I was having lunch with a friend today, and the topic came up of loneliness. Why do people feel lonely? Are they not happy with their own company?<\/p>\n
My friend suggested that it is not so much being by ourselves that causes such a feeling, but rather the back-and-forth between being alone and being with other people. The contrast encourages a mindset that expects the company of others.<\/p>\n
She related a story told to her by a friend who had visited North Africa, where he had encountered a nomadic tribe. Individuals of that tribe would sometimes end up all alone for weeks at a time, with nobody else for miles around.<\/p>\n
When told of this extreme way of being, her friend had asked one of the tribesmen whether he ever became lonely. “No,” the man replied, “I am always with myself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was having lunch with a friend today, and the topic came up of loneliness. Why do people feel lonely? Are they not happy with their own company? My friend suggested that it is not so much being by ourselves that causes such a feeling, but rather the back-and-forth between being alone and being with … Continue reading “A cure for loneliness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18547"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18551,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18547\/revisions\/18551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}