Being Lonesome Together
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“City life is millions of people being lonesome together.”
Henry David Thoreau
Manhattan. Born and raised. I love this place. This city. This life. I love the hustle and bustle, the mosaic of faces, the messy blur of belonging. I cherish the symphony of car horns and human hollers, the speeding of souls and yellow taxis. I’m warmed by the bright lights, the constant color, the tie-dye of time. I celebrate that I am rarely alone. There is always someone else. Someone walking by. Someone hunched over a screen. Someone reading a paper. Someone soaking up life. Someone who also dreams and struggles and curses the traffic.
But I wonder. And I know. Being surrounded does not mean being connected. It is plenty possible to be alone, and to be lonely, in a vast crowd. Maybe it is even easier to grow lonesome in a place packed with people? Maybe as people zig and zag by us, buzzing through the maze of their days, it is harder to reach out, to talk, to say it. Hello.
I think about this now. Because I am a mother. I have little girls who will one day grow up and live in the world. And I wonder what world it will be? Do I want them to live here in this exquisite urban chaos? Or do I wish for them a simpler space, full of green grass and wide smiles and robust relationships? I don’t know. I don’t know what I want for them because I don’t know what I want for me. It is hard to figure these things out, isn’t it?
Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe city and country are screens just like this one into which I stare. Maybe behind it all, life is life and place is place. Maybe, in truth, we are all destined to be a bit lonesome from time to time. Maybe this is good for us. Maybe distance from others, from self even, is important. Maybe it just doesn’t matter whether we float amidst tall buildings or tall trees. Maybe we are who we are no matter where we grow.
I don’t know. What I do know is that I am here. Swaddled in this city that raised me alongside Mom and Dad. At this screen, my bright haven, thinking aloud, asking. Asking the big questions that come like rain, pounding down. The big questions that find us when we are good enough to let them. The questions that are bigger than we are, than we will ever be.
Who would I be if I were raised somewhere else?
Is this city part of my soul?
Is loneliness, in patches, good for us?
What do I want for the creatures I created?
Why am I here, opening up, admitting uncertainty?
Does becoming ever cease or are we always evolving into who it is we are?
The big questions alight wherever we are. City. Country. Cyberspace. Everywhere in between. They burrow in and beckon. And in their misty presence, we think and write and wonder. In our loving lonesomeness. In our tangled togetherness.
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Do you think it’s possible to be both lonesome and surrounded? Do you think you’d be a different person if raised elsewhere? Do you think it’s important to ask big questions? Do you think that this life, this cyber life, is millions of people being lonesome together?
I love the city too but I adore being alone. I love the city because I feel you can be together and solitary. You can be anonymous. You can talk a lot or not at all. You can go to Central Park and look at the most beautiful trees and round a corner and see the most beautiful skyline. I guess only a city person finds a skyline beautiful. I think we are who we are despite where we grow up, I do.
I most certainly do believe that you can be surrounded by many, many people and still feel isolated.
There’s a line from a song by (hold on to yourself and don’t laugh) Alice Cooper that hits this perfectly from a relationship standpoint that I’ve always remembered:
“I may be lonely
But, I’m never alone”
Packed by humans on all sides, I knew the feeling of looking up and watching the dozens and scores of them file past me and not one of them was I able to reach out to. However, other days, I was able to smile because I love the heady feeling that came with being in the middle of the throngs of human bustle.
But your point concerning the possibility of feeling lonely while being surrounded? I certainly do know that you can have both at the same time.
Taken further, I do believe that location (city or rural) makes a difference when we experience that feeling – and we all experience that feeling.
Yes, I do think we all experience that feeling. Of being alone. And I do not think it’s always a bad thing. I think that patches of loneliness can often be patches of fertile existential soil. For me, stints of lonesomeness are often very productive professionally and personally. These are the more quiet times when ideas come, where dots connect themselves, when awareness alights. But I do wonder whether those of us who are so impossibly surrounded by people tell ourselves that we are more connected than we really are. I think that we often tell ourselves the story that we are part of something grand, but are we really part of it or just a moving piece?
Thanks for chiming in here.
You can be surrounded and lonesome at the same time. I love the way you express this, “maybe we are who we are no matter where we grow”. I think about children that grow without our freedom, some abused and not able to use their potential. In the U.S we have so much more than other places in the world. Sorry this is going off of what you are talking about here. I believe deep down inside we are who we are, and where we live can either enhance that or not.
