The line that stayed with me was that loneliness is not the absence of people, but “the awareness of all the lives you’re not living.” That feels closer to the truth than any clinical definition I’ve ever read. What you describe as stations of loneliness also read like stations of consciousness: the house becoming a cloister, the shelf turning into a lineage, the page into a record of a mind refusing to look away. It’s strange how often we treat loneliness as a pathology when it is also the condition that lets us feel the depth of being alive at all. Your last lines, about standing at the gate of your own life, make loneliness feel less like a malfunction and more like the cost of staying awake.
I really enjoyed this piece. Your writing is dense and chewy, like healthy granola but it makes my jaws ache sometimes trying to extract the nutrients. Maybe I found this more palatable because of my familiarity with the territory. I appreciate the apparent effort you take to formulate and express your thoughts with precision and insight. Thank you!
You are reminding me why I used to love to read so much, I spent years trapped in the algorithm and at some point forgot that real literature is for enriching the soul. Most writing I encounter nowadays is secretly ad copy trying to sell you something. It is such a pleasure to read a well crafted essay that makes me think that does not end with a plea to buy a course. I'm tired of being sedated by society, I want to live.
Thank you for writing this. I am, currently, just the teenager crossing the street with that buzz in their ears, but there were words in this piece that I needed to hear. :)
This line hit me like a gut punch: "with his own obligations failing to add up to meaning." It's taken a long time for me to understand the importance of consciously choosing obligations rather than accepting obligations you were conditioned to choose.
“loneliness is our century’s invisible infrastructure. Beneath your life runs a whole unseen grid: servers, algorithms, cables pulsing under oceans, oceans of darkness, oceans of calamity, warehouses of doom filled with humming machines: all so you never have to feel, for more than a few seconds, the actual texture of being by yourself.”
A few months ago I stopped fighting and examined this idea that awakening at 4 or 5am was incorrect, a sign of something wrong. Now I slowly get up make tea and look at the sky, the neighbors lights and listen to the crows. I find myself acknowledging somewhat peacefully that we are all, each, alone and lonely. I’m not trying to win an argument, this is my shared human experience.
As you’ve so beautifully expressed it’s terrifying and paradoxically comforting. Not an ‘illness’.
Beautiful writing. Remembering the small child(ren) needing a drink of water while I tried to write; thinking of my daughter and son-in-law, now in the same position with their small son, in a country far away. Knowing that my father was once the philosopher trying to write while his small child(ren) slept (or refused to sleep). The loneliness is definitely generational--and, surprisingly, bearable.
Loneliness is not the absence of people. It is the awareness of all the lives you’re not living.... oooofff! Totally true. Brilliant write on a peering at life through a keyhole you have no key for.
This made me cry. The very first work that made me cry. How did you put my loneliness to words? Words that I too was surprised to be something described. I love this.
My goodness but you are an inspired genius. This is certainly a dent in the world’s vast indifference, and so much more. Thank you.
The line that stayed with me was that loneliness is not the absence of people, but “the awareness of all the lives you’re not living.” That feels closer to the truth than any clinical definition I’ve ever read. What you describe as stations of loneliness also read like stations of consciousness: the house becoming a cloister, the shelf turning into a lineage, the page into a record of a mind refusing to look away. It’s strange how often we treat loneliness as a pathology when it is also the condition that lets us feel the depth of being alive at all. Your last lines, about standing at the gate of your own life, make loneliness feel less like a malfunction and more like the cost of staying awake.
I really enjoyed this piece. Your writing is dense and chewy, like healthy granola but it makes my jaws ache sometimes trying to extract the nutrients. Maybe I found this more palatable because of my familiarity with the territory. I appreciate the apparent effort you take to formulate and express your thoughts with precision and insight. Thank you!
You are reminding me why I used to love to read so much, I spent years trapped in the algorithm and at some point forgot that real literature is for enriching the soul. Most writing I encounter nowadays is secretly ad copy trying to sell you something. It is such a pleasure to read a well crafted essay that makes me think that does not end with a plea to buy a course. I'm tired of being sedated by society, I want to live.
Thank you for writing this. I am, currently, just the teenager crossing the street with that buzz in their ears, but there were words in this piece that I needed to hear. :)
This line hit me like a gut punch: "with his own obligations failing to add up to meaning." It's taken a long time for me to understand the importance of consciously choosing obligations rather than accepting obligations you were conditioned to choose.
The expansiveness and the intimacy of loneliness all captured beautifully here. Thank you!
“loneliness is our century’s invisible infrastructure. Beneath your life runs a whole unseen grid: servers, algorithms, cables pulsing under oceans, oceans of darkness, oceans of calamity, warehouses of doom filled with humming machines: all so you never have to feel, for more than a few seconds, the actual texture of being by yourself.”
Yes.YES.
A few months ago I stopped fighting and examined this idea that awakening at 4 or 5am was incorrect, a sign of something wrong. Now I slowly get up make tea and look at the sky, the neighbors lights and listen to the crows. I find myself acknowledging somewhat peacefully that we are all, each, alone and lonely. I’m not trying to win an argument, this is my shared human experience.
As you’ve so beautifully expressed it’s terrifying and paradoxically comforting. Not an ‘illness’.
Yes, emphatically.
Profound. I seemed to hold my breath as I read this, then sighed long and slow at the end. Thank you.
Beautiful writing. Remembering the small child(ren) needing a drink of water while I tried to write; thinking of my daughter and son-in-law, now in the same position with their small son, in a country far away. Knowing that my father was once the philosopher trying to write while his small child(ren) slept (or refused to sleep). The loneliness is definitely generational--and, surprisingly, bearable.
„You are alone with.“ Never felt that naked reading something. Frightening and beautiful at once. Thank you for sharing.
Loneliness is not the absence of people. It is the awareness of all the lives you’re not living.... oooofff! Totally true. Brilliant write on a peering at life through a keyhole you have no key for.
On a second pass, and it just gets better and more true. The rawness of our humanity is both seen and elegantly articulated. Thank you ❤️ 😊
This made me cry. The very first work that made me cry. How did you put my loneliness to words? Words that I too was surprised to be something described. I love this.
Thanks Revi! Im a lonely guy, been that way all my life!
Thank you for this piece, it is poetic, contemporary and universal as literature
Hot damn, SO MANY lines clicked into place inside my chest reminding me I'm alive. Thank you.