Loneliness Paradox

By Amanda Bertucci & Harry Stamatov

Loneliness Paradox

For love and loneliness

and love of being alone

The irony of a paradox that isolates us when most feel the same.

As a student, I dreaded book reports. I rolled my eyes at overly analytical debates in my undergrad film studies class. I’ve always appreciated artistic dimensions and the creative process, but I refused to believe that everything had to have depth. Surely some things exist solely for passive aesthetics or enjoyment. Humans are a selfish species, attracted by what affects or appeals. We build a figurative guard against tough experiences or emotions that reject pain and the pleasures of vulnerability and ignorance.

Exceptions apply, like me. And if you’re like me.

Only as I grew up and experienced the volatile spectrum of emotions and experiences did I relate to the films I watched and books I read. Music became therapy and I’d listen to my favourite songs on repeat feeling seen by the lyrics and moved by the melody. Books became education or an escape as I sought stories I could relate to or distract from reality. And films were a mirror or looking glass. I craved complexity and found community in art that I couldn’t find in people.

Fulfilling mostly; I put the alien in alienate.

It’s ironic that something that impacts everyone is talked about by no one but can ultimately bring us closer.

Why, by nature, are we embarrassed to admit we're lonely? Or that we love to be alone.

It's inevitable from a world so entwined but detached; stimulated, overwhelmed, burnt out, repeat; especially when our pre-configured ageing complex creeps in; from making friends in your 30s and dating in your 50s to swallowed words and fumbled chances.

It’s not shameful but a byproduct when our internal voices become louder than those around us. Like the earth orbits the sun, our life exists in cycles or loops. Endings and beginnings. And as I’ve learned from growing up in a city: volume doesn’t fill space. It impedes and expands the innate desire for intimacy.

Works like Andrew Haigh's film All Of Us Strangers and Hanya Yanagihara's book A Little Life warrant independent discussions, but both hit different in depicting this natural phenomenon.

Despite different plots, the commonality is the unsettling quiet associated with loneliness. Almost meditative, you’re grounded in the present and watch the past click across your consciousness like Viewmaster stills or Hi8 clips.

We learn love is an antidote for being alone, but they are not mutually exclusive. Love and loneliness exist from one another. And impermanence reminds us that sometimes we only have ourselves. The void is not always polarising, maybe barely noticeable, and occasionally – or often – enjoyable, depending on circumstance and perspective.

Self-love helps.

For me, I feel most lonely in transit. Being on a plane in the confines of my mind, surrounded by strangers, is where I’m sobered by solitude; digitally dissociated and dialled into myself I process completion and anticipation.

Then I land.