I grew up in small-town USA, where you can’t walk into the grocery store without seeing someone you know and stopping to chat. And I have found, since moving away to live in cities since marriage, that I miss that dreadfully. Life may be slower and duller in the country, but there is a richness to it that I crave now. (She writes, as she is currently planning on moving from small city to big city!)
So yes, I think it is very possible to feel lonely even when surrounded by many people – because I do, on a daily basis. And this internet? It helps me feel less lonely. There is a community to be found here that is lacking here in this city where I dwell.
Your comment strikes me on two levels. First, why is it that we so often do things that contradict our deepest longings? Why do we move to big cities when we want to be in small spaces? I know there are many factors at play and that it doesn’t all boil down to desire.
Second, I have wondered for a long time whether those of us who blog belong to a unique species of particularly lonely or introspective creatures OR whether we are just more honest about the grays of reality, more compelled to have conversations about these things???
“Lonesome” is part of the human condition. No matter where we are. Personally, I prefer being alone in an urban setting. I love the hustle and bustle and sense of life buzzing around. The ache of being alone is considerably lessened.
I note that you say “lonesome” rather than lonely. “Lonely” seems to be a dirty word in our culture – which is subtly judgmental. Millions of us are lonely, and somehow feel shame rather than admitting it. As though there is something wrong with us when in fact – everyone feels this way some of the time, and there is no shame in feeling lost and isolated in our culture which reinforces separation and distrust in so many ways.
Thank goodness for our virtual communities that allow us some sort of connection.
I’m from a fairly small town in Louisiana, but aren’t they all small in Louisiana? I could totally move away and live in a large city. I know I would miss having some sort of celebration every weekend. I would miss walking into a place and seeing a familiar face. But I have to say that doesn’t mean you aren’t lonely.
I’m one of those people that has a million and one friends. But even saying that I can be in a room full of those people and feel like I am the only one on the island. Is that a trust issue? Does that mean I put up walls?
On the note would I be a different person if I had been raised in a different city? I think that answer is yes and no. I would still have the values my parents instilled in me. But maybe I wouldn’t take life as slow and maybe I wouldn’t be so open with strangers. Maybe I wouldn’t expect food to be such an experience. I def wouldn’t have a Southern drawl that is a conversation starter.
I was in Europe this summer all by myself and you would think I would have been lonely. Nope! I had the time of my life making friends for 30 days. The most lonely I’ve ever been has been while surrounded by all the people I love.
You asked if “you’d be a different person if raised elsewhere” – I was raised in multiple cities and I most likely would be a different person had I been raised in the same place. I moved in the middle of seventh grade and again in the middle of my freshman year of high school. It’s interesting to look back at the person I was at each of those points in my life and I can say with honesty that moving was the best thing for me. (At the time I most certainly did not agree.) In retrospect I was a little cliquish during the seventh grade – hanging with the same girls that I’d known since kindergarten. I was a bit of a snob and perhaps not the nicest person. When I moved I was the outcast in my new school – eating lunch alone the first few days and forcing myself to learn how to make friends. It made me realized that perhaps I hadn’t been the nicest person before and I, at the wise age of 12, turned over a new leaf. Moving again during freshman year of high school was the most traumatizing. However, this time I had my sister, who is two years older than me, at the same new school. We huddle together at lunch, talking, getting to know each other again (we had grown apart for a few years when I was in middle school scene and she was in high school scene) and it was a magical time for both of us. I would have to say this is the time when we became best friends again. Had I been raised in one place I think I would have been a different person and I am so grateful for being raised in multiple cities.
