A few days back when Ratan Tata said, “You don’t know what it is to be lonely, until you spend time alone wishing for companionship”; to many of us that was happening to someone, somewhere else.
A common description of loneliness is the feeling we get when our need for rewarding social contact and relationships is not met. Loneliness is a state of mind. Loneliness causes people to feel empty, alone, and unwanted. It is marked by feelings of isolation despite wanting social connections. It is often perceived as an involuntary separation, rejection, or abandonment by other people. There is a difference between Loneliness and Solitude. If the latter can be therapeutic at times the former is corrosive.
Speaking of Ratan Tata, we subconsciously compared his situation with ours – Lonely, old, rich, unmarried gentleman without children, living alone in a big house. We may not be as rich or may not be having that big a bungalow; but we have family, children, friends and so many other social contacts and engagements never to have a lonely moment. Simultaneously we started thinking of our relatives who already are rendered lonely or will become soon because of the death of their partners or migration of their children on a gravy train. We worry about them while counting our many blessings and thanked God that we are not in their situation.
Really? Now take this test.
Imagine these situations. You are elated after meeting someone who validated your conviction of an idea you have been working on for the last few years. You had an awesome meeting with your client and almost bagged the deal of your lifetime. You feel utterly defeated because you were let down by an associate. You felt utterly ignored by a friend you knew for years at a party. Do you want to share your joy and sorrow with someone who has the time to listen to you and will empathize with your feelings? You have some 1500+ numbers on your phonebook; now select five.
You don’t have to tell the result. Most would not have found the first one even. Let’s face it.
Despite being amidst a sea of people, most of us are lonely. It feels like being at a social gathering of people you know no one. The difference here is that you know everyone but there is an invisible barrier that is preventing the human connection. Many of us lack empathy and compassion for others. All are so busy with our life’s problems that there is no time in their hand to think about others’ lives and to check if anyone would be needing them. The virtual clamour on the social media platform successfully hides the lack of human interaction or touches in the society we are living in at present.
What do you call a society where humans have become stones and teddy bears and pet dogs have replaced humans when it comes to exchanging human touches?
Is the problem of recent origin or has exacerbated by the dramatic change in lifestyle triggered by nuclear family structures, migration, and technology?
Leo Tolstoy captured this emotional state of humans through the feelings of a father who had lost his son that morning and his desperate attempts to share his grief with someone. After failing to find a human to share that with; he discharges his pent-up grief on the horse that drew his coach. He didn’t want money or any help; Just someone with compassion who agrees to compassionately listen to his grief.
As relevant today as when it was written.
When in 1970 Neeraj Sridhar used the phrase ‘Bheed Ke Beech Akela’ in the song Phoolon Ke Rang Se, he never could have imagined how relevant, and representative his metaphor of the general feelings of a society of lonely people even in 2020.
I was listening to Ruskin Bond at the Bhubaneswar Literary Festival and he before signing off requested the audience and readers to keep writing to him. He light-heartedly said that the validation of the readers still matters to him at this age too. We thought an author of his level of accomplishment wouldn’t care what his readers think of his writings.
How wrong we are.
If I could never forgive my closest friend who didn’t think it was important for him to speak to me even once when I was losing my father slowly over 15 days and showed up two days after his death; I also will not forget the compassionate gesture of that angel who packed all her furry friends in a car let them loose in our house one full evening the very next day I lost my dearest pet dog. While my closest friend didn’t have the eye to see the pain I could be going through, this girl who hardly knew me thought of relieving me of my grief of losing a family member.
The above two examples describe what compassion and human touch mean to a person in grief especially when he is falling apart. Our personal lives are rife with experiences of disappointments meted out by our close ones and surprises coming from unknown persons.
Let’s accept that though our bodies are designed to respond to touch, not just to sense the environment around us; we have a network of dedicated nerve fibres in our skin that detect and emotionally respond to the human touches of another person — affirming our relationships, our social connections and even our sense of self.
For a social person of higher emotional order, these are the essentials on which his identity exists.
When we are overcome by the feeling of loneliness, we are not craving human contact, but human touches. If we want a society that provides us with all the human contacts and touches, we need, are we ourselves doing it for others?
Bruce Springsteen in his song Human Touch writes…
I ain’t lookin’ for praise or pity
I ain’t comin’ ’round searchin’ for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
And a little of that human touch
Just a little of that human touch
Share a little of that human touch
Feel a little of that human touch [2]
Share a little of that human touch
Feel a little of that human touch
Give me a little of that human touch [2}
Dial into others’ lives to check if they are fine and need your time and compassion; It’s time we stopped waiting for someone else to call. Jadoo ki jhappi doesn’t have to be physical.
