Alone Together

We are living in lonely times, but the human conditions make us wonder, are we alone in our loneliness? And that answer is clear. Somewhere, someone else is taking off for the unknown, moving to small towns or hitting the road to start a new life.We can understand loneliness when we peer up into the sky or see celebrities doing ordinary things, when we laugh at comedians and still feel sad because we recognize their loneliness. And we may not be hermit crabs or whales in the ocean or rare birds or lone wolves, but the way animals behave tells us something about loneliness and isolation. There’s solace in discovering we all need a shell and we are allowed to grow out of that shell, or we need to be apart from others like lone wolves. We can see it in clouds or in comics, read it in words and feel loneliness in our silence, in remembering and in those times when we can’t sleep or want to talk to someone else sitting on a bench.Those are the lessons in loneliness that come from understanding the way we see ourselves and the world around us as we wrap up with the final episode of this season.  

Benches are places in public spaces where people can sit by themselves. They are special because they’re not just a place to sit, they’re spots available to anyone and that availability turns benches into opportunities for connections.Benches are bridges between those eager to chat, and those wanting to just listen. When we sit on a bench, we’re indicating we’re part of a world that maybe we feel too lonely or afraid to fully participate in.Benches give us an opportunity to be engaged in our surroundings whether it's observing from the side or opening up a chance for conversation.

The first multiple blind dates in the world are believed to have taken place in April 1827. The story goes that Thomas Swain, a 52 year old bachelor, had vowed to take the first woman to step ashore the world’s most remote island. Her name was Sarah Jacobs, a widow, and Thomas Swain took her hand as soon as she put her foot on the island. The four other women who had arrived with Sarah Jacobs married the four other bachelors on the island. From those beginnings, the island population at Tristan da Cunha grew exponentially. By 1832, just five years after the five women arrived, Tristan had a population of 34--22 of them children. The solitary outpost which had been a British garrison had become a community.Today, it is still the most isolated island in the world where people live and Tristan da Cunha is located in the middle of the ocean between two continents.  The residents who live there, all 247 of them, understand a type of loneliness like no one else. But their isolation has, for hundreds of years, been a place that others have learned from: how to survive away from anyone else.

We Don’t Talk About Bruno, the number 1 hit song, written by Lin-Manual Miranda for the Disney movie Encanto, is all about a member of the Madrigal family who no one talks about, Bruno. Encanto is a movie about family, but it’s also about trauma and how families connect, separate and become estranged. For a Disney movie, there are some very heavy themes, including war and violence and ruptures within what family members expect from each other and what they can’t accept. We all have been told and taught that family bonds are unbreakable but for many, family is their pain, and these relationships are broken. There’s a certain type of loneliness that comes from being estranged from family, in choosing to depart from the ties that are part of our genetics and our lineage. 

Sleep is often viewed as something that takes us away from social interactions. We have to give up sleep in order to be social. Sometimes, it’s very tempting to stay home and sleep rather than be with others. But when you think about it, sleep is actually something that connects us to each other. Because without sleep, we lose the motivation to socially interact with others.

Imagine forgetting John Lennon.It isn’t hard to do when collective memory fades. We remember things because they have meaning for us and we forget things because other things become more important.Seeing people and hearing songs that aren’t part of our day-to-day conversation brings with it a sense of nostalgia, a longing for the past, and a remembrance of what had been. And in that longing and in those memories, we form a connection to what had been things or people who once mattered to us and then, the realization of all that has been lost. Is it that realization that makes us lonely, or does the loneliness come when we remember what was once real. How does nostalgia become a way for us to forget our loneliness?