Loneliness Is Not Just A Word

 "If you want to go fast, do it alone. But if you want to go far, do it together." - African proverb.

Loneliness is an unpleasant feeling in which a person experiences a strong sense of emptiness and solitude resulting from inadequate levels of social relationships. However, it is a subjective experience. Loneliness has also been described as social pain - a psychological mechanism meant to alert an individual of undesired isolation and motivate her/him to seek social connections.


An interesting study at the University of Chicago have linked this social pain to brain activity. In which it is said that - "The ventral striatum—a region of the brain associated with rewards—is much more activated in non-lonely people than in the lonely when they view pictures of people in pleasant settings. In contrast, the temporoparietal junction—a region associated with taking the perspective of another person—is much less activated among lonely than in the non-lonely when viewing pictures of people in unpleasant settings."


One of other leading researchers have stated that loneliness undermines health and can be as detrimental as smoking. Some have also stated that the relevance to this social inadequacy may lead to obesity and later may be the brink to Alzheimer's disease.


An article by Sunday Times, dated in May 2010, also evoked new perspectives in which technology and the pressure of modern life today are to be blamed for creating an epidemic of loneliness. The rationale to this is that the increase of internet usage, social networkings, Blackberry, and so forth, have driven the society to isolation as they trade the absolutes with a world of virtual reality. 


So how do we combat this disease of the mind named "Loneliness"?
Does increase social interactions help alleviate the inert matter of a being's choice made to live in solitude?


It is often said that if one wants to be heard, one needs to speak one's mind.
To speak one's mind, someone has to listen. 
Many have found it aimless to achieve any social interactions when everybody talks and nobody listens. Hence, most people choose to keep silent of their thoughts rather than invest wasted energy trying to be heard. And question that follows suit would be, "Now you hear me, but do you listen?"

Sigh... I do not want to be lonely... no more...