Hopping on the bus home recently, I was greeted by the sight of a young woman hunched over her phone, alone in a seat, bawling for England. Or, as it turned out, Scotland. As I plonked myself down beside her and asked her what was wrong, various slumped passengers burst into animation as if a switch had been thrown, and started beseeching me to tell her that she must stay on this bus until such and such a stop, then get the bus with such and such a number. Clearly, I’d missed some of the drama.
But I knew what the drama had been. A young person, feeling vulnerable, needing some comfort, had been showered instead with practical solutions to a practical problem, which had just upset her even more. Having recently seen the episode of Parks and Recreation (American political sitcom on NBC) where pregnant Ann kept complaining of her discomforts, only to have Chris annoyingly try to “cure them”, I understood that this young girl needed only for me to tell her that, yes, swollen ankles suck.
Though first I had to get her to stop crying, which consisted of both of us sitting up straight, taking in a deep breath for seven counts, holding it in for four, and letting it out for seven. So it actually was quite like an episode of Parks and Rec. It turned out that she was 22, had been in London for a few weeks, had just been to her new job’s Christmas party, and had become overwhelmed with the misery of homesickness.
Originally from Cornwall, she’d been to Edinburgh University, had fallen in love with the city, and was missing it every moment of every day. A quick chat back at mine about the virtues of Edinburgh (which was still there and could be returned to), a cup of tea, a biscuit, an Uber, and she was right as rain. Bonus: She thought I was an Angel of Kindness. Which I am.
The next morning I was boasting about my Angel of Kindness status to my friend Mary. A young woman she knows had trained as a physiotherapist, got a job in the geriatric ward of a hospital in an unfamiliar town, and shared a flat with older people with whom she had nothing in common. Without the means to break her contract and move, she became so lonely that it made her ill. She had to go home to be looked after by her parents.
What these stories illustrate is the way in which the threat of loneliness is hard-wired into modern life. Practical people doing practical things — travelling far for a job opportunity, opting for the accommodation they can afford, under unbending rules — learn the hard way that human beings can only take so much practical. Loneliness always increases as societies modernise. Loneliness is an ailment of modernity.
The prescription
It’s terrific that the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness (undertaken to understand the scale and impact of loneliness in the United Kingdom) has highlighted this large and growing problem.
Many of the points made at the end of a year-long study are sound ones. Working out what to do about the problem, though, that’s harder. The commission’s prescription is for many small changes to be coaxed into being, overseen by a government minister who takes a lead on the bigger picture. Yet loneliness is a feeling. Engineering a large-scale change in people’s feelings — it’s a hard thing to do.
Most people understand that loneliness is neither necessarily felt by people who are alone, nor alien to people who are always with others. The great prophylactic against loneliness is feeling that you are part of something bigger than yourself — a family, a friendship group, a community, a benign universe, whatever. Even a community with little in the way of material resources finds some contentment in being in a group of people who are all in it together.
Individualism is the opposite of that. It demands that you represent only yourself. It is an atomising philosophy, an ideological machine for creating loneliness, a wrong turn from the progress of humanity that makes people narcissistic and self-absorbed, and therefore isolated. This simplest of equalities — just the feeling that your worth as a human is the same as everyone else’s, no more, no less — is all that is needed. For many, however, such a psychological goal is anathema. Inequality makes people lonely — even at the top.
The report mentions social institutions that are becoming a less and less common aspect of people’s daily lives — workplace, social club. Even schools feel like high-pressure environments rather than places where people are nurtured and coaxed through childhood. Even corner shops have changed beyond recognition, more than once in my lifetime.
Modern life is lonely and it comes with a threat of isolation, hard-wired into our lives. Failure is judged so harshly. How anyone at all still manages to feel secure in their own company is the real mystery of life today.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Deborah Orr is a Guardian columnist.
