Loneliness In The Crowd - Relations

Once my friend wrote poetry - teenage, hysterical, but touching. I liked them - maybe because they corresponded to my mood spoiled by puberty, or maybe they were really talented. I remember one of them - or rather, not even the whole poem, but its ending:

Well, how can I understand that everything is near, But only there is nobody around!

School is over, my friend and I dispersed to different universities, and on that our paths also parted. But these lines remained in my memory and periodically surfaced. Because in the megalopolis, millions of people quietly hate their neighbors in traffic jams - especially the closest ones, in neighboring cars, which the devil pulled to go this very road … In the city we simply get tired of people, from other people's voices and faces, from round-the-clock noise … And at the same time we suffer catastrophically from loneliness.

Another hero of the film "Irony of Fate" lamented: "We stopped doing big, good stupid things, we stopped climbing through the windows to our beloved women …" And now you can also add: "We have stopped communicating." We are forced to communicate daily. We have voluntarily reduced our communication to a minimum. Or is it not entirely voluntary?..

WHAT ARE THE REASONS?

1. Loneliness in a crowd is a syndrome of a metropolis, an unpleasant attachment to it, payment for high salaries and household comfort. The city sets its unnaturally fast pace of life, when there is simply no time to communicate. Morning "hello" to your neighbor in the elevator, sharing news with colleagues at work, discussing diet with a fitness trainer, tired "hello-how-are-all-good" thrown to the spouse before bedtime …

And besides, there is an overabundance of contacts during the day. There is a kind of intoxication with superficial communication with random people, so we can no longer accept real, deep communication - friendly, kindred, loving. After all, if you overeat chips during the day, a delicious homemade dinner just won't go down your throat …

When something is in excess, it is devalued. This law is true both for the market and for relationships: the more forced contacts, the more people around, the less you want to see others around you. Remember how many films have been made in which the heroes find themselves on a desert island and finally begin to appreciate each other!

2. Our society does not dispose to communication - the need for it seems to be not foreseen.

In Soviet times, there were youth organizations, circles, courtyard companies … Now the section for a child is a matter of parents' income, and letting him go unattended to walk around the outskirts of a sleeping area is like taking him into a dark forest and leaving him to be devoured by wolves. But the child's desire to be among his own people does not disappear, and by adolescence it only grows, so he finds himself a company, sometimes not the best one.

Needs for communication in other age groups are also ignored: benches for pensioners, tables on which dominoes and chess were laid out have disappeared from the courtyards … We have practically no clubs for pensioners. And if you can put a bench in the courtyard yourself, then a meeting room in the cold season is not so easy to find.

3. “Man's friend” is no longer a dog, and the Kid would ask his parents not for a dog, but for a game console. He would not have noticed Carlson's arrival at all. Unless he would have brought a computer novelty. Then they would have played it - side by side, silently, throwing remarks "on business" …

A person can be thought of as a flower with a core and petals. Petals are emotional attachments, ideally to other people. But if these petals are already occupied, then there will be no place for another person. Remember Pontius Pilate and his beloved Bangu? “After all, you can't agree, put all your affection in a dog. Your life is meager, hegemon. " And modern man places his affection not even in an animal, but in an inanimate object: a laptop, an iPhone … This year in Japan a marriage was registered between a 28-year-old man and a pillow depicting an anime heroine! There is no place left for a living person. Our emotional attachment goes to machines, not humans.

4. Internet communication is useful and interesting. For one and only "but": if it does not crowd out real communication. And this is what often happens … "Communication" means not only the exchange of information through symbols, be it words or emoticons. There is something that the Internet cannot convey, even when it has reached Skype in its evolutionary development: touch, smell, warmth of another person …

In addition, offline friendships are "greenhouse" and safe. That is why so many prefer it - it's easier. You can lie with three boxes, without explaining the reasons to ignore a friend, and you can leave the chat yourself at any time … So important skills of group communication - finding your place, role …

The substitution of Internet communication for real communication is especially dangerous for “immature minds”, that is, children and adolescents. In psychology, there is such a concept - "sensitive period", which can be translated as "Every vegetable has its own time." That is, certain skills should be formed at your age, if time is lost, then it is difficult to make up for it later. A child who has not learned to communicate in time in adulthood will face big problems.

Internet communication should be an addition to real communication, but not a substitute for it. After all, over time, a person begins to believe in virtual reality more than in the real one. In the same social networks, you can see 500 - 700 people in the list of "friends". What kind of friendship is this? Is that a surrogate …

5. The upbringing system is aimed mainly at the development of intelligence, assimilation of new information and the ability to operate with it. But no one forms communication skills - they say, they will arise themselves, the child learns not alone, but with other children …

My dream is to have a special subject "Healthy communication skills" in high school. In my subjective opinion, then life in the adult world would be much easier and more pleasant.

After all, the fact is that we all love to communicate. Because a person is a gregarious or herd creature, not a loner. But at the same time, we for the most part do not know how to communicate, therefore we proudly refuse this need. Like an offended child: "Well, don't, I didn't really want to." We say that "there is no time", or we start to run away into virtual safe communication … Or we even declare ourselves "self-sufficient individuals" and abandon friendship, marriage, lose family ties …

After all, the point is not that at the hour of death someone served a glass of water. Suddenly, as in a joke, you really don't want to drink. It is important that throughout your life there is someone who can bring this same glass or a cup of tea … The one for whom you yourself are happy to do something good … And "just like that", as in a children's cartoon …

EXPERT OPINION

Natalia Slavashevich,

practicing psychoanalyst

TIME FOR YOURSELF

This "illness" - "loneliness in the crowd" - is rather psychological, and therefore spiritual. And such well-known virtues as faith, hope and love solve both the problems of their own loneliness and the ways to overcome it. But … sometimes there is not enough strength, time or experience for this, a kind of test of life, the natural course of things and events that teach people such an experience of struggle or resignation with loneliness. Sometimes we have to be alone, on the days of waiting for loved ones, in hospitals or captivity, traveling without companions. Many people are looking for it for relaxation and accumulation of strength, reflection and absorption of knowledge, while others flee from it in panic, throwing themselves into dubious enterprises and companies, or "hang" in virtual reality.

The more artificial and detached the inner life of a person, the more acutely the feeling of loneliness is experienced if he strives for people, or the more he observes fencing off from people or opposing himself to people, so as not to feel an unpleasant feeling with the objective fact of loneliness. Every person in the civilized world is faced with the problem of building his own system of being from contacts, connections and communication. a person has to learn a lot - to try, choose, communicate, experience difficulties and indulge in excesses, observe, maintain and cut ties, experience and show different feelings and be aware of their limits in order to create a comfortable living environment and a favorable environment for themselves.

CUP OF LIFE

Sometimes our life is compared to a cup. And we invite you to imagine your life - that part of it that is connected with communication - as several vessels.

Communication:

• with relatives;

• with friends;

• with a loved one;

• with children (if you already have one);

• with colleagues at work.

1. Now answer the following questions:

What percentage is each of your "bowls" full? Write down specific numbers. Thus, you can compose a kind of "hit parade" that will help you understand what you are missing (for example, "Communication with a child - 40%"), and what, perhaps, you have in excess ("Communication at work - 200 %! Everyone got it, they want something from me!.. ").

2. Is each bowl filled with exactly what you would like? Are your contacts optimal for you or do you sometimes keep a good face in a bad game, convincing yourself that "everything is OK" and "no problem"?

3. If you find that one of the bowls is not full enough or its filling does not correspond to your true desires, think - how can this be corrected? Be specific and realistic. For example, “to come once every two weeks to visit my parents”, and not “I should visit my relatives more often” …