In these times of difficulties and isolation, the feeling of loneliness has never been as present as today. While exchanging with relatives and friends, I hear from all of them how much they suffer from being apart from their beloved ones. They feel helpless. So do I.
Living two hours away from my family, I haven’t seen them for 7 weeks now. I live on my own and I work from home, which means that my social contacts are quite limited. Even though I do miss that contact a lot and I can’t wait to see and hug my people again, I also take consciously some time off for myself, when I am totally disconnected from the outer world.
At the beginning of the crisis, I got into a sort of panic. I saw the physical separation as a thread, as a danger. It increased the feeling of loneliness that I had been experiencing for a long time. Because that feeling was not new. It had always been there. Hidden behind a happy face. How many of us are feeling lonely and don’t show it, because we are scared of being vulnerable?
But then, what is the sense of feeling lonely? The only way to get an answer is to go deep inside, to investigate where this feeling comes from. Because once you have identified the source of your loneliness, you’ll also find a way to deal with it, to embrace it. On the other hand, if we try to escape from that investigation, the feeling will come back again and again, until we look closer at it.
The good news are that loneliness does really have a sense. The fear of being alone and separated from others brings us back to the longing for getting together, connecting to each other. From that very deep connection, that we all feel inside when we take time to look at it, we start to feel again, to love again. We start to care about our neighbours and strangers. We feel compassion for all human beings who are experiencing the same feelings right now.
The answer to that great experience is love and gratitude. Love for every being on Earth and gratitude for what we have and what we share.