Some people want to be heard. Some people want an
.
The ones who want to be heard are seeking a connection in which something about them is understood – even if it's only their views on a football match.
The ones who want an audience seek to dazzle with whatever show they are putting on. Often this consists of lengthy reminiscences and they rarely allow anybody to truly understand anything about them.
I once observed two such men barking at each other for half an hour and the discomfort of each at being faced with an adversary who had never listened to anyone in his life was a joy to behold.
The real point I want to make is that when it comes to connection, loneliness and belonging, it's all about degrees. That everybody wants to belong can hardly be disputed. And the research suggesting that extreme loneliness hurts our physical and mental health is well established by now.
But the assumption that we all want to be swaddled tightly in a warm social blanket is wrong and leaves out the differences between people.
I am a person who is happy enough to know there is somebody in the next room who will talk to me sometime in the near future. They don’t actually have to be in my room right now, nor do I need them to talk to me right now.
Worse than me was a man who despised people but needed a connection with them anyway. I had only to sit in the bar long enough for him to appear beside me to explain yet again the wrongdoings and inadequacies of everyone else we knew. His complaining to me, or to whatever other victim he pinned down, was his human connection for the day.
In the middle of it all
At the other end of the scale is the person who has to be in the middle of a bunch of other people every waking hour of the day.
You can see them wilt if they have to spend more than five minutes on their own. People like me retreat from them and hide.
I like solitude and my own company and I get enough of it as I go around the country doing various pieces of work. But if you asked me to enjoy my solitude for, say, a week you would find me, by the end of it, desperately trying to hunt down some sort of connection.
I have a dim memory of feeling intense loneliness at some time in the past. I recall a black feeling that seemed to have no end and walking for hours around the streets which helped, if only by tiring me out. I didn’t define myself as lonely or depressed and I didn’t think of going for therapy because it wasn’t a thing people thought of at the time.
But I learned that loneliness can be very painful especially when it’s twinned with an attack of the blues.
On the rise
I expect loneliness in society is increasing. More and more of us have become individualised, working alone in our own wee jobs in our own wee apartments or cubicles. The old, intrusive type of community, which had its unpleasant as well as its good points, is melting away.
For those of us who are fairly at ease in our own company this isn’t too bad. For those who need to be around people at all times, it must be hell.
You can find interaction on the internet, of course, but I think it might meet only the need for connection if you also have enough face-to-face encounters – and I don't mean on FaceTime.
As with so much else, the whole nature of belonging is being redefined in our era. We don’t know how it’s going to work out but we know we need it, that’s for sure. Each of us needs different quantities of it and it’s when we don’t get enough of what we uniquely need that we start to shrink.
Padraig O’Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.