[stcredzero]

I had forgotten what it was like to be alone with my thoughts. I feel as though I am rediscovering a part of my brain that was suppressed by having a boredom-prevention device at my fingertips all these years.

Right. Necessity is the mother of all invention. Boredom can be a powerful necessity. If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs in the 80's, I would never have learned to code at the age of 11.

[brightball]

Loneliness is the same way. It can give people determination to come out of their shell, work up the courage to ask someone out, etc.

[Broken_Hippo]

I think you are mixing up loneliness and shyness. Loneliness can cause shyness and the other way around, but they are not the same thing.

Loneliness can be forced on you. I personally moved and since some girls at the new school decided (in the locker room) that I was lesbian, folks stopped talking to me. I found a very small group of friends the next year at high school.

These girls were half correct in their assessment, but that was no reason for the entirety of a school to decide I wasn't worth talking to.

Seriously, loneliness is awful. I should mention that I had no issues asking folks out later in life (when I became interested in such things).

This sort of thing might have been more common pre-internet times. The internet made me less lonely because I found folks I liked to talk to.

[B0btheBuilder]

There's a great episode of the "Hidden Brain" podcast about scarcity: https://www.npr.org/2017/03/20/520587241/the-scarcity-trap-w...

One claim made was that poverty and loneliness are two of the most difficult scarcity traps to be in. Even more so than hunger (especially in the developed world). Because poverty and loneliness push you into behaviors that only perpetuate more poverty and loneliness. You can see this with the rise of toxic misogynistic groups on the Internet, and I personally see this with my more awkward, lonely friends and acquaintances who put off new company with desperate, weird, or standoffish behavior.

[brightball]

Loneliness sucks...but at the same time at the point where you decide you’ve had enough of it and you realize you have the power to do something about it, it becomes a tremendous motivator.

Loneliness is curable, but requires effort.

[Broken_Hippo]

Because I had so many choices at 13. Because poor folks can simply move where they'll be more accepted. ? Because everyone should be willing to act like someone they aren't so they have people (that doesn't cure loneliness). Because loneliness cause by depression is always curable?

I'm happy you solved yours. I'm happy I solved mine. But I know not everyone can have the stroke of luck to change things like I have. Lots of folks have little choice, in part because of financial woes, mental illness, age, and so on.

NOt everyone is like you. Loneliness has never been a great motivator for me, and though I don't suffer from it like I did 10 years ago, the entire thing has left me with a negative view of people and their willingness to accept folks that are different - especially when they "should know better".

That last bit has been key to my own "cure", as I'm an immigrant and folks don't assume the same things.

[tanzbaer]

Or it may just crush you...

[bargl]

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/theodore_roosevelt_103499

[retsibsi]

I was tempted to reply with a link to the wiki article for survivorship bias, but that would come across snarkier than I intend. Seriously though, this is a bit like taking advice on financial risk-taking from a startup billionaire.

[bargl]

Do you really think it's at that scale? I see that some adversity in life actually makes me better and some does not. It really depends on how hard it is to overcome each individual hurdle.

Keeping with the analogy of hurdles. It's like, successful startup is a 20 ft wall. Deciding to workout 3x a week is a 3ft hurdle. Getting a fitbit and targeting more walking is like a 2ft hurdle (my scales not everyone's). Getting over loneliness due to not having a cell phone is a 5 ft hurdle. It'd require getting out of the house a lot more and that anxiety can be crippling. If that was a goal of mine I'd train for it just like a marathon. You don't start by running the whole thing in the first week, you start with increasingly large goals.

I totally agree that blindly saying adversity is good, is a crazy over simplification. I also think we (if you are in top 60% of tax brackets just to really bound that statement) have it exceptionally easy in the USA and that we are all capable of much more than we think we are.

Not everyone can do a startup, but many of us have lost the concept of setting a goal and pushing ourselves (myself included).

Thanks for calling me out. A quote from T. R. could be seen as snarky as well. This really is a personal thing. I should have really put a caveat that this applies to me. Just me. I think more people would benefit from the mentality, but I also don't believe in a society that pushes artificial adversity to "make people better" that'd be bad.