Kristen – Thank you for your comment. Here I was thinking in that good old city/country binary opposition and you raise an interesting and important layer to the discussion, namely permanence. It is very intriguing to think that you would have turned out a different person if you hadn’t hopped around a bit as a child…
i think that lonesome feeling can sink in anywhere–even in the safety of our homes, surrounded by our families and friends. there are these moments of disconnecting from the world, of feeling ill-aligned that seem to crop up. i feel this odd love for them, perhaps because when I feel lonely that sad tinge seems to foster gentleness with myself that other times i have a hard time remembering to muster.
as to where we’re raised, i am a country girl through and through. i live in a city and i chose to live in a city and i imagine that this is a choice i will continue to make, but the fresh air and tall grass and dark starry sky run through my veins. sometimes feeling lonesome in the country seems easier–you bump against the world a little less–but i feel like it can be harder to pull yourself out of, too. there have been so many times in my city life when i have been unexpectedly pulled out of loneliness by a chance encounter.
i think blogging is about loneliness but only partly. i think it is a space of self-examination, of indulgence and exploration away from the demands of our everyday. i think it is about daring to hope to connect with people on the most personal and most vulnerable of levels, away from the convenience of proximity and schedules that influences so many of our face-to-face friendships.
and yes–i think it’s important to ask the big questions. that’s part of why i love your blog.
Rachel,
I think you’re absolutely right about loneliness hitting us amidst the safe zone of our families and friends. Sometimes we are going through something that we don’t feel like they get. And we are pulled out when we make a connection with someone who has been there, who gets it.
I don’t blog out of loneliness, but a desire to connect with others, to share ideas, to listen to others and how they grapple with some of life’s big questions.
And yes, Aidan, those periods are fertile ground–times to explore and bounce around the walls of our mind. You never know what you may find!
I am a city girl, and there’s no escaping the fact that it’s a large part of who I am. I love the chaos but when I’m in the middle of it all, I don’t feel consumed by it – I’ve learned to accept it and in this chaos, have found my own calm. The cacophany of sounds bring me comfort.
Sometimes I do long for the gentler pace and solitude of the country or a small town. Maybe that’s why I welcome snow days in the city, despite its inconveniences. There’s nothing quite like the serenity that snow brings as it blankets my city in white. It also reminds me of fresh new beginnings and the pristine beauty of simplicity – Mother Nature embracing us in the midst of our own hustle and bustle, scurrying from concrete to stone to metal and back.
This question of where we were raised influencing who we’ve become? I ask it ALL THE TIME. I have mixed emotions about my home town. I loved growing up there, but I could never move back now. I became someone who is incompatible with that place in spite of growing up there. Would I be even more different from that place had it not shaped the first 18 years of my life? Probably. Would those differences make me a better version of myself? I’ll never know. And that makes me a wee bit crazy.
Where we live definitely influence our thoughts and feelings- how could it not be. I’m one of the few natives of Los Angeles- born and raised here.
I love LA because it is so much more than people realize. I love my car and being able to hit the beach, desert or mountains. I can go skiing and surfing on the same day.
Winter clothes? I don’t know what those are. We don’t pack them up and put them away in spring.
But having been privileged enough to travel around the country and world I know from experience that I would be different if I grew up elsewhere.
I’ll throw something else into the mix. If you speak other languages you often find that you look at the world/life differently. Language has an enormous influence upon things too. When I speak Hebrew I am a different person than when I speak English.
As for loneliness, well that is something that I have experienced in relationships with one other person and in rooms filled with people.
Sometimes I notice it and sometimes I don’t. I think that some people have a much harder time with quiet moments than others.
I agree with you about being bilingual, I feel the same way when I speak Greek. Maybe it’s because they are such ancient languages the words seem weightier?
One of my favorite quotes: “To have another language is to possess another soul”–Charlemagne
Between birth and high school graduation, we moved ten times. I have lived in a small coastal New England town, a town so rural that two towns shared one high school, and a southern community large enough to be called “city” but full of suburbs. There is no doubt that the frequent relocating plays a part in who I am today.
There is no good or bad. There is just different. I am resilient and adaptable but can also be reserved and disconnected. I can let people and things go because I learned that I must, but I have the ability to embrace change in a way some others don’t.
I find the images of big city and rural life extremely and equally romantic. But my suburban cul-de-sac is exactly what I need. The space for privacy, a yard all our own, coupled with a sense of community.
“Being surrounded does not mean being connected. It is plenty possible to be alone, and to be lonely, in a vast crowd.” This is so true. However, I like to think that thanks to blogging and social media, the opposite can be true: We can be physically alone, yet “connected” to people all over the world.
However, cyber-connections are not the same as physical connections and we need both. I think loneliness and connectedness are not about locations but relationships.
City or country, what most of us need are people who love us and who we love. If we have that, we won’t be lonely, even when we’re alone.
