Sometimes the words have to come out, to save your sanity and to connect yourself again with a better manner of thinking, and hopefully a better life in the process.
The loneliness has gotten to critical levels, and life itself is reduced to a meaningless wait. The lack of friends, and meaningful relationships has brought any purpose to it to an end. Employment is sparse, and that is being optimistic, while the industries you were trained in have all but vanished. Housing is too costly, and even the simple act of staying fed is a challenge. There are no security blankets, and there is nobody left that knows your story. Two and four-legged acquaintances are at the end of their lives, and the overwhelming feeling to give away your belongings to clear your life’s clutter is at an all time high. I don’t know how long I have in this world but it appears the ending is going to be the toughest part.
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I didn’t think it would be this way, I don’t think anyone who suffers from anything like this does. Unprepared for a world we couldn’t prepare for, it will now swallow us up and declare our lives as worthless remnants of a bygone era. This sounds like it is coming from someone of advanced years, not their mid to late fifties, but that’s the case. Between personal events and world ones, more and more people are faced with outlooks of this nature. Lives with little to no meaning other than taking up space and waiting it all out. That is not living to be honest, that is not having a life, but having to endure, having to suffer, and having to watch everything you knew die off and disappear. One day you are full of possibilities and optimistic, the next you are trapped in a world of excess and endless omnipresent losses of purpose, of being. There isn’t even anyone to tell about it, or anyone who would be happy for your successes, achievements, getting better at… The loneliness is real, and hacks away at your physical and mental health exacerbating the effects. It is a singular terror to hold.
Psychologists, and scientists are studying this kind of malaise of living, this just being done with it. The tiredness of everything for people of a more advanced age. In looking at the parts of this the psychologists are studying, I realized it is not something that is only present in people older than myself. I have seen it present in almost all of the generations in one form or another. I have watched my own Mother go through the gradual shutting down, the stiffening of the joints, and the health issues that exacerbate themselves. It is a slow motion turning to stone, a Medusa effect that adheres to the spirit as much as it does to the body. After some time even the thinking is affected, the routines shorten and the droning of life becomes as loud as the bad tinnitus that keeps you up at night.
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This suffering and ending though is not going away. The ways and whereto of this conditioning is opening up wide with the rampant ageism, generational-isms, social boundaries and varying popular movements, amongst other things. Loneliness is a worldwide issue that is causing conditions to develop that not only effect the elderly, but also the young and very young. Confused, fearful, scared, disinterested, apathetic, I think much of the reasonings for the lack of human connectivity are more universal than people readily accept. Whatever the reasonings are these effects are going to ripple through our collective species with profound costs. From education, to training, to social constructs of the next generations including even the reproduction that is supposed to ensure our survival is under assault from our ways. The framework of what friendship is has even been redone/redefined in our societal consciousness through social media.
These are some of the unseen consequences from our vaulting into the future. The real lives affected are still amongst us and clawing away at foundations as thin as the air. The world will once again take its toll on the weakest, the most ill prepared, or the ones that are systematically placed onto the pile of the dismissed, disapproved, and diminished. These are always the things we come around to and proclaim that we missed out on the indicators, we didn’t do right by, thoughts and prayers… It is an unsettling feeling when looking at the big construct and seeing the very wheels of humanity failing to climb out of the ruts we have imposed on ourselves. The thing is though, in many ways we have been here before. This part of our story is not really new; Our immense, and undeniable ability to overcome our worst of times would do us well to remember. We, as a species have been almost eradicated in our distant past, leaving our population in the hundreds, and thousands at times. We have come back from plagues, and wars, famines, and floods. We have clawed back from the great depression, and found ourselves through the beginnings of this current new age.
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The world has changed, and the loneliness will continue to grow, the opportunities for those essential, and meaningful human connections will become scarce for many. It may be the natural conclusion to the societal equations, it may have a measurable solution, a way to help fix it or make it more bearable. As the years progress and millions are left unprepared to sustain basic necessities, basic housing, basic dignity, maybe this aspect of growing out of life can be averted. Maybe some of the oldest among us could still find a way to feel like their lives are still pertinent, still participating, still human. If we could find a way to do that, then maybe we could stop the sedimentary creep that sometimes comes in and freezes them with a hardening, a longing, and a curse at the same time… Which I call, the Medusa effect.
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