You can’t cure loneliness with warm bodies.
Only the right bodies.
Joining a club or becoming part of a group or getting hired at a new company quickly buys you a baseline of belonging, but if you start to discover the organization is filled with people whose mental, physical and moral temperament is incompatible with your own, after a while, the loneliness starts to creep back in.
And the problem is, you don’t notice it at first. Because it’s not your typical brand of loneliness. Unlike the bonafide social isolation that leads to chronic inflammationand premature death, this type of loneliness is more insidious. It comes in a much lower dosage. So much so, that when you’re surrounded by other human beings, your eyes actually tell you that you’re not alone.
Which is true. Physically.
But the eyes betray you. They don’t realize warm bodies aren’t enough. They don’t realize loneliness is a multi-sensory experience. They don’t realize feeling less alone in the world requires something beyond material nourishment.
The heart, on the other hand, begs you. It knows what home feels like. It’s knows who the right people are. It knows that true belonging comes from surrounding yourself with like minded, like hearted and like spirited individuals.
That’s the organ you should listen to.
Considering that loneliness has become the most common ailment of the modern world, it may take more work than you thought to satisfy your basic belonging needs.
All hearts on deck, people.