Originally Posted Thursday, February 20, 2014
According to the article, people who feel "lonely" die younger than those who aren't. They do not sleep as well. Of course, the study cannot tell whether people are lonely because of environment or psychosis. The article doesn't bother to define what they mean by lonely nor what indicators they used to verify the "loneliness" (I haven't read the study, but surely it does). I am pretty certain, though, that people would have been identified by their responses to a long questionnaire.
There are two things I'd like to know: 1) were the people who made the questionnaire lonely, and 2) were the people studying the subjects the same?
I will look for the questionnaire on loneliness. If I can find it, I will post it here and we can all take it.
I'd also like to know what percent of those who are identified as feeling lonely lived alone.
The article gives you the perception that even a bad relationship is better than being lonely, though. Aggravation and frustration and anger would seem to trump loneliness, though I am certain that was not part of the study.
You understand, of course, the theme informing my photographs, right? I mean, you are not just looking at them and not thinking about it, about "pleasure" and being? About the difficulty of conjoining the physical and psychological in some happy relationship? About isolation and existence?
There is more to them than that, of course, but as I say, it is an informing thematic concept of some significance.
And so there I was before sunrise this morning sitting on the toilet with my iPad reading an article on loneliness having posted a "confession" just the morning before. I had to wonder.
It is wonderful to read a desultory account of loneliness with no follow up. I mean, these researchers feel they've done their job when they've given evidence to the world that loneliness is bad for people. But where is the prescription?
And that is life's joke.
Oh, wait. . . I just found the article (link). I am going to quit reading CNN online. It is such junk news.
But who needs the study at all. Wikipedia already reported all of this. They are a miracle. They site studies that found that much of loneliness is genetic, which, of course, one would assume. And besides that, they illustrate with such a wonderful picture.
I assume I inherited a trait from my father. He was good with people but avoided the crowd. I have friends who are just the opposite. I wonder if they are lonely? I love the line in "The Moderns" concerning Nick Hart when Oiseau sees him sitting alone, drawing: "Ah, Hart [Heart?]," he sings, "among the throng but not of the throng."
It has been awhile now since I've been in a relationship of any degree or kind. I wonder if I might not have to try that again. They don't seem to work out after awhile, and what I desire, I'll never find, but maybe I'll settle for something, a sentient being in the room, somebody to remind me of my foibles and flaws, someone to disappoint me at the worst possible times, someone for whom I can make excuses to both myself and others, someone who will not provide me with the fundamental things for which I would get into a relationship in the first place.
Or perhaps I'll simply join a club.
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(I've searched fruitlessly for the right scene to post here, but it doesn't exist, so here--from the best film about loneliness ever made).
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