Being Lonely, a Bigger Pandemic!

Most of us are lonely. The bigger the city, the larger the designation, the wider the social network - the more and more we are lonely. This loneliness is killing us all from inside, day by day, while we put up a facade on the outside.

This is my experience from watching myself and people around me for years. I was attributing some other reasons to it all these years except this one thing - loneliness. There was a phase I was missing my home, parents and my brother when I left home at 21. Then came a phase where my work schedule, colleagues, never ending deadlines and meetings made me feel I am occupied. Occupied to an extent, I forgot to live my life the way it should have been lived. Because I was made to believe that promotions, after office hangouts, networking and everything with some end result was what life is all about. I lived that life for years, diligently, with all earnestness. It rewarded me in the form of promotion, money, artificial human beings around and a bunch of belongings which felt very necessary.

I was addicted to retail therapy, a new age terminology for shopaholics. Somehow recovered from it. Then it became gadgets. Spent a fortune, literally, on all sorts of gadgets. I always had this reasoning that having devices with the latest technology helps in productivity as well as me getting bored of the existing ones. All this for what? Keeping myself occupied. Keeping myself busy, busy for nothing. 

Social media has consumed us like never before. I realized I was drowning in it for endless hours. Even if I thought I knew how to swim in it, it took a lot of time to realize there was nothing in it. Let me put this out here today - I have played to the gallery, I have waited to check the number of people liking what I have expressed, attention was like a drug. I have also engaged with people which was unnecessary. I have behaved like an idiot on a few occasions, which is known as trolling. I have argued on so many topics as if winning that argument will earn me a badge or a medal. All this for what? Validation? From whom? People I don't even know or met in real life? I may have been better than many faceless people out there, but that can never be an explanation for allowing myself to be consumed by this medium.

All these made me question, where am I heading! What is the purpose of it all? Before you assume that I am in search of nirvana, I am far from it. I am only in search of myself, the self which is largely living on materialistic validations & achievements. I can not be detached from it completely for sure, but I want to go back to the simpler days that were quantified in how much happy time I have had in a day. I want to go back to my friends who were there with me when none of this happened to me, long lost cousin brothers with whom I spent many afternoons conspiring to fight against aliens, visiting new places that will be an addition to my experiences. 

I can say these with so much clarity today because when I look back at the last decade and think about memories that puts a smile on my face, I can only think of instances where I discovered a land I had never been to, the moments I spent with friends or colleagues at locations which we never planned, family outings without any reason and so on. These are the things that happened rarely, because we rarely had taken that much time for ourselves. 

I have discovered this loneliness in small patches. More so in the last few months. Enough to write about it now. I have found loneliness in the midst of office-parties, inside crowded local trains, WhatsApp groups, while driving or even in the middle of a conversation. And the feeling of it is so empty that I can barely describe it. But the process to recover from this has to start and the best person who can help me is myself.

The SMS at the end of month & the size of our social media platforms have fooled us for long enough. Time to leave & live.