The more I’ve watched companionless strangers, the more I’ve come to think that these moments are only lonely for those who are observing them.
Perhaps we see loneliness in others simply to feel less lonely ourselves.
But loneliness isn’t necessarily tied to whether you have a partner or a best friend or an aspirationally active social life in which you’re laughing all the time. It’s a variance that rests in the space between the relationships you have and the relationships you want.
Loneliness lives in the gap.
Evolution shoved us into molds that caused us to feel not only unsettled by rejection, but also mortally threatened.
There’s a reason that, short of execution, banishment was the harshest punishment a king could bestow.
Almost all of his actions are laced with a disinterest in others, but this is the important part: it implies superiority, and only when a man is superior to others is his loneliness meaningful instead of pathetic.
Baby seagulls ask their mothers for food by tapping their beaks against a red stripe that runs down the center of hers.
When scientists present yellow popsicle sticks to the nest, painted with a red stripe, the birds peck at it just as they would their mothers.
But when they’re offered sticks painted with three stripes, the baby birds run over each other, frantic to get closer to the stick, pecking maniacally. They ignore the single stripe, and even their real mothers, in favor of the hyperbolic impersonation.
Pop songs are still sung to women who are beautiful but don’t know it. Their beauty is for others, and for the man singing his song, who seems to know he is getting something for free. He benefits from her beauty without its threat—she won’t leave, she won’t ask for too much, because she hasn’t learned the value of what she has.