Every person has the time when they are in a train home late or scrolling through their phone without meaning when all the noise subsides, and there comes the weird thing to do: I am in the midst of people, but I am not held by anyone. It is not dramatic enough to refer to loneliness. It does not appear to be isolated. Life is all about rich- meetings, messages, groups of relatives, colleagues who order your coffee. And there is a missing that is faintly ringing in the farther corner of the room, like one which had a lamp, but no warmth.

This feeling is not discussed by most of the people. It is not because it is not real but it is confusing. It is impossible to be lonely in a city that never sleeps, in the life which is constantly interrupted with notifications, obligations, and familiar faces. What then is missing connection when you are technically never alone?

It is the solitude of contemporary city life. Not the type born out of desertion but the type that develops within fullness.

I Speak to People All Day, Why Does it Appear no one Knows Me?

In large cities, there is no end of talking. Elevators, offices, cafes, social gatherings are full of small talk. It has birthday dinners, reunions, weddings, festivals. Externally one seemingly is a socially active person, even perhaps popular. but inside, there is something thin.

When something hard occurs, many people start paying attention to it. A bad day at work. A quiet birthday. A moment of self-doubt. They stand and hold the phone, who can they call, not to complain, not to be angry, but to be plain with. A person who would not have to have context, who would not trivialize it, who would not make it recommendations.

Often, the answer is unclear. Or uncomfortable.

This is not concerning the lack of people. It is about having no experiential identification. Friendships in the modern world are ubiquitous, but seldom profound. Present, yet fragile. Good natured, though frequently subject to convenience, time, and energy. No one leaves intentionally. There is rarely conflict. Friendships merely become diluted, making it through distance and hectic and the silent consensus of that there will be time to reunite.

Soon becomes months. Then years.

The Social Pressure to Look Like You’re Fine.

Performing okay is one of the most tiresome parts of city loneliness. Self-sufficiency is rewarded in cities. Independence is admired. Sensitiveness is confused with stoicism. The indirect message is very obvious: live your life right, do not overload other people, move on.

With time, this message is internalized by people. They just cease calling until they have something happy to tell. They underemphasize their plights. Friendships are edited, and the sections that are easy to carry are picked subconsciously.

What has not been said is the same.

This brings about a silence based relationship imbalance. Human beings are not vulnerable in giving presence. They listen, and support and appear--but they hardly ever stand to have themselves seen. It is not that they do not want to, but they do not know where they would land safely.

In this respect, loneliness does not concern the invisibility of others. It is the gradual disappearance on yourself.

When Friendship Begins to Feel Like an added Burden.

Even connection is a thing to manage in fast-paced lives. Weekly catch-ups are made ahead of time. Meetings are crammed in between appointments. Friendship starts working to feel like something that you need to work on, but not something that sustains you.

There is guilt over lack of calling enough. Feeling of guilt about cancellation. Guilt around drifting. And under that sense of guilt, there is a more insidious fact: that most of us are so weary that we can no longer maintain the emotional richness with which we used to do it.

This is highly influenced by emotional exhaustion. Cognitive and emotional labor required in the work all day leaves little time to be connected unstructured. Listening his heart out, telling the truth, keeping space, these involve energy that most individuals are not left with by the end of the day anymore.

So friendships adapt. They become lighter. Shorter. Safer.There is something fundamental, however, which is lost in that adaptation.Everyone else appears to have their people.

The idea that everyone has gotten it is one of the most lonely thoughts that people bear. That others have close circles, group chats and feel like home, the friendship that comes easy and lasts.

What can be seen supports this belief: photos, stories, inside jokes on display. What goes unseen are the silent fissures: the friendships that were transactional, the ones that got through simply because no one talked about what is different, the ones that exist as much in memory as in actual reality.

Isolation lives upon comparison. It makes individuals believe that they are the general element. That connection becomes difficult, there must be individual failure.

The fact is that lots of them are in the same overcrowded rooms with the same silent desire, not knowing how to state, I miss being close to somebody.

How Did We Get that busy That we forgot how to belong?

At one point intimacy was made by default due to proximity. Shared routines. Repeated interactions. Unplanned time together. Closeness is no longer ensured by proximity. Human beings are corporeally close but emotionally far and each has their own parallel lives.

The sense of belonging is now deliberate and not natural. It takes hard work, openness and danger. And in the places where individuals are continually on the move

in the workplaces, households, tasks, there are these underlying impermanence which spill over into relationships.

Why instruct so much when all this is temporary?

This is a question that remains to be unanswered but influences behavior. People hedge emotionally. Their friendship is lax, airy, undemanding. This lessens frustration, but this lessens intimacy.Loneliness in turn, is the price of emotional self-defence.

