Loneliness Essay

In “Living Alone is The New Norm”, loneliness shares no correlation with living alone due to the quality of social interactions. As Lucius Annaeus Seneca once said, “It is quality rather than quantity that matters”. According to the TIME article titled, “Living Alone is The New Norm”, “Reams of published research show that it’s the quality, not the quantity, of social interactions that best predicts loneliness,” (Klinenberg 1). Although there is no real or tangible definition of loneliness, researchers have concluded that loneliness revolves around social interactions.

Loneliness is the sadness resulting from being isolated or abandoned. Being lonely is almost always directly connected to relations between people, or the lack there of. Mother Teresa once said “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” In John Steinbecks classic novel, Of Mice And Men, the three characters, Crooks, Curley’s wife and Candy struggle with loneliness in different forms because of characteristics that they can’t control. All three characters deal with their loneliness by searching for companionship with others on the ranch and this works out differently for each of them.

Nouwen (1975) describes loneliness as a universal experience that affects even the most intimate relationships. He identifies loneliness as one of the universal sources of human suffering. Some of the mental suffering in the

“Actually, feeling lonely has little to do with how many friends you have. It 's the way you feel inside. Some people who feel lonely may rarely interact with people and others who are surrounded by people but don 't feel connected” (Karyn Hall 2013). Truthfully, loneliness is something almost all people fear. It 's a deeper feeling then just being isolated. It 's feeling distant or disconnected from others. Loneliness is so much more than just feeling secluded, it 's feeling rejected by society, or even like an outcast. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck suggests that there is a deeper meaning to being lonely than just the superficial sense of

Of Mice and Men is a skillful novel, that portrays the idea of loneliness throughout the novel. Two men, George and Lennie are there for each other through everything. They also have their tiffs just like any other friends. There are several clearly stated themes running through the novel. But, the two themes that interact with each other are loneliness and companionship.

“Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for” (Dag Hammarskjold). Loneliness is a scary thing. As a child, I was very shy and timid and I suffered from it. My life was sheltered by my parents and I desperately wanted a sibling. Along with my parents, the private school I had gone to all my life never gave me the experience of stranger interaction. The thought of starting a conversation with someone I have never met made me drench in sweat. I dreaded the day of going to a public high school. Never in my dreams would I have imagined how it would affect my life and mold me into the person I am today.

Loneliness has become an epidemic among young adults and spared out in elders’ everyday life where social isolation has become a cause of early death because we cannot cope alone.

Another effect is loneliness is not a matter of external conditions but rather more of a psychological state, which can cause neuroticism, or anxiety with due time. For example, John Cacioppo, the director of the center for cognitive and social neuroscience at the University of Chicago, says the epidemic of loneliness is affecting the basic functions of human physiology. And in one experiment, Cacioppo confirmed “The greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are.”

“I think cruelty is loneliness disguised in bitterness” (Thomas W. Hiddleston). This quote expounds how the lack of company and friends can potentially lead you down a path of heartlessness, and despair. In the story Of Mice and Men, you follow the duo George and Lennie in their quest to achieve the American dream. John Steinbeck utilizes his story Of Mice and Men to show how the loneliness of the characters leads to their cruel actions, he exposes this through the characters Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife.

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside... Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be”(Anne Frank). In the story, “Diary of a Young Girl”, by Anne Frank, Anne is a young Jewish girl who has to flee into hiding during the Holocaust and writes in her diary about what goes on. At the beginning Anne is sociable, but as the war progresses she becomes lonely. Therefore I believe that loneliness can change a person.

According to George Monbiot’s article “The Age of Loneliness Is Killing Us” Monbiot states that society is shifting into isolation and loneliness. Instead of having the age of sharing and socializing. Each and every individual is wanting to stay alone with their own solitude and loneliness. Monbiot recognizes this damaging effect on society and states that how much dangerous it is. To start off. Monbiot claims that we as humans are social beings and always will be “We were social creatures from the start,” by disagreeing with Thomas Hobbes’s claim on our human state of nature “of every man against every man.” Monbiot sees this idea of every person on their own an epidemic of loneliness in today’s age, and how it

Oftentimes, people confuse loneliness with the state of being alone. When looking at the overall big picture, it is easy to forget that loneliness is temporary. People are not alone because even back in primitive times, they bore a natural instinct to strive for companionship in order to survive. Human imagination creates companions in cases of extreme loneliness which contradicts the state of being alone. Due to societal and family standards, others in society make it practically impossible to be alone. Mankind often goes through life without realizing the overwhelming amount of human contact and support. People are never alone, they are just simply

Research provides empirical support for many of these postulated emotional correlates: for example, Sermat (1980) as well as Loucks (1974) reported data linking loneliness with hostility. In a study done at UCLA, Russell et at., (1978) found lonely students were apt to feel "angry", "self- enclosed", "empty", and "awkward". These students also described them- selves as tense, restless and anxious. Similar results were obtained among a sample of senior citizens studied by Perlman, Gerson and Spinner (1978). Another consistent finding has been that lonely individuals have a basically negative outlook: for instance, lonely respondents report being less happy, less satisfied, and more pessimistic (Russell et al., 1978; Perlman et al., 1978). When

To be lonely is an easy thing, being alone is another matter entirely. To understand this, first one must understand the difference between loneliness and being alone. To be alone means that your are not in the company of anyone else. You are one. But loneliness can happen anytime, anywhere. You can be lonely in a crowd, lonely with friends, lonely with family. You can even be lonely while with loved ones. For feeling lonely, is in essence a feeling of being alone. As thought you were one and you feel as though you will always be that way. Loneliness can be one of the most destructive feelings humans are capable of feeling. For loneliness can lead to depression, suicide, and even to raging out and hurting friends and/or

There have been numerous interpretations of the true state of loneliness, but how is it really defined? Would you think that a person isolated in the corner of the room socially withdrawn from the crowed is lonely or someone surrounded by their group of friends playing and laughing around? The fact of the matter is it could be both individuals, there is no telling what they feel on the inside unless you can figure out the signs and symptoms and analyze their background information in history. Some may not too choose to believe it but someone close to you can be suffering from this condition.