Those who are not loved and taught tolerance of others, will have none themselves, reports We Love Oakland. It is a strange thing that all the memories have these two qualities. They are always full of quietness, that is the most striking thing about them; and even when things were not like that in reality, they still seem to have that quality. They are soundless apparitions, which speak to me by looks and gestures, wordless and silent—and their silence is precisely what disturbs me. Is not happiness like another circulating medium? When we have a very great deal of it, some poor hearts are aching for what is taken away from them. When we have gone out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner or later. Nothing is perhaps more dangerous to the future happiness of men of deep thought and retired habits, than the entertaining an early, long, and unfortunate attachment. We do not always have to have closure, just accept things as they are, and life will get better. 

In the most general sense, neither the problem of human loneliness nor its cure is particularly new. Even Adam, wandering about as a solitary create in the Garden of Eden, was not happy until he had a companion in his own likeness. And that beautiful creature Satan sure did want companionship, no one wants to be alone. The Book of Life hardly begins before the Creator of Paradise states that it is not good for man to be alone. Paradise itself was imperfect without companionship. Even God could not create a Paradise devoid of companionship. Many bereaved individuals or anxious divorcees do not need advice at all. What they need is human compassion, human friendship—they just need you to be there and truly care and be respectful. Your counsel is often far less important than your mere presence.  

Throughout the history of mankind, this point has been readily acknowledged. Over the course of centuries, a large number of elaborate rituals, cultural traditions, and religious ceremonies have been developed to provide generalized sources of human contact and friendship for the lonely, those who has suffered human loss, and people who just like to socialize. These folk traditions have been a source of comfort for uncounted millions in the past. And yet, in spite of this long historical experience of dealing with loneliness, there are more and more people who no longer seem able to find companionship within our society.  How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, or dance with at the nightclub, whom through silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of those wandering eyebeams. The heart knoweth.  

For if social institutions are to be downgraded in importance or even eliminated, we must recognize that their disappearance will create a social vacuum that will not automatically be filled by the creation of new institutions. Social requirements diffuse and nonspecific and can best be summarized as the desire simply to be with other people. The agenda of all groups, irrespective of their ostensible reasons for meeting together, includes the satisfaction of this requirement of people simply to be with one another. Beyond its impact on traditional social institutions, the new objectivity toward emotion has led many people to adopt a peculiar attitude toward companionship and loneliness. Great value is placed on independence, individualism, and new-found freedom, and correspondingly less value is placed on dependency.  

In a World of 7.6 billion people, to need someone else is viewed as a sign of weakness, a social sin. The free spirit, it appears, should not relate with someone else out of necessity, but only out of choice. Those who lack companionship are inadvertently encouraged to suffer in silence or, in the most subtle manner, to give up their quest for human companionship, accept the status quo, and revel in their aloneness. To be unattached and independent of everyone else is, according to this definition, to be truly free, truly liberated. In this context, loneliness is currently being packaged in an entirely new way—as the price of freedom. A second implication also emerges quite forcefully: feelings of loneliness are a sign of weakness. If a person is truly independent, then he should be happy rather than suffer from loneliness. The new individuals should rejoice in the knowledge that they are unattached and “have come a long way, baby!” The lonely are not the victims of malevolent governmental propagandist, but rather the victims of their own penchant for self-deception.