When all this was getting started, I talked about the idea of there being an anxiety wave spreading around the world, a wave of fear, unsettled discomfort, this kind of feeling of uneasiness that you can just see spreading to every corner of the world.
And after these several weeks having passed of settling into this situation, now the idea that comes to mind is that there’s a wave of loneliness that we can now feel spreading around.
I’m hearing from so many people that are feeling the effects starting to build up of isolation.
You know, it started as this idea that in order to avoid illness we must isolate, and it makes perfect sense from a medical, epidemiological point of view that we need to be physically isolated from other humans in order to reduce transmission of an infection.
But as part of taking on this policy, in the interests of protecting our health, we’re also inviting in everything else that comes from isolation.
We’re asking for this.
We are applying this to ourselves, because we deem it to be necessary, that we are choosing to take on all the costs that isolation brings.
And besides all the economic, business, employment issues that will reveal themselves over the time coming up, there’s the more immediate effect that is really starting to sink in now of what it means for humans to be isolated.
When we focus on simply the health matter, we just think “This is absolutely necessary.
There’s no choice, so we just have to suck it up.
Don’t even complain about it, because, you know, you’re lucky to be healthy.
You’re lucky to have a home to isolate in.
So you have nothing to complain about.
Just accept isolation, because this is what’s necessary in the name of health.” And, you know, it’s hard to disagree with that, because we all need health.
But at the same time, there is a real price to be paid that we’re only starting to see in the world of mental health, the world of our spiritual health, our state of mind, our state of well-being.
So many people are suffering now because isolation is not a healthy situation for humans to be in.
And really it takes this situation for me to start to appreciate this a little bit, something that maybe people that have been imprisoned, people that have been isolated in one way or another, that they already understand, that there are effects that sink in on a person when there isn’t enough social contact, isn’t enough time spent close with others.
It’s like we’ve all heard about, you know, what it’s like to be in solitary confinement, and how these prisoners seem to have all kinds of psychological breakdown because they’re not able to have any interaction.
Now, what we have, of course, is a much milder version, in a sense, and we have all the electronic world to help us be connected.
But there’s still something missing.
There’s something that we are now seeing what it means, and we’re seeing what we’re missing.
So I hope that this time can become something that we always remember, that we really need to reach to the people that are close to us.
We need to always be close.
Of course we have our time alone, but never for too long, and we always need to be in human communion.
And I think by the time this is over, there will be this great hunger for this that hopefully none of us will ever forget.
#loneliness #lonely #isolation