Loneliness…
Broad topic, if any…

It is a matter of distinguishing positive loneliness from negative loneliness.

By positive loneliness, I mean the loneliness that one appreciates, that one sometimes loves to the point of seeking.

It is linked, in general but not necessarily, with calm, peace, resourcing, rest, introspection, reflection, balance sometimes, in short, it is the crucible of becoming, the cauldron of choices, the cocoon of decisions. Most of the time, the choices will be right and the decisions will be wise since they will have been made free of external influences, at the heart of being.

There is another loneliness, the one that I call negative, the one that we fear, that we flee at any cost.

It should be noted that this last does not necessarily imply the state of physical loneliness because we are talking more here about psychological loneliness.

This represents a real suffering for a large part of the population and the period we have just gone through and are still going through, moreover, has made this suffering much more acute.

Although more intense at the present time for the reasons I have just mentioned, this suffering is not new, far from it.

I think that our ancestors, even the most distant ones, already knew this type of suffering.  However, the past decades have significantly worsened the problem.  Indeed, in the age of hyper-connection, human beings are less and less so. The family unit has been reduced to its simplest expression when it does not explode in a mono-parental scheme.

Human beings called «connected» have never had so much trouble «meeting» themselves, a supreme paradox!

Life is a constant change and the only thing unchanging is the impermanence of things…

The human being adapts, as much as he can, to the incessant «progress» of his environment. The movement has accelerated considerably over the past fifty years. It seems that, at times, the human being is more in a state of survival than in a state of life!

New technologies, instead of bringing us closer, have separated us. Even before the “mandatory lockdown”, they locked us in our ivory towers. It happened without our knowledge, little by little, in insidious ways.

Many people, at the end of the mandatory lockdown, continued to “self-isolate”, out of fear, habit, or whatever.

The damage caused by these different forms of isolation, forced or not, is only beginning to be felt and now is the time to act!

Apart from the periods of solitude chosen and therefore positive, the human being being a «gregarious animal», he is not made to live alone but the world today imposes on him, more and more, this suffering.

So what do we do?

The only thing the human being can do is act on the only element that he controls, namely himself.  This has always been the case but it was much less visible.  There was a time, not so long ago, when man had the feeling of "controlling" his environment, his family, his work…  This illusion has now completely disappeared and the people who cling to it are deeply unhappy.  The only true path today, which the ancients already advocated, is the path to oneself!

So, it is really now that we need to take care of ourselves, that we need to take charge of ourselves, that it is important to work on ourselves in order to evolve, grow and best manage the changes that are imposed on us whatever we do.

It has never been more important than today to live in the present, without lamenting a bygone past and without fearing an uncertain future to say the least.

It’s obviously anything but simple!

And that’s where coaching comes in. Coaching starts with “what is” and doesn’t deal with “why”.

The observation today is that everything is going fast and faster and faster and that sometimes we do not have time to ask ourselves deeply about the causes while the effects must be dealt with in an extreme urgency.

This instant photograph of what is, is the only solid foundation on which a work can be based.  This base will serve as the basis for the strengthening work, the only work that, in my opinion, will keep the course in the middle of the turmoil…

In the next article, I’ll talk about resilience

Patricia Deswert