Book: Exercises in the art of loneliness

What does it mean to be lonely? How we live, if not involved in another person's life? As we establish relationships with other people, especially if it is not easy to talk? Medicine whether from loneliness - sex, and if so, what happens when your own body or sexuality are seen unhealthy or flawed when we fall ill or are not blessed with beauty? And do we benefit from it? If she brings people, or screens for us a trap?

A long time ago I was listening to a song by Dennis Wilson. <....> It was my favorite line: "Loneliness is a very special place." A teenager, sitting on the bed autumn evenings, I envisioned this place as the city may at dusk when everyone comes home, when pomahival, reviving, neon. I had already identified myself as a citizen of this city, I liked the way Wilson had it right, as does his and abundant, yet intimidating. Loneliness is a special place. To discern the truth in the statement, Wilson is not always easy, but in the future my travels, I was able to confirm that he is right and loneliness is not a mediocre experience: it leads straight to the heart of what we value and need. From a lonely city brought forth many wonderful and born alone, and that helps him to overcome.

What - the pain of another? Easier to pretend it doesn't exist. It is easier to refuse to even try to empathize with, easier to believe that the body of a stranger on the sidewalk - just steffany Ghost vtrostepennyh figure, a collection of colored pixels that are out, should we turn away, to switch their visual channel.

Talk a lot - and he will be terrified, and all around; speak little, bit do not refuse to yourself in existence: "a" shows that it is in no way direct communication channel. If being alone is to determine what desire of proximity, then, this definition included the need to Express themselves and be heard, to share thoughts, experiences and feelings. Intimacy cannot exist if its members do not wish to be known, manifested. But assessment of the levels of this vicinity - a sly thing. Either communicate enough and left for other people hidden, or risk becoming an outcast, obragas too: small and large wounds, tedious obsession, abscesses and cataracts need, shame, and longing.

An infirmity of speech, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, oleski, seizures, muteness, stuttering and stammering, forgetting words, even the failure to grasp the joke - all this creates a loneliness, a haunting reminder of the precariousness and imperfection of the ways of expression.

In 1975 the sociologist Robert Weiss has prepared an important study, "Loneliness: the experience of emotional and social isolation". Recognizing that this topic is commonly neglected, he dryly noted, loneliness is often broadcast poets, songwriters, and not social scientists. He believed that solitude is not only in itself removes from equilibrium - Weiss writes about this condition as an "obsession" that this state of "persistently remarkable", "almost sinister affliction of the spirit," and thus interferes with empathy, because pulling a kind of self-protective amnesia, but because when people are no longer alone, he barely remembers what it is, it's condition: "If a person has been alone, now he has no access to the his self, which experienced a loneliness; moreover, people will likely prefer that it stays that way. In the end, suffered in the past from loneliness is likely to respond to someone else's loneliness without understanding or even it is possible, with irritation".

What connects the mask and the loneliness? Obvious answer: eliminate the exposure mask, shipment visibility, in German it is called Maskenfreiheit, the freedom given by the mask. Not to see means to Dodge the possibility of being rejected, as well as the possibility of adoption - balm love.

When people start experience of loneliness, they turn on, as it is called psychologists, sverkhplastichnost in relation to social threat is a phenomenon first described by Weiss in the 1970s. Unwittingly caught in this condition, people tend to perceive the world through a more negative concepts, and to expect and remember the rudeness, rejection and strife, to give them more weight than goodwill and friendliness. Because of this, of course, a vicious circle, lonely man deeper segregated is suspicious and naudime. And since sverkhplastichnost not perceived consciously, to recognize or to correct the bias extremely difficult. In other words, the more lonely a person becomes, the harder it is given to him the navigation of public waters. Loneliness was growing on it like mold or wool becomes a barrier to communication regardless of how much you need this relationship. Loneliness grows, spreads and feeds on itself. It is worth it to take root, it is incredibly difficult to uproot.

What it's like to be lonely? A feeling akin to hunger: still hungry when everything is prepared for the feast. There is shame and anxiety, and over time they begin to exude outward, and a lone man is increasingly cut off from the rest, increasingly alienated. It hurts as hurt feelings, but there are physical consequences: they are invisible, hidden inside the closed cavities of the body. Loneliness setting in, I'm trying to say, cold as ice, and clear as glass, it encloses and absorbs.

Alone is hard to admit, it is difficult to determine. Like depression - a condition with which it is often crossed, and the loneliness can deeply permeate the fabric of personality.

The revelation of solitude is all - pervading, inexplicable feeling that I lack something, I don't have what people expected, and all because of a certain serious and undoubtedly visible on the outside of my flawed person, and this feeling has arisen as an unwelcome consequence of such a complete disregard for me.

Loneliness - not a mediocre experience: it leads straight to the heart of what we value and need.

Loneliness grows in depth, breadth, and seeks to live forever. It is worth it to strengthen, how to get rid of him becomes very difficult.

Imagine: you're standing at night at the window on the sixth, or seventeenth, forty-third floor of a building. The city opens for you as a set of cells, hundreds of thousands of Windows, some dark, some flooded green, or white, or Golden light. They here and there pass strangers, busy with myself. You see, but not reach them, and because it's a common urban phenomenon in all night in any city in the world, according to even the most sociable thrill of loneliness, it is an uncomfortable combination of disunity and nudity.