The Friendship Deficit Friendship No One Equipped us With.

Nobody teaches adults how to create and maintain friendships after their convenience. Romance scripts, family role scripts and professional networking scripts exist. Friendship is supposed to simply occur.

When that is not the case, one thinks that something is wrong with him/her.

But the friendship of a man demands another sort of manly heroism. It involves labeling needs without being sure of any reply. It involves putting up with embarrassment. It involves remaining there even when life takes you into other directions.

Above all, it involves shedding out the notion that profound intimacy should feel natural.

Many individuals are not alone as they do not have people. They are alone since they do not have places where they can come without acting, justifying, or cringing sections of themselves.

Perhaps, It is Not about Doing More to Fix It.

When discussing how to remedy loneliness, individuals tend to think of adding something which should be more plans, more people, more effort. But the loneliness which sports through busy lives is hardly so to be dispersed by extension. It is hardened by diminution. Fewer masks. Fewer assumptions. Less pretending to be fine.

Allowing the connection to become less than perfect is one of the silent transitions which starts to balance out the friendship loss. Not all the dialogues should be interesting. All meet-ups do not have to be effective or happy. The intimacy sometimes becomes too common, sitting together without telling, not talking, not even saying that one is bored, is sad, and not saying sorry.

City living teaches individuals to edit themselves. When a person decides to arrive uncurated, healing commences.

This does not involve melodramatic confessions. It may be as little as saying, I have been feeling very out of touch lately, rather than falling back to I am fine. These are the moments where there is no guarantee of intimacy- but there is a suggestion of it.

Allowing Friendships to Evolve Without Sympathizing that they are not working.

Most of the friendships do not seem close any more because they are old fashioned. They were constructed in similar conditions which do not exist anymore.

Rather than grieving this as being a loss, others learn to allow friendships to develop. Or to relieve the tension of recreating what was and to inquire What now can this be?

At other times depth appears to be different. A friend does not always have to be the person to talk to every day, but the one you will call upon at the right time. There is nothing like distance and distance does not necessarily imply lack of interest, but making the most of limited emotional capacity by having richer lives.

Repair here is concerned not with pushing intimacy into the old forms. It is about letting relationships breathe in to new ones without feeling resentment.

Making the Emotional Availability Choice vs. the Emotional Perfection Choice.

A lot of individuals wait to be ready before they make the contact. Ready feeling, more relaxed, more composed. But connection never occurs at our most genteel times. It occurs when one chooses to be emotionally open, and not emotionally spectacular.

This availability is subtle. It is the readiness not to lie but not need encouragement. To give without seeking mending. To hear without repeating answers.

Emotional availability is a blessing in a life where everybody is strained. Not because it is the solution, but because it provides a moment of rest--of space in which two individuals confront each other in the kind of being that they are.

Loneliness does not usually come to pass when one is perfectly understood, but rather when he/she is met with earnestness.

Being Strong and Remaining the same, Not by Intensity.

Deep connection is a myth that is brought about by intense conversation or dramatic bonding. Things work out in practice since belonging is constructed by repetition. Through familiarity. By reappearing over and over in the minor and mundane manner.

That is why short-term social contacts can be rather unsatisfactory. They lack continuity. To restore a friendship deficit, it can be important to put more of their resources into fewer relationships, but to interact with those relationships in a more regular and consistent way, not deeper and deeper simultaneously, but more reliable over time.

The consistency speaks without saying much: I am not going anywhere.

Creating Spaces of New Forms of Friendship.

The nature of friendships required by the people also vary with the level of growth. Not every significant relationship resembles being your best friend. Others are more slow and quiet, and circumstantial--and yet most nutritious.

Relinquishing hard and fast notions of the way friendship ought to be is healing. In permitting connection out of continuous validation. In understanding that not all meaningful relationships have to be comprehensive to hold.

Loneliness can also be remedied by allowing yourself to redefine connection in your own way.

The Ending of Where Connection Actually Begins.

Having loneliness is not a failure in life. It is a relational reality. And seeing it, without a judgment of it, is the first step of benignity to yourself.

You do not have to transform your social life. You do not have to start feeling helpless in front of all your friends. It can be a secret process, healing, and it can be achieved by a single soothing expectation, a single sincere moment, a single relationship permitted to exist, but not to be an ideal.

The pangs of the middle of the ten-thousand days are not evidence that there is something wanting in you. It is an evidence that you want to belong and when you are on this side, and, perhaps, you are wondering, I did not know how to say this, but this is just how I feel--then you are not alone to-day at least.

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