I believe I would have different experiences, different friends, maybe even a different husband. But as I’ve grown as a person I know that I am who I am. No matter that the world changes, jobs, friends, even kids. I know in my gut that I would love and wonder and strive to be the same person no matter where I was raised.
BTW, I forgot to mention that this post made me think of Eleanor Rigby.
Wow. Big questions! I think it is possible to be very lonely and be completely surrounded by people. Just because people are around you does not mean you are making a connection. Which when I think about it makes me both sad and happy. Sometimes I want to make a connection with the people I am around and other times I do not. For instance, when I was becoming increasingly unhappy in my job, I was surrounded by people but not making any real connections because “it” (the job), was not who I was or wanted to be.
I am very blessed to live in what has been considered to be one of the “best” places to live in the country. I have mountains all around me and beautiful walking trails that I can not wait to enjoy when baby arrives. Yet, there is a **chance** we could be leaving this beautiful space and moving to the BIG city…..It has taken me a long time to get used to this idea, but after a much thought, I realized that it does not matter where we are as a family. As long as there is a lot of love and we are there together. I think wherever you are, you will be happy because you have a wonderful family and little girls that love you and need you. So, in short I dont think it where you are that matters, but who you are there with!
I believe strongly that ‘place’ shapes us, so I loved this post, and I do think where we’re raised changes us. But I think one can feel happy, sad, lonely, connected anywhere. I grew up in a tiny town in the mountains, and felt very connected, but I imagine your kids can feel just as connected in their neighborhood, block, circle of community. And both locations lend to a unique childhood experience.
The lonliest time in my life was my first semester away at college. I commuted for 2 years, then transferred to the big (to me) city of Pittsburgh. The other kids new to living the college life were freshmen, and didn’t really click with me. So there I was, on a campus with a student population 6x greater than the entire county I grew up in, and in many ways, totally alone. It’s the connections, not the population density, that banish loneliness. And so I think the internet is a double-edged sword: it’s possible to be anonymous and alone. But it’s also possible to form meaningful connections with others we may never meet face to face, and those supports can make us feel as though we are not alone. And I think where we live shapes us, but it doesn’t limit us. We will always have an understanding of our home places, but we can choose to reinvent ourselves somewhere else.
I believe that where we live influences who we are. I am a city girl and I will always be a city girl even though I now live in the suburbs. Much of my family grew up in small towns and I see great differences between myself and my cousins of the same age and I attribute some of these differences to our different environments.
As for loneliness, I think it can strike at any time and in any place whether we are alone or with company. When you find yourself amongst people yet nobody shares the feelings you are experiencing it can be lonely. I remember when I was in elementary school (my school was very diverse) and we were on a field trip at the Art Institute (Chicago) my class was still on our bus and we were watching a class from another school as they stood outside waiting for their bus. There was only one black student waiting in that crowd, and although he was playing with his friends I heard one of the black kids on our bus point him out and say “He must be lonely.” I would not have thought of it on my own, but once I heard it, it made perfect sense and I don’t think I will ever forget it.
These are great questions.
I’ve only lived in cities (minus the 4 years of undergrad in which a college campus is a unique ‘city’ unto itself).
I love to do things by myself — movies, walks, drinking coffee, shopping. I often feel like because of my job I give so much of my personal self to what I do that at the end of the day I *want* to be alone. (Also, maybe it’s an only child thing).
I love living in NYC for exactly what you posted. I love to do things ‘by myself’ but I never actually feel alone because I am constantly surrounded by people. I think I find that comforting. Most of the time.
I have been to the Hopper exhibit at the Whitney twice. First time with two of my friends and second time by myself. Strangely, I felt awkward and annoyed the first time, but when I went alone I got so much more out of his work.
Some of my most favorite experiences were being alone in big cities. Taking it all in as an observer, doing whatever I was doing as a participant, being so keenly aware of my own reactions and responses … For me, that’s soothing balm for a lonely soul.
Definitely. I feel like I have been lonely in a crowd for most of my life. Sad, but true. I am so happy that I have my son and I love him with every fiber of my being, but I still feel lonely at times. At night. When he’s asleep and I’m alone. For the past year, I have been working on this with my Therapist because I am ready to live. And enjoy life. And make POSITIVE and meaningful connections with others. Aidan, this post SPEAKS to me.