What you have written in this essay certainly resonated with my understanding and experience of loneliness.
I am some years your senior, with all the challenges of aging, less stamina, and with a mind that imagines I'm still 25 or 30 and a body that all too often reminds me that I am not.
What you've written about loneliness and being seen makes perfect sense. I am seldom lonely when I am merey alone. Alone times can be occasions for reflection and for discovering one's best companion: oneself. Also, I have discovered a creative kind of loneliness that can prompt me to extend myself empatheticly to others like myself, and hopefully see as I would like to be seen. And that takes me a real effort, as I am by nature 'shy'.
It is when I am "invisible" to people I'd dearly like to be seen (perceptived) by that real debilitating loneliness threatens to set in.
This most recent essay of yours reveals, whatever hurt it must have cost you to get there, an emotional sensitivity and sensibility that seems all too rare in today's too fast paced and too acquisitive society.
I am very grateful for your essay. You always give me something important to think about.
Thank you for this thoughtful and generous response. What you wrote about loneliness versus being unseen resonates deeply with me as well. I think you named something essential there that solitude can be nourishing, even creative, while invisibility is what truly wounds.
Knowing that my words connected with your own experience means more to me than I can easily say. Writing this essay did cost me something, but comments like yours remind me why it was worth it. To be met with understanding, reflection, and empathy that is a rare gift.
I am grateful not only for your kind words, but for the care and openness behind them. Thank you for reading so attentively, and for sharing a part of yourself in return.
Mike, thank you. ❤️ That means so much to me. Feeling isolated even around people is such a real thing, and I’m sorry you know that feeling too. I see you and hear you as well. Thank you for being here with me.
What you have written in this essay certainly resonated with my understanding and experience of loneliness.
I am some years your senior, with all the challenges of aging, less stamina, and with a mind that imagines I'm still 25 or 30 and a body that all too often reminds me that I am not.
What you've written about loneliness and being seen makes perfect sense. I am seldom lonely when I am merey alone. Alone times can be occasions for reflection and for discovering one's best companion: oneself. Also, I have discovered a creative kind of loneliness that can prompt me to extend myself empatheticly to others like myself, and hopefully see as I would like to be seen. And that takes me a real effort, as I am by nature 'shy'.
It is when I am "invisible" to people I'd dearly like to be seen (perceptived) by that real debilitating loneliness threatens to set in.
This most recent essay of yours reveals, whatever hurt it must have cost you to get there, an emotional sensitivity and sensibility that seems all too rare in today's too fast paced and too acquisitive society.
I am very grateful for your essay. You always give me something important to think about.
,
Dear Gary,
Thank you for this thoughtful and generous response. What you wrote about loneliness versus being unseen resonates deeply with me as well. I think you named something essential there that solitude can be nourishing, even creative, while invisibility is what truly wounds.
Knowing that my words connected with your own experience means more to me than I can easily say. Writing this essay did cost me something, but comments like yours remind me why it was worth it. To be met with understanding, reflection, and empathy that is a rare gift.
I am grateful not only for your kind words, but for the care and openness behind them. Thank you for reading so attentively, and for sharing a part of yourself in return.
Mike, thank you. ❤️ That means so much to me. Feeling isolated even around people is such a real thing, and I’m sorry you know that feeling too. I see you and hear you as well. Thank you for being here with me.