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by kubielid
782 days ago
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Okay, if we take your comment as the “full truth” then you have successfully identified the cause of your loneliness so the solution for you, specifically you, would be to give your money away. Then “interacting” would be a requirement again. |
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I'll certainly be going back to work, but more because it gives me a sense of purpose and less because I think working is a necessary (or even good) solution to address loneliness. My comment was intended to highlight that there's no silver bullet to this issue.
Modern society has many alluring activities which don't necessitate forming bonds with other humans, the world keeps shifting around even if you stay the same, and it's easy to find yourself dissatisfied with the status quo while also feeling like your lifestyle is an accurate reflection of the way you desire to live.
Five years ago I was in a relationship, shared a house with 5 other people, social media wasn't as stigmatized, and my peers and I were all in our twenties. I had transitioned to fully remote work, but I felt overwhelmed by the amount of personal interactions I was having. Space was more desirable than connectedness.
Fast-forward a bit, I moved out of a group living situation post-covid, broke up with my partner which segmented our friends, many people settled down with children and stopped going out, and Facebook became uncool. These things happened slowly, and I was enamored with my job, so it didn't weigh on me as it was occurring. Then, when the job was finished, I realized I had settled into a lifestyle where I had no external pressure to leave the house, could go weeks without using my voice, didn't have readily available ways of quickly connecting with people, and that I would need to take significant actions to address the situation in ways that I'd never needed to in my life thus far.
Adding a job back into the mix will help in some ways. Management certainly forces me to use my voice. And, of course, it's possible to put myself out there and make friends with twenty-somethings who want to go out all the time, but it feels less natural when there's a larger age gap. It's a lot of work, too, as it's easier to meet friends through friends than forge relationships from scratch. I can change my personality entirely and decide I want to settle down, to try and better guarantee having a close partner, but that's certainly never been something I've seen myself doing. Or I can try to re-envision myself as an extrovert and try to find it implicitly appealing to socialize rather than just something that addresses a need, but that's never been a trait I've seen in myself.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I feel my personality and desires have remained consistent throughout my life, but society and culture has shifted around me. If I want to be less lonely then I need to change myself and build an appreciation for activities which result in socialization, or settle for different/worse interactions that are still useful for addressing loneliness, but these decisions weren't necessary in my teens and twenties. People were just around all the time. And yes, I'm sure some of that has to do with people being busy working, but it's a lot more than that, too.