Who Would Notice If I Was Missing?
There is a loneliness in realising that no one is waiting for you.
You may have people you could call, messages you could answer, and somewhere you could go. Yet the day could pass without anyone wondering where you are.
An invitation might be welcome. Something less deliberate might matter just as much: being expected at the usual time, having a place at the table, and someone asking why you weren't there. These small experiences give us a place in other people's lives.
Perhaps this is one way to approach loneliness: by asking who holds us in mind.
When we ask whether loneliness is a modern phenomenon, it is easy to get caught up in an argument about whether people were happier in the past. A different question interests me more. When did people begin to describe their suffering as loneliness? When did it become a familiar explanation for what was missing from a life?
The historian Fay Bound Alberti identifies the period around 1800 as a significant turning point in the English language, when loneliness increasingly acquired its modern emotional meaning. This interprets a changing vocabulary and culture, rather than a date marking the first lonely person. It invites us, though, to consider how people come to recognise their experience.
To say “I am lonely” is already to give a particular shape to an ache. Someone else might speak of feeling forgotten, having no one to confide in, missing a partner, or being unable to find people among whom they can relax. These experiences overlap, but they ask different things of us.
We might also wonder about the expectations surrounding the ache. What do we believe our relationships ought to provide? How much understanding do we hope for? Does needing companionship feel ordinary, or does it seem like evidence that we have failed to become sufficiently independent?
There is much to value in the freedom to live alone, to leave an unhappy relationship, or to step away from a community whose acceptance depends on concealing who we are. Few of us would willingly surrender those freedoms. Yet choosing our own lives also entails the work of building and sustaining connections. Friendship requires time. Familiarity needs repetition. Trust cannot always develop at the pace our schedules allow.
Somewhere within this lies a tension: we want to belong and room to breathe.
Buddhism offers an interesting perspective on that tension. The Buddha's encouragement of solitude sits alongside his striking emphasis on good friendship. When Ānanda describes admirable friendship as half the spiritual life, the Buddha calls it the whole. The capacity to be alone develops within a teaching that also values companionship.
For someone experiencing loneliness, this leaves open two movements, and part of the work is recognising which is called for. There may be value in turning towards the feeling: noticing its bodily texture, the memories it evokes, and the predictions it makes. An evening alone can become entangled with the conviction that we will always be alone. Meeting that conviction with care, rather than accepting it as fact, can loosen its hold.
There may also be a need to reach outward, or for somebody else to reach towards us. An invitation, a shared meal, or a dependable friendship can change the conditions in which the feeling arises in ways no amount of attention to the feeling itself can. The two movements can look alike from the outside, since both involve staying with something difficult rather than fleeing it.
The difference is whether the difficulty is being met, or whether it has become a habit that stands in for meeting somebody. Turning inward becomes a retreat when it starts to replace the harder step of reaching out; reaching out can become restless when it is used to avoid sitting with what solitude brings up. Telling the two apart has less to do with instruction than with honesty about what you're avoiding.
I find myself wanting to ask what someone means when they say they are lonely. Do they have nobody around them? Do they feel unseen by those who are there? Have they lost someone whose presence cannot be replaced? Have they learned to hide so much of themselves that company offers little relief?
The answer matters. It tells us what kind of encounter is required.
Perhaps a less lonely society would make more room for the ordinary continuity of relationships: seeing the same people, doing things together, and gradually becoming familiar enough to be missed. Belonging can grow through these modest repetitions, without anyone having to make an impressive case for themselves.
An empty chair does not always mean something is wrong. Someone may be enjoying a quiet evening alone. There is comfort, though, in knowing the chair is yours and that someone will ask after you upon your return.
Sources
Fay Bound Alberti, A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Upaddha Sutta: Half (of the Holy Life), Saṃyutta Nikāya 45.2, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Rory Singer
You can also read this post on our Substack journal, Unfolding.