Do you ever feel lonely?

Sitting on the Central Line, travelling through London’s West End on a Friday night, I am enjoying watching people go about their business, on their way to Who Knows Where? 

I can’t help but notice the three Indian ladies on a rare girls-night-out, excitedly chatting over everything from life as a hairdresser to the benefits of laser eye surgery in Mumbai.  The young French couple opposite me, meanwhile - betrayed as tourists by the scrunched-up map in their hands - are saying nothing.  They gently caress each other as the rhythm of the train lulls them into light sleep; something that can hardly be said of the happy shoppers at the end of the carriage.  Alighting at Oxford Circus with their armfuls of new stuff, you just can’t miss their blow-by-blow account of latest bargains and indulgent treats. 

And then there’s me.

Who’s noticing me?  I wonder.  I feel like I am just a by-stander here - invisible, unnoticed, cut off from everyone around me, trapped in a bubble.

Who’s stopping to consider where I have come from or where I am going, who I have left behind or who I am travelling to meet?

I know this feeling.  I’ve had it before.  To me, at least, I recognize it as loneliness.

Or is it?

As I leave this underground world at Clapham North, ascending back into the streets of this busy capital, I notice a homeless man sitting under the bridge.  He is almost out of sight and his requests for money for food are inaudible to those who pass him by.  I am struck by how cut off he is: ignored, dehumanized and yet accepted as a ‘normal’ part of the urban landscape.

Is that loneliness? I wondered.  Or does this increasingly enigmatic word describe something else?

I couldn’t quite let this one go, so I came up with a theory that there are at least four types of loneliness that are to do with places, decisions we make, solitariness and the universal human condition.

Allow me briefly to elaborate.

The loneliness of place

This one’s easy.  Certain places generate a feeling of being estranged, left out or disconnected from the whole.  And the irony of this type of loneliness is that, more often than not, you feel it when you are in the middle of a crowded place.

Big cities, busy railway stations, football matches – we’ve almost all experienced, at one time or another, the feelings that can these situations can give rise to.  You see, being surrounded by people, is simply not enough for us.  Rather, we have to find a place in the story that is being played out; we need to establish some kind of connection or entry point with these huge, sprawling social networks. 

The loneliness of decision

Another type of loneliness, I believe, arises from the decisions we make.  Women and men in leadership positions will often speak about how lonely it is at the top; when they are the ones having to make that difficult call.  Likewise, political activists and great social reformers will refer to their struggle to hold on to what they believe in, when challenged on every side.

At a different level, all of us have faced difficult decisions at one stage or another in our lives – Should we take that degree course? Should we buy that house?  Should we walk into that relationship or out of that marriage?  And in that moment of decision, we can often feel overwhelmed by ‘loneliness’, as we realize that no one can make these decisions for us; no one can assure us that they really are the right steps to take.  You might say that this is the loneliness that comes with living by ‘faith’ in the future.

The loneliness of solitude

Standing alone on the edge of Lake Nakuru in Kenya, thousands of miles from anyone back home, confronted with the beauty of hundreds of thousands of flamingos in a single place against the backdrop of the Rift Valley, I discovered a different kind of loneliness; a variation on the theme that seemed to take me to a much more positive place.

I guess that this is what they call solitude; that inner peace and stillness that is hard to find amidst the noise of everyday life.  This is the kind of loneliness that requires a letting go of people, things and places; a loneliness that enables us to connect to the earth at some deeper region.

Sadly, I fear my children will find this feeling much harder to come by in a world that is exchanging its ancient cathedrals for shopping malls.

The loneliness of our humanity

The fourth kind of loneliness is the one that none of us can get away from.  It is a feeling of emptiness and fear that, when it comes down to it - stripped of our temporary man-made comforts - we are totally and utterly alone.  It is that feeling that comes to us when we stare into the Abyss of human insignificance and consider how ‘little’ we are – how meaningless, inadequate, helpless, empty and temporary are even our most noble acts.

Or, in the words of Jean-Paul Satre: ‘Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.’

The death of a loved one – or facing up to our own death – brings us closest to this deep existential angst.  It forces us to question and reinterpret our lives from an entirely different perspective; leaving a single question ringing in our ears:

Is this it?  Or is there, by chance or design, a deeper story to be told?