As I sat in my office at Cambrian, Go West by Anti-Flag came on my iPod. I was in a particularly somber mood this morning, and the lyrics captured my attention:
Like a ghost
Emptiness haunted his years
Still his heart was made of nothing less than good
Insecure narrative in his head
Something less than schizophrenia
Gripping him with every move that he makes
Breath he takes
A beautiful walk alone
To his empty home
Where he’ll lay and he’ll sleep by himself
Loneliness isn’t about a lack of people around you; it’s about a lack of meaningful connections to other people. It’s never been difficult for me to find company, and even now, there have been a lot of people in my life. The problem is that I don’t always feel attached to those people.
I think it comes down to a fundamental difference in our personal philosophies. I differ from most people I know in terms of how I balance work/school and my social life. I am not different in terms of valuing my social life over work/school, but I am different because of the reasons for it. I know quite a few people who don’t care about their work and school, or are too lazy to put in an honest effort with it. I don’t fit into that category generally (we all have our lazy days, obviously).
I put my social life ahead of work/school, because it IS the essence of life. You don’t live to work, you work to live. That is a fundamental philosophical flaw in our society, in my opinion. It seems that most people feel work and/or school is the important part of their life, but this is not true. Of course, your work can be a vital part of your life, especially if you’re doing something that helps other people out, but that’s not where your happiness should stem from. What is life if you have no one to enjoy it with? Nothing.
The issue is that many people, treating work/school as more important than their social life, tend to not make enough time to hang out with their friends and family. This creates a series of problems. First of all, the lack of a meaningful social life is always detrimental to the individual. The biggest problem, however, is that a person’s social relationships suffer. This leads to a series of events that are undesirable. People become “too busy” to spend quality time with one another, leading to a system where people don’t spend as much time as they should amongst one another. This process exaggerates the feelings of isolation and loneliness people feel, and often times leads to an almost xenophobic setting, where people become too busy to meet new contacts and expand their social circles.
I understand life is busy sometimes. My life is ridiculously busy. However, we have to find time to spend amongst our friends and family, and demonstrate that spending time with one another is significant to us, rather than obligatory. I hope that people start to cherish one another more, because life is too short to throw away by focusing solely on work and school.