This past week I had witnessed social loneliness. I was offered to have lunch in one of our institutions. I picked up my tray, picked up a turkey sandwich and looked for a place to sit down. There were eight employees in the room, each socially distanced because of health regulations (two per table). But for a Philippine lady two tables over there was complete silence in the room. This older lady made some conversation with her co-worker at the other end of the table. The six other people in the room had their lunch bags in front of them, ate in silence but all the while they were completely taken up with their phones.
No one spoke! There was no eye contact between persons. The only direction the eyes went was toward the screen on their phones.
I ate my lunch in complete silence. What a lonely experience! Is this where modern life is taking us? Holding your phone with one hand, eating your lunch with the other: is this the sign of a healthy, vibrant life? What a chilling question.
In North American society we have been moving during the past three generations toward a society that is more and more individualistic. ‘I do not belong to any group/community/family and I do not feel any responsibility to contribute towards others.’
Each person in that room could have been in a little room with no other human being, eating their lunch and working their phone. Nothing more is needed to live when life has become so lonely!
Loneliness is when no one cares about you and you do not care about others. Loneliness is having nothing to share and receive from the others. Loneliness is just trying to survive all on your own. You can be in a room full of people (their physical bodies) and yet be so alone.
That is how I felt. That is the message I received. You will walk out of this room and your existence does not matter one single bit!
Oh, how I wished there were children in that room. They would want attention and I would certainly want to interact with them and their parents. Oh, how I wish there was an elderly grandparent in that room. They would have moved over to make conversation. Children and grandparents will break the loneliness.
We all fear growing old, needing care in a seniors care home, where we might spend most of our day, alone, in our room with no one to share our concerns and joys with, and no one to ease the loneliness of this part of our life.
Is this the life that awaits us in the upcoming decades? Will we sit there munching our lunch but only be as significant to the next person at the end of our table as the paper napkin we are using?
This was certainly not a pleasant lunch hour.
What are we to do?
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