Within you is a private space where “no visitors are allowed”. This is where you meet yourself in total honesty.
Every human being feels lonely in his life at some point or the other. It’s but natural to have such feelings, because that’s what that makes us all human and that is why we are as we are.
So what is loneliness? Is it a feeling? A condition? For different people, it means different things. It is hard to describe exactly what it is, or how come we feel this way. Perhaps a better question is “what is loneliness for you”?
If we dwell on why we feel lonely at times, we would be very much astonished or even probably surprised by the results. We ourselves are responsible for our self-defined gloominess. This is because at times we really feel that we are uncared for or feel someone doesn’t understand us.
Sometimes (in my case, all the time) we over analyze real life situations and have this growing sense of self pity inside us. This feeling always gives us thoughts which picturise us always receiving the wrong end of the stick in life. The truth might not always be true if we touch our heart and see. It’s just that our expectations in life and from people around us or circumstances that we are facing have got the better of us. Expectation is the silent killer which murders millions of time tested relationships.
A human being’s existence is a lonely existence. At the end of the day, we are all alone. Can anyone ever truly understand what it is to be you, to experience all the things you have experienced, to understand your joys and happiness, your pains and sorrows? Surely we can talk to other people about how we feel, we can draw pictures, we can play music, but this entire attempt to communicate ultimately leaves something behind. We cannot always get our feelings, ideas or experiences across exactly. There is a painful reality that ultimately we are alone, by ourselves, and ultimately lonely.
Some people are better at alleviating their loneliness than other people, at hiding their existence than others. For them, loneliness is a fleeting feeling that visits them on cold winter days or cold gloomy rainy days when human contact becomes minimal and they are left only with the thoughts in their heads. For others, loneliness is a curse, a shadow that follows them all the time that rears its ugly head at every human contact, which surrounds them in their waking and in their dreams.
Whether we would like to agree with it or not, loneliness is a universal phenomenon, it visits every human soul at some time in every culture, every race, every class, every age, and at all times in human history. Not only is loneliness so pervasive, but it has been associated with a variety of different emotions. People who feel lonely describe it as painful, and it is associated very strongly with feelings of depression, suicide, low self-esteem and aggression. Being lonely for too long may not be a good thing. And while we suffer a monadic existence, we are social animals, needing each other, to bond, to connect, to love. It is the paradox of human existence to seek to fill a need that can never be satisfied, to fill the vortex of loneliness in our lives.
Well, all in all a little bit of loneliness is good for a self analysis to keep a check over your actions. Introspection always makes you communicate with the inner self. But too much of introspection can make u scale the altitude of self pity. So show restrain at the right time.
Aloneness vs. loneliness
There is a small but noticeable difference between aloneness and loneliness. To be alone is to be by oneself. You may or may not FEEL lonely when you are alone, but the only important condition for being alone is that there is no one else around you. To be lonely, is to suffer the feelings of loneliness, to want people, social contact, and yet be unable to get any. Given this fact, it is quite possible to feel lonely when you are alone, and it is also to feel lonely when you are NOT alone. Many people report feelings of being lonely in a crowd, that even though they are surrounded by people, they still feel lonely.