Fight Loneliness
Holding my two and a half year old son in my arms, we emerged from the underground to be overwhelmed by screams of triumph, cars honking wildly, and people wearing red soccer jersey’s jumping for joy.
Spain had just won the world cup and it seemed that their fans all wanted to come downtown to the intersection of Yonge and Dundas in Toronto to celebrate.
Me, my wife and two kids had gone down to go see the movie Despicable Me. Sundays are family day and we’re always figuring out new things to do with the kids. This Sunday was movie day.
But before we made it to the theater we had to make our way through a sea of smiling faces, red jerseys and Spanish flags.
The police had blocked off Yonge Street south of Dundas so the partiers could celebrate without worrying about being mowed down by crazy Toronto drivers.
And as I stared out at the sea of red, I thought about loneliness.
That in this day and age there are so many ways to fight it.
How To Fight Loneliness – Go Where Your People Are
Critics of the internet age have said that our technology breeds isolation. That we are becoming more and more isolated. Living in houses of glass.
But looking out at the sea of smiling faces yesterday made me realize that those kind of thoughts are just pure bull.
It’s never been easier to connect with your people.
Don’t know what I mean?
We all have things that we like to do, watch, and read.
And it’s never been easier to find other people who share those same interests. And once you do find them there are countless ways to connect with them and start to build solid friendships.
So if you want to fight loneliness find your people. Connect with them, share with them and celebrate with them.
Even the most isolated of people, if they loved Spain yesterday, they could have joined together with thousands of other like-minded people. Dancing and celebrating to the wee hours of the morning.
How To Find Your People
Below you’ll find three of the biggest and easiest online hubs for connecting with your people so you can have help fighting loneliness:
Facebook: I read a report that said there are more than 620 million facebook groups indexed by google. Now that’s a lot of people to connect with.
Yahoo Groups: is one of the world’s largest collections of online discussion boards in the world.
Meetup: Meetup.com is an amazing place to find your people and to connect with them in the real world.
So if you’re looking for ways to fight loneliness first figure out what you like or what you’re interested in. Second go to these three sites and and start making friends.
Be Inspirational!
Ian
Thanks for visiting the site. You should check out some of the other personal development posts. Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook. Or stay in the loop by subscribing to the monthly newsletter and get a free ebook. Thanks for visiting!
No related posts.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good story, good thoughts. I totally agree that no one should be lonely, that there are so many ways to find compatible friends. Just make the effort!
Actually, I have the opposite problem, that of finding more quiet time, time for me to just be with me.
And ultimately, the most profound kind of loneliness is the realization that no one can truly know us completely, can never share our experience the way we do. Even our most intimate friends are pursuing their life journeys alone, just as we are. The antidote to this kind of existential separation is acceptance and affirmation of self. Self-respect and self-love.
And it does help to be able to have those intimate relationships. That kind of closeness matters a lot.
Hey there Denny thanks for the insightful comments. I was on your site last week. Some good stuff going on there.
Like you mentioned, ultimately, even if we’re in a crowd of thousands of people we will be experiencing that experience in ways that even our closest friends will never truly know.
That aloneness lets us touch the essence of ourselves. It lets us understand what it all means for us on a personal level. We process it. Learn from it. And hopefully grow from it in some way.
So aloneness is coming into contact with the inner essence of ourselves. Loneliness misinterprets the silence within as a void of desperate darkeness. One that we must escape from.
Once we can find our place within and our place within the world, that is when we will find ultimate joy.
From the moment we are born we are surrounded by people. Even if only our mother is there we come into this world connected and in the presence of someone.
A subtle lesson for us that we may miss. That we are never truly alone. And with a little oomph we can come back into the world and connect with people through this experience we call life.