There is no such thing as a human being who hasn’t experienced loneliness. Being human means being lonely, or at least feeling lonely from time to time. I’ve experienced it too, and I’d like to tell you more about it here. Maybe my words will help someone, maybe they’ll disappear into the digital void.

Maybe.

There are a lot of maybes in my head, dependencies, connections, ambiguities, unanswered questions, which is why I wrote on my about page that I like to connect dots. I’m not sure if I like it or if I have to. In the end it doesn’t matter, even finding the answers doesn’t matter anymore.

One of the puzzles I’ve been trying to solve for some time is why we feel so lonely even when we’re surrounded by people. Well, I still don’t know the answer, but I have found another clue. And I found it in the process of working through some unpleasant experiences from one job or another. I was surprised, but later I realized that I shouldn’t have been. And I left myself in the state of being surprised by being surprised. Yes, say hello to my brain.

It took me some time to understand why I felt so alone at that time, when I had to deal with some difficult tasks. It was far too much for one person, and yet I had to do it alone. I was given promises, of course, but promises aren’t real help. They’re just words, and words cost nothing. And in the end I was alone. The more promises I got, the more alone I felt. I didn’t understand it then.

This lack of coherence between what people told me and what they actually did created a sense of loneliness in me. I simply felt that I was being lied to. A lie is a basis for lack of trust, and trust is necessary to feel connected. There’s no teamwork if there’s no trust, and where a person is dealing with difficulties they need to feel supported. Really supported, not just with fine words about teamwork and a sense of mission. They need to see another pair of hands working together. The absence of those hands is enough to make you feel alone, but being lied to makes it worse.

Experiences like this, multiplied and amplified, are one of the reasons why I felt so alone. There was simply no space for real connection while I was feeling betrayed and deceived. I began to observe other circumstances in other areas of my life, and I realized that I could be surrounded by people, but if I didn’t trust them at all, I couldn’t make a real connection. And without connection there’s only loneliness.

My lesson was to surround myself with people I could trust, who were coherent, who helped when they promised to help. It may sound silly, naive or just simple, but it was a huge discovery for me. To realize that my loneliness is linked to the lack of inner coherence in other people.

Of course, it wasn’t enough to find people I could trust, nor was it easy. It was only the first step, but it helped me to realize that I wasn’t the problem.

The second step was ahead of me. And it was almost impossible to take.I had to open up and show these people, who I was supposed to trust, who I really was. Oh, it was fun. Now I was the one who had to face the lack of coherence between what I said and what I really did. But it was still the lack of coherence, the discrepancy, between words and actions. On my side this time, but still the same problem.

The lesson I have learned is that one of the main reasons I have felt so lonely so often is that I have lied and been lied to. I was so afraid to show who I really was, or maybe I forgot, or maybe I just chose the wrong people ¹. In the end, I was the one who felt alone, and I’m pretty sure I made others feel the same way.

There’s no moral here other than a lesson for me, and maybe for you, that to feel less alone, we must trust, and to trust, we must be brave. And it’s good to remember, that not all people are trustworthy, but it doesn’t matter if one or hundred of people will hurt us, it’s still worth to try again, because we don’t need hundreds of friends, few is enough.