assume that they'll be there in the next situation either -- because things are so varied that I think a lot of low self esteem comes from people who got drastically burned in a randomly bad situation and then expect more of the same even after changing context.

Be aware that where you are now and who your'e dealing with now may be a lot more welcoming than people you knew in the past in a situation where you faced external conflicts.

I'm finding out that I had more skill in social situations than I thought I did, fighting uphill against prejudice about poverty and disability. I have my Social Security now so I'm no longer in the category of "probably trying to scam Welfare" where everyone assumed I was lying to cheat the system so I wouldn't have to work. Believe me, I would love to be capable of working a regular job like anyone else. If I had the physical resources to do so, I'd never bother with it because my assorted self employment venues all would've been stellar successes if I didn't have my physical limits. I have yet to find anything that I can live on that involves working maybe one or two days a month when those days can't be scheduled in advance.

Comment by Pauline Trabert on May 9, 2009 at 2:46pm

I suggest if we have time available to indulge in loneliness and feeling bad about ourselves, then we have more time available for work or other positive pursuits that will occupy our minds. We need to get outside of our miserable selves and our dismal concerns and look for ways to help other people improve their lives. The world starts at the end of your nose... that's what my Grandmother always used to say. It makes sense to me now.

Comment by Brian Grady on May 9, 2009 at 2:31pm

Have you ever dealt with REAL lonliness? I'm not talking about the alone in the crowded room lonliness, I'm talking about living for a winter in an area where you see NO ONE for days at a time and when you do it's the same guy from the post office or person at the gas station 20 miles from your home. It's interesting to hear all these flowery little ditties about a state of mind, but I've dealt with the REAL deal for almost a year now and believe me, it's a little more difficult than anyone here has addressed. Yes, excercise helps, yes positive thoughts help but the only thing that really gets you through is someone to actually speak to. I think without a phone, e-mail and Skype it would be hard to face day after day, week after week.
Try it some time and then write a blog about that!
I start every day with a few phone calls; 1 to someone that I am close to and speak to frequently; I know will stimulate me creatively or some other way, 2 to someone I haven't spoken to in a long time. This catch up is very theraputic as it puts your situation in a histroical framework and 3, to someone that I have been recommended to because of my work, but that I have never met before. This helps satiate the need for new friends or social adventure.

Comment by W. Dan Chance on May 9, 2009 at 2:29pm

Your post is a lovely fragrance wafting on the breeze. It may float away but the experience is sweet and refreshing.

Some of you know what loneliness is and some do not. May you never learn. It is a miserable condition as many can attest. Loneliness has several catalysts that magnify the effect and drive some to the edge of madness and suicide.

One of the most potent has to be criminal conviction and especially for crimes that touch on a primitive component of who we are like sexuality. It is the means by which we propagate our species and the magnetism that creates a sense of union and “family”. I have observed that we judge these crimes (rape, child molestation, etc.) and persons most harshly because they have attacked what we value most highly. In judging them we hope to broadcast our innocence of even the tendency to commit such violations ourselves and we distance ourselves from the perpetrators. We do not allow them to work among us or even live near us. We give them no way to return to normal society. Their isolation must be profound. A death sentence would be more honest and in the end, kinder if we can not find a way to restore them to normalcy.

Another behavior that magnifies loneliness is hiding. Everyone hides to some degree and it is easy to understand why some don’t want us to know who they are but life would be much less of a burden and more of a joy if we all stopped hiding. We hide because we are afraid that if people really knew us they wouldn’t like us. We hide because we are gregarious people even if our friends would call us loners. We want genuine relationships but we have observed the much stronger propensity of our friends is to associate freely only with those who have not offended even by their hair style or choice of clothing. Ah, well I’ve run out of time.

Comment by Dale Sims on May 9, 2009 at 1:55pm

Thanks so much for the great perspectives! For myself I discovered a way to never feel alone. First I got to know myself at a really deep level ( Thanks to the course I now teach), then I also realized that others are more like me than they are not. Suddenly i was surrounded by myself and all my family of 4 or 5 billion. Alone? I don't think so. Now lonely is a different story. I can create that (if I really want to) in a flash. Don't plan to with friends like you in my "family"! Aloha Dale

• First
• Previous
• Next
• Last