Lessons in Loneliness: an essay by philosopher Kaitlyn Creasy

From The Philosopher, vol. 113, no. 2 ( "Crossing the Floods" )

https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/lessons-in-loneliness



Two summers ago, and almost two years after giving birth to my son, I found myself driving aimlessly through the streets of Los Angeles with a dull, deep ache in my chest, an ache somehow amplified by the brilliant midday sun and blue sky above. Being somewhat picky, I had driven in on a weekday for a haircut. The plan had been to return home immediately afterwards to avoid the worst of the day’s traffic on the interstate so that I could make it home for dinner. Instead, I drove aimlessly through the streets of Silver Lake, stopped for a coffee in West Hollywood, and drove deeper into the city, all with a lurking awareness that every stop and detour was inching me closer to rush hour in a city notorious for soul-crushing traffic. By the time I punched my home address into Google Maps from the parking lot of the Getty – a destination I’d chosen because it felt like an especially dignified place to brood – the drive time to home had more than doubled. Simultaneously frustrated with myself (I would, after all, have to sit through more traffic) and strangely satisfied (the trap I’d half-wittingly laid for myself had worked), I called my husband to say it wouldn’t make sense to leave the city anytime soon, that I wouldn’t be home in time for dinner.

Seated on the tram to the galleries and gardens, I turned my attention back toward that ache, thinking about how best to describe the feeling. It felt a bit like a weight had been attached to my heart, I thought to myself. No – more like a hole in the middle of my chest, a thrumming emptiness. And I wondered how empty space could ache. Looking out at the Pacific Ocean from the garden wall at the Getty, sensing the depth and intensity of my loneliness, it became clear to me that I was experiencing loneliness of a sort I hadn’t in many years. This bewildered me and set in motion a years-long process of sense-making – of which this piece, too, is a part. Then, I had wondered to myself: how could I be lonely? I had a loving partner who appreciated me. My young son was a persistent source of joy and wonder who showed me a depth of love I hadn’t yet experienced, just as every cliché about parenthood suggested he would. I had an active and engaging career and several close friends. So why did I feel this way?

***

Loneliness is ubiquitous: everyone experiences it at some time or other. But we’re extremely complicated creatures. Each of us possesses an elaborate (and often idiosyncratic) set of needs and desires, many of which we require others to meet. While experiences of loneliness are widespread, they vary – sometimes widely – in part because the unmet desires and needs at the root of these experiences do. Broadly characterized, loneliness is a painful subjective feeling that results when our desires for recognition or connection are not fulfilled (or are perceived to be unfulfilled). Importantly, however, there are many forms of meaningful recognition and endless forms of connection that we may need, not all of which can be offered even by beloved others who know us extremely well and appreciate many features of us.



In addition to desiring recognition of our basic worth as human beings – wanting to be recognized as beings with unconditional value, as Hannah Arendt and Kieran Setiya highlight – we want to be recognized in our particularity: we want to be seen, understood, and valued as the particular individuals that we are. Just as I may become lonely if no one reflects my unconditional worth back to me, I may become lonely when others in my life fail to acknowledge or sufficiently appreciate a valued aspect of my identity or self-conception. Indeed, even in cases where my beloved appreciates certain features of me (perhaps my sense of humour and my passion for analysis) simply because they are features of me and I am their beloved, I may experience loneliness absent a deeper form of appreciation, one that requires that these features resonate affectively with my beloved in the way required for him to genuinely value them.

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