21st Century Loneliness

Yesterday evening on my way home from work, I made an observation.

I frequently make observations on my travels through the city every day, but these are usually along the lines of "Slow people are the ones who drift into the middle too much" and "Tourists like to take photographs of the rats on the underground, and sometimes of me eating my lunch, too". But the observation I made yesterday was very unlike me; rather than making an angry, sarcastic or bitter observation, I made a sad one: people are lonely.

I was sitting on the train staring out the window with, ironically enough, P!nk's Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely) blaring into my ears, when I caught sight of a man's reflection in the darkened glass. He was staring at his mobile phone.

My eyes drifted to the reflection of the woman sitting across the aisle from me, and she too was staring at her phone.

I moved my gaze from the window to the woman sitting across from me, and yep, another one was scrolling through her Blackberry. A quick look around the carriage confirmed that everyone (yes, literally everyone) was either talking on their phone, pressing buttons on their phone or staring at the screen of their phone intently. (And to top things off, on my way to work this morning, a woman staring at her phone let out a loud, involuntary "Awwww!" It warmed my heart for about two seconds, and then I got irritated by the man standing next to me, breathing too loudly.)

Maybe loneliness isn't the right word, because that sort of suggests that these people are missing some fundamental social proximity in their lives, while in fact it is entirely plausible that they all have big, loud families, doting partners, hyperactive children, crowds of friends and a surplus of various other acquaintances. In fact, if all of them are finding people to talk to at 8:30 in the evening, then that must mean they have someone to fill that void in their life. What interested me is the fact that so many people crave social proximity.

I know humans are supposed to be social creatures, but I didn't realise until yesterday evening just how social we are. Or they are, anyway; somehow, I don't quite get it. Sometimes I drive myself crazy with all my Mini Maaarfers running around up in my brain, bumping into one another and causing chaos, but then there are also occasions where all the Mini Maaarfers sit round a table together and have a civilised discussion about whatever the topic of the day happens to be. And I love occasions like those.

Sometimes, there's nothing I love more than to be alone. I used to think that everyone felt like that, but as I sat there on the train yesterday evening, it suddenly dawned on me how little I see people simply being these days. No one sits in a park alone and stares at the ducks; no one sits under a tree and writes a poem; no one goes out for a walk anymore unless they have a dog to take with them. We are all kept busy with our phones, our Kindles, our iPads and, in my case, our iPods, and in our struggle to keep up with the modern western world, the imagination has become a forgotten tool. And perhaps that is the saddest thing of all.