Most people are lonely and don’t know it. I know that because I was one of them, and only recently was able to acknowledge that truth.
I am writing this article while sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of 1st Avenue and 13th Street in the East Village of Manhattan. I recently relocated my family to the big apple from Toronto, a city I lived in for twenty-six years, with the intention of expanding our business and our lives. Overnight, this decision uprooted me from daily "hellos" with acquaintances from my neighbourhood, regular coffee chats with friends and the local restaurant servers knowing me by name to spending a great deal of time alone. However, I’ve quickly learned that alone doesn’t equate loneliness, as there are many introverts who spend time by themselves and yet do not feel lonely. Loneliness happens when the human interactions we do have with others are not meaningful. I’m surrounded by 8.8 million people. I can assure you that I have hundreds of interactions with human beings every week. It’s just that most of them have yet to match the meaningful connections I had cultivated back home.
It takes me back to the time when my father lost his job when I was a teenager, and at the age of sixteen we had to move from the security of my small town to the big city where I now had zero friends. Today, I still remember the sadness and frustration I felt walking past conversations of kids planning house parties knowing just a few months earlier it was me that people came to with the plan for Friday night. Back then I would have interpreted my anger as me being mad about not having a social life. Today, I look back at that time and realize I was just sad about not having people to talk to about the things that mattered to me.
As you read these words you may