Brain Food #429
Connected through our loneliness
Daily Brain Food.
Thoughts of the day
British writer Olivia Laing can be described as the queen of loneliness. It’s not every day that someone writes a book called The Lonely City, capturing the essence of being alone in a place filled with people, namely New York.
Isolation does not necessarily have to mean loneliness. But the act of being alone, and not having easy access to distractions, can allow us to embrace that pang of loneliness that might unexpectedly visit us once every now and then, and to accept it as an essential part of being human, together with everyone else.
“Love is not just conveyed by touch. It moves between strangers; it travels through objects and words in books. There are so many things available to sustain us now, and though it sounds counterintuitive to say it, loneliness is one of them. The weird gift of loneliness is that it grounds us in our common humanity. Other people have been afraid, waited, listened for news. Other people have survived. The whole world is in the same boat. However frightened we may feel, we have never been less alone.”
— Olivia Laing