On loneliness

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Faisal Alhamdan, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Generally, the notion of loneliness is met with a level of rejection. One may have been rejecting loneliness due to our perception of what it would be like to be alone. One may think of being alone as a form of punishment and estrangement. However, being alone is not synonymous with being ostracized. There is a spectrum in loneliness. We might be physically alone but emotionally connected. In contrast, we might be present with people around us and feel ostracized.

Human beings are social creatures. Therefore, we perfected a way to include and exclude others from our lives. We became adept in the practice of explicit and implicit snark and possibly mockery. We gage how we fit and how others fit within our social emotional parameters.

We learn from an early age how to gage the effect of those around us. This ability becomes what we might refer to as “gut-feeling.” We reject those who might seem like harmful to us. First impressions become the tools of which we base our judgment. We start forming a mini-questionnaire that is applied automatically to assess those we who we come across. We start having strong opinions and oppositions of certain criteria. We start feeling differentiated and form a bubble around us.

Expectations may lead to resentment. This is an invitation to stretch our thoughts and ideas about what is expected from others. It is also an invitation to meditate on loneliness and how we we might lock ourselves in a lonely place by building our own walls of rejection. Maybe if we had fewer expectations we might experience people differently. Maybe if we became skilled at monitoring how we build these walls we become more able to peak through our imaginary fences.